Thursday, April 12, 2012

St Andrews...

... is possibly the most beautiful setting for any university. On the train from London I was busy with books and letters for most of the time, but after Edinburgh the only wise thing to do is just relish the glorious ride along the Scottish coast.

I was speaking to the Cathsoc at Canmore. Topic was celebrating the Church's feasts and seasons - we'd titled the talk "How to evangelise using the calendar" and this turned out to be good because people were rather intrigued (one told me that he'd wondered if it was going to be some sort of weird advice like 'Never evangelise on a Thursday"!). Delightful young people. A beautiful Mass in the chapel of the big old house - which I first visited to give a talk over 30 years ago, before today's undergraduates were even born...

After the meeting, everyone crowded into the chapel again for Compline. Candlelight, and young voices, and outside the sea and the sky...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a wonderful idea and theme " evangelising using the calendar. Interesting that Alain de Botton said (in an excellent interview with Richard Coles in Radio 4) that the calendar is one of the gifts of religion to a secular world. He wa talking about his new book of Religion for Atheists, of course, which I confess I haven't yet read. But he made a good point: that our diaries are full of tax return deadlines and dentists' appointments, but religious traditions can give us some joyful things to add! Thank you as always.

Pearl of Tyburn said...

I'm sure it was a great talk. It's always interesting learning new evangelization tips.

I have a friend who lives in Dysart, now a part of Kirkcaldy, not too far from St. Andrews. Have you ever been there?

Dysart was actually the port-town where Major John Pitcairn of American Revolution fame was born, so I find that very cool!