Homily of Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews & Edinburgh, Festival Mass , St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Edinburgh, Sunday 11 August 2024.

My dear friends,

A warm welcome to our Cathedral on the happy occasion of the Edinburgh International Festival.

In your name, I’m very pleased to welcome Councillor Robert Aldridge, the Right Honourable Lord Lieutenant and Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, a number of our city’s bailiffs and councillors, several distinguished representatives of the City’s Consular Corps, representatives of the Knights and Dames of the Order of Malta and of the Holy Sepulchre, the city’s High Constables, and other distinguished guests and friends.

Thank you for honouring us with your presence today.

You may have noticed the second reading, from one of St Paul’s letters, on this occasion to the Christians of the little church in Ephesus, now the Turkey of today.  The reading is an appeal to be kind to each other, to live harmoniously.

He is not the first person to say it, but he expresses it in relation to faith in Christ: “Never have grudges against others – he says - or lose your temper, or raise your voice to anybody, or call each other names, or allow any sort of spitefulness.

Be friends with one another, and kind, forgiving each other as readily as God forgave you in Christ.”

It goes without saying, or perhaps it bears restating in the world of today, that St Paul’s letters and the rest of the New Testament remain a definitive touchstone for the whole Christian world.

But it’s not the only thing from the middle of the first century, a turbulent one to say the least, that has come down to us.

We all continue to be fascinated by the first century, as Rome slips from Republic into Empire.

Our civilisation remains fascinated by Rome and by the first century AD – and this is proven not by the number of pious movies made about the life of Jesus, but by the latest big thing being pushed on stream with Anthony Hopkins as emperor in 69 AD, gladiators and charioteers running around the Coliseum, and life and death hanging by a thread down in the Forum.

We are seduced by Rome’s power, its reach, its cruelty.  But we are also heirs to much of it, because it has shaped our civilisation.  But I’m not thinking of Rome’s power or reach or cruelty.

The most enduring legacy of Rome for me is perhaps its legal system.  The Romans loved law.

They legislated enthusiastically, and Roman citizens participated actively in the governing of their city and their state.  And their legal principles and laws form the backbone of our own law and our own outlook on civil life to this day.

But if the Romans were people of law, the civilisation that they admired and copied was that of the Greeks.

The Greeks were politically and legally original in their thinking, and the democracy of Athens remains a standard and an example that is unique in history.

So, the Greeks were better at ideas, at thought, at philosophy.

They were the first to ask the questions that we’ve all been trying to answer ever since.  No other ancient people did this like the Greeks; not the Egyptians, or the Chinese or the Indians or the Persians.

It was the Greeks who first asked in the way that we still do, Where does everything come from?  What are things made of?  Why are we here?  What is a human being?  Is there any meaning to our existence? Is there right and wrong? 

And to this day, when we’re not at the Festival or watching gladiators on Netflix, we are still trying to answer these important and intriguing questions.

One thing the Greeks noticed was what became mathematics.  Through geometry and arithmetic and music, they began to notice patterns, things that always came out with the same answer.

They began to notice how music had natural harmonies in it.

And through both, they found things that were always true, “eternal truths”, and they concluded that geometry and music and harmony all spoke of the hand of something eternal, even a creator.  The logic and the harmony spoke, not of chaos, but of predictable order in the universe, and of a benign order at that.

Music was therefore seen by the Greeks as something sacred.

Sure, it was fun too, but its deeper beauty lay not in the satisfaction that Mick Jagger was looking for, but in the truth and the beauty and the harmony displayed in the way that music always works: it is always telling us something true and good and right, and eternal.

Perhaps this is one way to look at what happens in the Edinburgh International Festival.

Through music, Sir Rudolph Bing wished to confirm the return of peace to Europe and to underline the restoration of harmony among nations.

And music does that brilliantly in several ways: it does so when it is played and sung beautifully, as by our choir and organist this morning, it does so in our wonderful international festival; it does so as an illustration of the political will and intentions of those who promoted the Festival in its early days; and it does so in an intellectually satisfying way, since music is a demonstration of the eternal and of the order and harmony at the centre of our universe.

The chaos is not where we’re meant to be; we’re meant, as St Paul says to us today, to be in harmony; in harmony with each other, at peace with the earth, in harmony with the cosmos.

I hope that the beauty and the harmony of the music on display at the International Festival this year, as in the past, will continue to illustrate and underline the intentions of Rudolph Bing; the shared desire for peace and harmony in our troubled world; and our firm political resolution to work for peace and harmony, especially Europe, but elsewhere in our world as well.

Have a harmonious and happy Festival, and God bless you all!