Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Official Report 880KB pdf

Time for Reflection

The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader is Father Christopher Heenan, the parish priest at St Margaret’s memorial church in Dunfermline.

Thank you for the opportunity to address members today.

Many visitors come to Dunfermline, and we are pleased to welcome those who come to visit our beautiful church and the shrine of St Margaret of Scotland. One group that visited recently particularly stands out. It was a group of over 50 Indian children and their leaders. Their origins lie in Kerala in India, but now they all live in and around Edinburgh. They belong to the Syro-Malabar Church, which is one of the eastern rites of the Roman Catholic Church.

The group celebrated mass and prayed in their own language and according to their own rituals. After a break for lunch, I led them around the places in Dunfermline that are associated with St Margaret. I was impressed with how the young people preserve their own culture, and how open and eager they are to learn more of the culture and history of Scotland. At the end of the tour, I was highly impressed with how they had soaked up so much and answered every question that was posed to them.

Even though she died over 900 years ago, Margaret still has much to offer Scotland. Fleeing political unrest, she came as an exile to this land and found a welcome and a home. She worked to further education and to alleviate poverty where she found it. She worked to reform the church and she encouraged merchants to trade. Perhaps her hardest task was to improve the manners of her husband and the Scottish court.

Margaret’s love of God and her spirit of prayer flowed into her life and found expression in her love of her husband and family, her love of her adopted country and her care for those in greatest need. She cared for the spiritual and material welfare of her countrymen. She showed the value of being able to welcome those from different backgrounds and cultures, and of learning from them and benefiting from their gifts and talents. She embodied love, compassion, care and concern with a strength of spirit and personality that changed those around her for the better.

Among St Margaret’s treasured possessions was a relic of the true cross—the holy rood or black rood of Scotland. As we gather in Holyrood, we can all learn much from her example as we seek to build an open, welcoming, just and compassionate society.