I hope the faithful of the Parish will forgive me for a personal insight regarding the Papal Mass in Glasgow, and indulge me as I put a personal spin on it.
Archbishop Conti (a true guide to the faithful who has always spoken out on grave matters to reinforce Catholic doctrine) gave a wonderful speech on the Faith throughout these isles, and the role of the various wonderful saints who brought Catholicism to every part of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.
Of course he mentioned St Ninian - whose feast day it is - and his ordination in Rome prior to bringing the Faith to the people of Scotland.
It is here that I remember a small journey made in Scotland.
Some years ago my family and I lived in that fair land and we were walking beside a river in Caithness, at the very northernmost part of Scotland, once a region ruled over by Norsemen.
A little into our walk we bumped into a local man in a field and as we spoke to him about the stone walls around the fields, he told us a wonderful story.
The walls were built with two outer 'skins' of rock, then the centre was filled-in, giving the walls a strength they surely needed to survive some of the winds that would batter them over the years.
A few years before, so the farmer told us, he was repairing a wall when he took out a broken stone with a strange symbol on it. He then found another stone, which fitted the first.
When the two stones were put together, it formed the Chi Rho - the ancient symbol of the early Christians, and the symbol that we now recognise as that of the Pope.
It was this symbol the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great saw in a vision which was then explained to him by Christ in a dream, which he adopted as the Imperial symbol that gave him victory in battle and led to Rome becoming officially Christian.
It was astonishing to think that this old Catholic symbol, perhaps broken after the Reformation, perhaps initially hidden as many holy and ancient objects were, was in this place in some quiet valley in rural Caithness.
It reminded me, and reminds me to this day, of the deep roots of the Catholic Faith throughout these islands, and as Archbishop Conti reminded us today, Christ used His saints to take that Faith to even far flung communities as apart as our parish of Burry Port & Kidwelly and the people of Caithness.
This is the Faith that His Holiness the Pope called on the people of Scotland to live through the love of Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment