In the January issue of “Close News”, The National Cathedral’s magazine, the Dean comments on his forthcoming retirement
The Very Rev Dr Robert McCarthy writes, “I will soon be 72 and it is time that I retired from the office of Dean of St Patrick’s. I have therefore sent my resignation to the Precentor to take effect on 25 January 2012.
“My last Sunday in the cathedral will be Sunday 22 January and I will preach at Evensong.
“The fact that both Mr Graham and Canon Mullen have previously called for my resignation has not influenced me in the slightest.
“I have received many messages of good-will. One of the bishops was kind
enough to apply to me some words of the late Archbishop McAdoo who described
a priest as having ‘a laudable abomination of humbug’. There will be
no presentation: I think there is great wisdom in a remark of Bishop Hensley
Henson about clerical presentations. “If a man has done his duty it is superfluous.
If he has not, it is merely satirical.”
The Dean’s Christmas address is also in “Close News” –
The Christian religion veers between creation on the one hand and incarnation
on the other – both are necessary insights. To get some insight into the
majesty and otherness of God let’s turn to the hymn “Immortal, invisible,
God only wise – In light inaccessible hid from our eyes – unresting, unhasting
and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might …..”.
That hymn isn’t as well known as it should be. But today we are concerned
with the other end of the spectrum – that of incarnation.
Because we find it so difficult to imagine the majesty and unknowingness of
God we are given the picture of a birth in a human family. What could be
easier or more human to imagine than the birth of a baby in an ordinary
family and yet God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Indeed
the New Testament is almost entirely given over to the idea of Jesus Christ
as our companion along the road of life.
Our God, in Bishop John Robinson’s
great phrase, is “Christ shaped”. Throughout the New Testament we
see Jesus taking the path of love in the face of all trials and temptations. A
bishop of my acquaintance always changes a line of Mrs Alexander’s wellknown
Good Friday hymn to “There was no other good enough to pay the
price of love”. That is not all that God is, but it is what we can most easily
relate to. More than that we are taught to believe that the tribulations of Jesus
Christ when he walked this earth have made a permanent mark on what
God is – he who for men their surety stood and poured on earth his precious
blood, pursues in heaven his mighty plan the saviour and the friend of
man.T hose sentiments were dear to Richard Randall Hartford, Regius Professor
of Divinity and Chancellor of this cathedral and I remember the hymn
which gives voice to them being sung at his funeral here in 1962.
The Christmas gospel which we have just heard is almost entirely given over
to the pre-existence of Christ and how in Jesus the word which was there
from the beginning was made flesh and dwelt among us.
So on this day given over especially to the incarnation of the word in a baby
in Bethlehem let us remember that there are other aspects of the Christian
religion as well – God is both creator and redeemer.
And now to God, our Creator, Redeemer and sanctified be ascribed …….