HOMILY for St Margaret of Scotland
Many of us will know Saint Margaret’s chapel in Edinburgh Castle. Reputedly the oldest surviving building in Edinburgh, it dates to the reign of King David I (1124-53). But the saint we celebrate today is even older. She was King David’s mother, and she died in the Castle in 1093. But although Queen Margaret of Scotland never worshipped in the chapel named after her, it is the one remaining structure closest to her time, and, I think that through it one gets a sense of the woman and the saint we celebrate today.
This building is quite literally, a survivor. It has survived sieges, wars, and being battered by the wind, snow and rain. Margaret herself was a survivor. She was born a princess of Wessex, but not in England. Her father had been exiled from England in 1016 when the Danes invaded. So, she was born in Hungary around 1045. At the age of 12, she returned with her family to England, but when England was again invaded, this time by the Normans, in 1066, Margaret and her family had to flee to Northumbria. But a storm drove their ship off course, and they landed in Scotland. So, St Margaret was a refugee, a survivor of war, violence, and both political and natural storms.
St Margaret’s chapel, with its thick stone walls and low ceiling gives one a sense of strength, austerity, and endurance. This is fitting as St Margaret was certainly a strong person to have endured and weathered all this turmoil in her young life. But what gives St Margaret’s chapel it sense of solidity and firmness, I think, is how its rough stone walls seem to blend into the very rock on which the Castle stands. So, too, St Margaret’s strength comes from the Rock on which she built her life: Jesus Christ.
Her being founded on Christ – her strong faith in him – was expressed in spiritual works and corporal works. Thus St Margaret was renowned for her austerity, her piety and devotion. After her marriage to King Malcolm III in 1070, she would read him stories from the Bible, rise at midnight for Matins, and she invited Benedictine monks to establish a monastery at Dunfermline. In this way she sought to bring the Scottish Church closer to the rest of the Catholic Church. Her childhood on the Continent had given her a greater sense of the universal Church than people on these islands might have had, and her son David would continue her efforts in this area.
St Margaret’s firm faith was also expressed through the corporal works of mercy she carried out daily. As the website of Queen Margaret University notes: “Queen Margaret was concerned with works of mercy and giving and particularly with the care of the poor”. So, she would wash the feet of beggars, she fed orphans and the poor before herself, and she tended to the sick. And she did this because, as our Gospel reminds us, she saw Christ in them.
Finally, I think something can be said about the way St Margaret’s chapel stands humbly and often unnoticed, dwarved by the grand War Memorial and other Castle buildings around it. We’re reminded, thus, of the saint’s humility and quiet service. But also, I think, of the on-going works of charity and compassion done by countless Christian women, and men, down the ages. These are often unnoticed, too, and one can be distracted by the apparatus of the secular State, military power, and wealth. But today’s feast recalls that goodness, mercy, and love, being founded on Christian truth, are never forgotten, always precious, and stand steadfast and firm against the battering of time and fashion. Just so, St Margaret’s chapel has stood for almost a millennium.
But even when that crumbles, St Margaret herself will shine like a pearl for all eternity, radiant with the glory of Christ and all the saints.
May she pray for us.
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