 |
St Patrick Preaching the Gospel to Laoghaire, King of Ireland |
Mass Times for St Patrick's Day
Friday (Vigil) 7 p.m. Rathcoole
Saturday 17th 9 a.m. Saggart
10 a.m. Newcastle
12 noon Rathcoole
The photo above is of the meeting between St Patrick and King Laoghaire in the royal court of Tara (Teamair). The saint is preaching the Gospel to the king and his courtiers, holding up the shamrock, symbol of the Trinity, in his right hand. This is the scene as depicted in a stained-glass window to be found in Sts Peter and Paul's church, Athlone, designed by Richard King of the Harry Clarke Studios which continued Clarke's work after his death in 1931. The photo is reproduced here by kind permission of the authors of the website Roaringwater Journal.
For more reading on Harry Clarke, see here and, for his illustrations for Ireland's Memorial Records 1914-1918 (published in eight volumes, 1919) giving information on 49,435 men killed in WWI, see here. Vol 5 (K-McG) has been digitized by TCD and may be browsed here. If you scroll down to the name McCann, Joseph William (p.282), you will find the following record for one of our parishioners,
Reg. No. 52825, Corporal Royal Engineers; d. Gallipoli 23 August 1915; b. Saggart, Co. Dublin, aged 26
Let us then remember on St Patrick's day all Irish people at home and abroad, both living and dead -- and that includes this young parishioner the Harry Clarke window has led us to. Joseph McCann lies far away today in the Portianos Military Cemetery on the Aegean island of Lemnos (see here Note that in this Commonwealth War Graves Commission record his address is given as Keating's Park, Rathcoole).
