Homily of Bishop Keenan President of BCOS at the chapel of Westminster St Mary’s Undercroft
BCOS Visit to Westminster 2025
Dear Friends, it is good for us to gather here for Holy Mass in this fine Chapel of St Mary Undercroft as the heart and centre of our visit to Parliament and our Scottish parliamentarians and others.
Like much else caught up in history and human affairs this chapel, we know, has not been without its ups and downs. Initially conceived as the crypt of the former St Stephen's Chapel which once stood above, we are told it had latterly fallen on hard times, even doubling up as a wine cellar, a dining room for Speakers and perhaps the stables for Cromwell's horses. It took the fire of 1834 that destroyed St. Stephen’s and much of the old building to restore it to its rightful use, although it hardly survived the conflagration and its scarred and burned-out stone must have made a severe, if not pitiable, sight.
At least, that is, until there came along the artist and architect Edward Middleton Barry. Surveying the sad remains of the chapel, with quite brilliant vision he imagined it as it could be and is now, adorned in its glory of fine decoration, gilded designs and rich colours from top to bottom, and all pointing to the backdrop of the altar depicting royal British saints.
Middleton Barry’s story was one of ‘like father like son.’ His father, Sir Charles Barry, was also an artist and architect with a reputable practice and, after his completing his initial formation, Middleton Barry joined his father’s firm, going on to become a trusted and invaluable assistant to him. Upon his father’s death, he then went on to complete many of his father’s unfinished works, most notable among them in this very Palace of Westminster, ever sensitive to his father’s vision and bringing to the light of day the plans of his father’s drawing board.
Why do I dwell upon all of this? Well, I think it can lend a perspective to help us understand and contextualise the Scriptures and Gospel for today.
Firstly, we can think of it casting some light on the prophecy of Isaiah. This forty-ninth chapter comes from the section written up in the last moments of the People’s seventy-years of Babylonian exile when all must have seemed darkness descending to gloom, with the People of GOD long having hung up their harps on the willows there and all out of cheer, much like must have been this clapped out and burned-up little chapel when first seen by Middleton Barry.
Like him, the LORD inspired Isaiah with a vision of a rosier, even glorious, future for the People and how to get them from here to there. Isaiah manages to see the desert plain from Babylon to Sion not as a place of thirst, scorching wind and sun but a journey with grazing on every hilltop. In the middle of the People’s sadness Isaiah offers a vision of joy; in their anxiety and despair, one of consolation. In a period characterised as leaderless, he offers them the assurance of GOD’s love, as dependable as the care of a mother for her child. Nor is his message limited to his own People but is a vision for the whole world, for he foresees ‘some on their way from afar, others from the north and the west’. The whole world will draw salvation from Isaiah’s hope.
In the Gospel we learn of the intimate relationship between Jesus and this Father, an insight unparalleled in any other place in the Scriptures. Here Jesus reminds us that we cannot understand Him by regarding Him simply in His own terms. He makes sense only as His Father’s Son, united with His Father in His will, power and function, in some sense just as Middleton Barry saw himself bringing to completion, according to his father’s design and plan, this chapel and Palace.
Jesus has the same will as His Father: I seek not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me’. ‘Whatever the Father does, the Son does too.’ It is the Father who has power over life and judgement; the Father gives life, but, just as the Father gives life, so the Son gives life. Again, as the Father judges no one, Jesus will withhold condemnation on every soul in order to offer hope of salvation. Certainly, as Son He is equal in nature to His Father but, as Son, will only will and act in ways derived from His Father.
Is there something in this for us as leaders, civic and religious? Perhaps a prayer in these dim and perturbed times to be leaders of vision, who are able to call our people out of darkness and help them to see how bare heights can be places of pasture and thirsty places springs of water: how to make roads in the mountains; how to draw all sorts of forsaken people in our collected humanity, from near and far, north and west, to the hope of a brighter future, of comfort, compassion and joy.
And then to find the humility not to look for self-glory but to see ourselves as heirs of a tradition passed down to us from our forefathers and forebears, who went on working for the freedoms, truths and values we have inherited in our time, and to look only to pass them on intact and enriched, as this Chapel, by our sincere effort, wise vision and humble service in our short time on earth.
