---

 

 The Chrism Eucharist - St. Fachtna's Cathedral

Maundy Thursday 20th March, 2008

This year’s Chrism Eucharist took place in the Cathedral Church of St. Fachtna, Ross, which, for those who might not know it, is beautifully maintained and is well worth a visit. The service included a thought-provoking sermon given by the Reverend Michael Thompson. Fr. Thompson, former Vicar of St. Bartholomew’s Church, Dublin was visiting the Diocese during Holy Week and assisting at St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral. Ian Sexton, Director of the Clerks Choral at St.Mary’s Collegiate Church in Youghal, played the recently restored organ and included two pieces of music that were special to Maundy Thursday: Scmucke Dich, O Liebe Seele and O Mensche Bewein, both by J.S. Bach.

The Bishop said “This is another valued and valuable opportunity to meet together, this time as a pause in the mania of Holy Week and at the start of the Triduum. It is an occasion when as bishop, clergy and lay church workers together we can renew our commitment to ministry, following the example of the servant Christ.”

 

The Chrism Eucharist has roots far back in the history of the Church.
‘When Peter acknowledged Jesus as “the Christ” (Mark 8.29), he was recognising him as the “Anointed One” of God: Christos in Greek, Messiah in Hebrew. The title that had once belonged to the anointed kings of Israel is now conferred on Jesus, who was anointed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at his baptism in the river Jordan (cf. Acts 10.38). As Jesus received baptism at John’s Hands, his true identity was revealed:  “Manifest at Jordan’s stream, Prophet, priest and king supreme.”

Our own baptism is the sacramental sign of our union with Christ, and of God’s gift to us of his Holy Spirit, to make us God’s children by adoption and grave, and to equip us for the share that all Christian’s have in Christ’s own ministry. The New Testament speaks of this gift of the Holy Spirit as an anointing (1 John 2.20-27; 2 Cor. 1.21-22). From an early date, it became customary to trace the sign of the cross in oil on the heads of candidates for baptism, and to anoint them again after baptism with the perfumed oil of chrism – a sign of incorporation into the prophetic, priestly, and royal life of Jesus Christ. At the same time, the Letter of James urges its recipients to anoint the sick with oil (James 5.15), as a sign of the healing and forgiveness that are also given through the Holy Spirit (cf. Mark 6.13). These are the biblical roots of the ancient custom of using oils in the life of the church, and of the three particular oils – of Catechumens, of the Sick, and of Chrism – that are prepared in the Chrism Eucharist. They have come to be used in many ways, especially, as in the Old Testament, for the setting apart of people and things for a special place in the life of the church: for bishops and priests at their ordination, for kings and queens at their crowning, and for churches and altars at their consecration.

There is a more recent custom, that the Chrism Eucharist is also an occasion for the renewal of commitment to ministry. As the priests gathered around their bishop, to receive the oils to take back to their parishes, they renew their commitment to serve Christ, who consecrated himself to his Father’s service and expressed his obedient self-gift, in the institution of the Eucharist and in the agony of Gethsemane, and who prayed for the unity of his disciples.’

Following the service there was lunch, hosted by the Bishop, in the nearby Celtic Ross Hotel which gave those who had had an early start a chance to recharge their earthly batteries as well as their spiritual ones before starting home.

_________________________________________________________________________________