BY Ian Dunn | July 10 | 
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Parishioners flock to Keith for St John Ogilvie
The tiny Moray town of Keith was the gathering point for Scotland’s Catholics last weekend for the national pilgrimage to mark the 400th anniversary of the martyrdom of St John Ogilvie at his birthplace.
The well-attended event involved a procession through the down, and events throughout the day culminating in Mass at Kynoch Park, home to Keith FC, last Saturday. Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh was the principal celebrant, current and retired members of the Scottish hierarchy concelebrated and Bishop Hugh Gilbert of Aberdeen gave the homily
Bishop Gilbert said they had gathered to mark the life and death of this St John Ogilvie because ‘we’re not a people who forget.’
“We are a people with a memory,” the bishop added. “We want to remember. We are educated to this by the Mass, the Holy Eucharist: ‘do this in memory of me.’ That’s the heart of our Christian life. And today within this Eucharist we are remembering a saint, John Ogilvie. He was born here in 1579 and died for his Faith in Glasgow in 1615, 400 years ago.”
The bishop said the focus of the event was not the circumstances of the saint’s death but rather ‘our focus is the man himself: his courage, his clarity, his human vibrancy. Our focus is his chivalrous love of Christ, his dedication to Scotland and its soul, and to the Catholic community there.’
The bishop said in returning to Scotland as a missionary the saint was like ‘Andy Murray ball in one hand, racket in the other, tensed to serve’ but that it wasn’t a ‘game.’
“In the end, it’s the openness of the human being to God that we’re remembering today: How no social pressure, no culture, no political system can lay total claim to us, just as the Anglo-Scottish polity of his day, for all its allurements, couldn’t expropriate John,” Bishop Gilbert said. “He accepted the legitimate authority of the state, of the king, but not its encroachments on faith and conscience. There is always more to us. We are free. We are great. We are immense. We are made by God and for God and God is forever drawing us to himself.”
Members of the Ogilvie family were among the pilgrims gathered.
Pic: Paul McSherry
—This story ran in full in the July 10 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.
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