Bishop Leo O’Reilly’s Homily
On the Feast of St Felim, Patron of Kilmore
Cathedral of SS Patrick and Felim
9th August 2009
(Readings of 14 Sunday Year B)
Many people nowadays, especially Americans, spend a lot of time and effort researching their family trees – tracing their roots. We need to trace our faith roots as well. Celebrating the feast of St Felim today is an attempt to trace the roots of our faith here in the diocese of Kilmore. It’s an effort to make the journey back to the origin of our faith. It’s an invitation to explore the beginnings of Christianity in our diocese and the person with whom it all began, St. Felim.
The first reading of the Mass today describes another journey, the journey of the prophet Elijah to Horeb, the mountain of God. Horeb was another name for Sinai, the mountain where Moses and the people of Israel received the Ten Commandments from God. When he Israelites escaped from Egypt they received an extraordinary revelation of God at Mount Sinai. This was their foundational experience of God. Here they came closer than ever before to the God who formed them into a people and who saved them from slavery. Here they received the gift of the law of God that would guide them and their followers in the future. Here they drank at the spring of God’s word and were strengthened for the ordeals that lay ahead on their journey to the Promised Land.
So, centuries later, when the prophet Elijah finds himself rejected and persecuted for preaching God’s word, he journeys back to the source of his faith – the mountain of God, Mount Horeb. He goes back to drink again at the springs where his ancestors first imbibed the faith. He is so discouraged and downcast that he is tempted to give up and die. But he is miraculously nourished on the journey. He eventually completes the journey and he is restored and strengthened to take up the struggle once more. He is given the grace to continue to follow his difficult vocation of speaking God’s word to his people.
In the same way we make a journey back to the roots of our faith in God and in Jesus Christ as we celebrate the feast of the patron saint of our diocese and of our Cathedral, St. Felim. We have not been in the habit of celebrating his feast with any solemnity. For one thing it doesn’t usually fall on a Sunday. Another reason is that it normally clashes with the feast of a new saint – St Teresa Benedict of the Cross – who was better known as Edith Stein. She was a convert from Judaism and she died in Auschwitz concentration camp during the Nazi period. She was canonized by Pope John Paul a few years ago.
However, despite those obstacles, it is important to remember our own patron and to celebrate the man to whom we owe the faith that we profess today. When we see how another of our local saints, St. Kilian, is honoured in the diocese of Wúrzburg in Germany where he is patron, we begin to realise how much we take our faith for granted. Today is an opportunity to thank God for the faith we have received and to thank St. Felim.
St Felim lived in the 6th century. He was a contemporary of St. Kieran of Clonmacnois and probably a disciple of St Columcille. He was a son of one of the chieftains of Breifne and lived in the area around Crossdoney that is now the parish of Kilmore. He is said to have gone as a monk to the monastery of Slanore and from there he founded a church nearby. He is recognised as the first bishop of the diocese. The boundaries of this area that is now the diocese of Kilmore would not be finally fixed until the famous Synod of Kells in 1152.
Despite the fact that St Felim lived so long ago, and that we know so little about him, we can be sure of one thing that connects us to St. Felim and that is the faith we share. We can be sure that central to his faith, as it is to ours, was the Eucharist. He heard the same words in the gospel that we hear today – of course in a different language, probably Latin – but the same words: I am the bread of life…This is the bread come down from heaven, so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.”
Today we renew our faith in the reality of Christ’s presence among us in the Eucharist. We renew our faith in the Mass where we come to be fed with the bread of God’s word and Christ’s body. We receive the body and blood of Christ as the food for our journey through life to God’s kingdom. When we become tired and discouraged on that journey and tempted to give up, we come here to be refreshed and renewed. And we go out strengthened and with fresh hope in our hearts and new determination to be faithful to our call as followers of Christ, and a renewed commitment to be his witnesses in the world. St Felim, pray for us. Amen.
