Candlemas St Paul's Cathedral
Sermon at Evensong on the Feast of Candlemas with the Licensing of The Rev'd Paula Hollingsworth as Chaplain I will fill this house with splendour: Haggai 2:7 The disciples were tourists, visiting the temple and wowed by it all – much as we are by St Paul’s. When they went to visit the temple was still being built. The original had been destroyed – not by fire like old St Paul’s, but by invasion; it had been rebuilt and destroyed again, and now was being raised on a grander and more wonderful scale. They were awed to see it. It was not just physically unfinished; it was spiritually incomplete. The Prophet Ezekiel saw in his visions the removal of the Shekeniah, the cloud of the presence of the Lord, and through all the rebuilding the House was not now filled with His splendour as of old. The hope grew with years of yearning expectation that the presence of the Lord would last return and fill the house with His splendour. But it did not come. So when t...