As part of the 200th anniversary celebrations at St James’s Church, St Fin Barre’s Cathedral Choir travelled to Mallow on Sunday 9th June, the Feast of St Columba, to sing Evensong at the church. They sang Canticles in D minor by T. A. Walmisley, Leighton’s Responses and the anthem was William Boyce’s O where shall wisdom be found? with words from the Book of Job. 

The Rector, the Rev’d Meurig Willliams welcomed the large and diverse congregation to St James’s and in his address picked up on the text of the anthem. He weaved this together with references to St Columba whose feast day it was, and with thoughts on the role of music in the liturgy and the place of Choral Evensong within a hectic modern lifestyle. 

 The Rector said:

We were thrilled as a congregation to welcome our Cathedral Choir to St James’s on the occasion of our bicentenary celebrations. The service reminded us of the skill and discipline that undergird the gift that is Choral Evensong. More widely, we were reminded of the crucial place of music in Christian worship. I’m quite sure that Columba would have given us all his thumbs up!

Refreshments were served in the Church Hall after the service which was attended by over sixty people.