Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Father Gerard Hatton of St Patrick’s church in the Cowgate, Edinburgh.
In the words of the prophet Isaiah, which Jesus Christ referred to during the cleansing of the temple,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer.”
It was not the fact that animals were being sold and money exchanged in the temple that bothered him, because those were needed for ritual offerings. What bothered him was the exploitation of God’s people and the fact that the devout were being overcharged, injustice reigned and the temple had become a “den of thieves”. The temple in Jerusalem had been constructed to be a place of encountering God in prayer and was built to be the dwelling place of God on earth.
That quotation—
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”—
is also the motto of an Oratorian community to which Archbishop Leo Cushley entrusted St Patrick’s church in the Cowgate. It is the nearest Catholic church to this Parliament and will celebrate its 250-year jubilee on 9 October, marking the unique history of a place that has been a house of worship to Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Catholics.
It is a fitting home for Father Ninian Doohan and me, and the motto reminds us that it is intended to be a house of prayer for the people of Edinburgh today and for its many visitors from all over the world. It is a house that sings praises to God and a place for learning and discovering the holy scriptures and meeting God. It is a house for the lonely and the confused, and for people of much faith or little. It is a refuge for sinners, as many come to sacramental confession, and it is a house of joy, as they leave it free, enriched by the beauty of the liturgy and ready, with the gift of grace, to brave the day.
The church on the Cowgate is not a political movement or pressure group. St Patrick’s stands to give God the glory and to be a gate through which all may witness a little bit of heaven here in Edinburgh.
St Patrick’s is dedicated to prayer and to the transformation that will come. We see that in our parishioners, in our homeless friends, in works of charity and in the people from near and far who have a connection with St Patrick’s.
I hope that you have a place that is holy to you, where you can be yourself. I know that my St Patrick’s helps me to be and that it provokes me to be more.
Have a good afternoon.