Newton Stewart, Wigtown and Whithorn RC Churches

Catholic Churches in the Machars of Galloway

Hymn “Ninian of Galloway”

Happy Feast of Saint Ninian, whose calendar commemoration is September 16^th every year. Happy Feast also to our Primary School in Newton Stewart! I have no doubt that our Patron is watching carefully over us and praying with powerful intercession for the Church in the area  of which he was probably the first “parish priest” as well as bishop.  Let’s ask him to commend to the Lord especially the sick, the children and those in any particular affliction of mind or body. We also pray that our friends and relatives who have died may enjoy his company in the Kingdom of Heaven, and pray with him for those of us still on pilgrimage.

 

The immediate purpose of this letter is to encourage everyone to develop a real relationship of prayer with Saint Ninian. The saints are alive with Christ in that eternal life which is the hope of every human heart. They join Christ in working for our salvation from sin and death. They are always with Him when He comes to us. They are really and truly our friends and they urge us and beckon us to strive to be united more and more deeply with Jesus, and thus with them. In the case of Ninian, we have a saint who knows the very land on which we walk. He saw the Machars, Cairnsmore and all the rest. He knows our weather, the colours and hues of our landscape, how the seasons play out and the light lengthens and shortens in our year. On these shores, he prayed the Our Father as we do; he celebrated the Mass and proclaimed the same Gospel we hear every Sunday; he suffered and he died. So let us all do what we can to let him emerge from the mists of history, because he is in fact alive now in Christ, and how can he not want to help with special favours and love those who now live where he lived while on this earth?

 

To help you and me to pray more to him, you will find on the other side of this sheet a Litany to Saint Ninian, in which I have tried to capture some of the most important aspects of his person, his life and his activity. To these I have added some petitions for his intercession. I invite you to pray the Litany frequently, be it individually or as a family, or if you make your own private pilgrimage to the Cave.

 

Below is the hymn “Ninian of Galloway” which we will sing as our opening hymn at all Masses this week-end.

 

Ninian of Galloway, homage we fondly pay and tribute bring;

Saint by our Church proclaimed, Scotland’s apostle named,

Thy praise we sing, thy praise we sing.

 

Born of our Scottish race, God led thee forth by grace to find in Rome

That pearl so richly priced, that faultless creed of Christ,

And bear it home, and bear it home.

 

Softly the Christian morn dawned o’er the lone Whithorn like kindly sun;

Nobly thy loyal band, led by thy sure command,

Our kingdom won, our kingdom won.

 

Where once thy footsteps trod, unquenched, the fires of God await thy hand;

Renew thy fervent care. Tender to God our prayer

To bless our land, to bless our land.