The Church of Ireland’s Primate, Archbishop John McDowell, this morning preached in Washington National Cathedral at the invitation of Dean Randolph Marshall Hollerith.
Archbishop McDowell is visiting Washington DC for a series of engagements which have included a townhall-style event on Capitol Hill with Archbishop Eamon Martin, and a visit to St Patrick’s Episcopal Church and its adjoining school in the city.
In the course of his remarks, Archbishop McDowell outlined how Patrick’s own character and discipleship was modelled on early Latin Christianity, a concern to avoid materialism, and a voluntary laying down of self in service to God and others. Patrick’s courage, he noted, is similar to that expressed by “those brave people who cross rivers and seas and mountains all over the world to live in a new country … there is something very deep inside them that tells them they were made for freedom so they risk much to go on their pilgrimage.”
As Lent continues, he suggested that to “travel a bit lighter and perhaps even a bit slower” can “condition our thoughts to see through that mist of tears … and to catch a glimpse of the Son of Man, the foregone conclusion of all history, drawing us towards himself”.
The readings for the service – a Eucharist for the Second Sunday in Lent and the Vigil of St Patrick – were Genesis 15:1-12, Psalm 27, Philippians 3:17 to 4:1, and Luke 13:31-35.
