31.10.2023
St Ann’s Dawson Street Marks 300 Years in the Heart of the City
Parishioners and representatives of Dublin’s civic and cultural life gathered on Sunday morning (October 29) to celebrate 300 years of worship and witness in St Ann’s Church, Dawson Street. For three centuries the church, with its bread shelves, has been a place of outreach and response to need. As the city grew up around it, the iconic church building with its distinctive red doors, occupies a key location drawing the eye of Dubliners and visitors alike as they walk along Grafton Street.
The Service of Choral Matins was sung magnificently by the Choir of St Ann’s under the direction of Charles Marshall. The service was led by the Vicar, Canon Paul Arbuthnot and prayers were led by the children of the parish. The first reading was read by Arthur Vincent, a life long parishioner, and the second by the Very Revd Dr Gareth Byrne, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Dublin. The sermon was preached by Archbishop Michael Jackson.
The Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Very Revd William Morton, was in attendance as well as former Vicars and Curates of the parish. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was represented by Cllr Micheál MacDonncha and the congregation also included former Taoiseach Bertie Ahearn and Deputy Jim O’Callaghan along with a rich variety of representatives of Dublin’s cultural life and charitable sector.
In his sermon, Archbishop Jackson looked back to the year 1723 when the bread shelves were installed in St Ann’s as a gift of the Rt Hon Theophilus Lord Newtown of Newtown Butler. The shelves, one of which remains today and is continually stocked with bread, were intended to help to feed the poor people of the rapidly expanding city.
“Rapid expansion is always exciting and progressive. It also happens to the disadvantage and the detriment of many. Every new development and decision come with a cost as well as with a benefit. And it is the destitute who go to the wall first and who need help first. This act, this event, this initiative on the part of Lord Newtown reminds us of how much tidier religion, the church and Christianity itself would be for many with tidy minds and tidy computers were it not for the poor and the needy. It pushes us further and forces us to remember that the poor and the needy are the first port of call for Christian self–understanding and for personal self–understanding within the love of God for the world of God’s creation. It pushes us to the ecology of response beyond reaction, of involvement beyond information. As we are told in St Matthew 25.40: Truly I tell you: anything you did for one of my brothers and sisters here, however insignificant, you did for me,” he said.
Archbishop Jackson added that across the centuries and down to this day, the church of St Ann has continued to address this need and to serve this body of people in a variety of evolving and appealing ways. He said that the church led the dioceses in public generosity on the street and in public sharing of public giving. Under the guidance of the rector of today, the parish was ready to launch out again in whatever is the appropriate expression of bread shelves for the fourth century of its life.
St Ann’s takes its place in the commercial and governmental quarter of Dublin with business continuing vibrantly and competitively in the streets around the church. “Our three–hundredth anniversary has to ask of us questions about appropriate engagement with societal and cultural issues of the day. We are situated in the heart of these issues in the heart of this part of the city. In such a way as this, St Ann’s Church can be prophetic in its own person as it facilitates a generation with spiritual needs and longings, but increasingly devoid of spiritual vocabulary or spiritual narrative, towards self–understanding and towards public altruism through its own generous public Christian witness.,” he stated. St Ann’s could help through confidence in public worship, by welcoming the visitor and stranger, by care for poor and wealthy and by offering good quality debate and discussion of areas and issues that shape society and the Church.
He said that it was for the people of St Ann’s to carry on the tradition of the bread shelves through building relationships, fostering partnerships and confirming commitment to being the church in and for the city of Dublin.
You can read the Archbishop’s sermon here.
