Homily of Bishop Leo O’Reilly
at the Centenary of the Church of the Annunciation
Mullies, Co. Leitrim, 5th June 2011
Today is the feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. It is a good day for celebrating the centenary of the building of this Church of the Annunication, Mullies. This feast celebrates the return of Jesus to the glory of heaven, but it also reminds us strongly that Christ remains with us through his Spirit in the Church. When Jesus spoke to his apostles before the ascension, and sent them out and preach and baptize in his name, he assured them: “I am with you always, yes to the end of the world.” Jesus remains with us in the Church. He is with us in the sacraments, in his Word, but above all in the Mass. That is the core of our faith as Catholics and as followers of Christ.
It was this faith that inspired your grandparents and great-grandparents to build this church as a fitting place to worship God and to celebrate Christ’s presence in this community. It was the faith of their ancestors before them that inspired them to build the predecessor of this church in 1817. It was the unshakable faith of their forefathers that handed on that faith from generation to generation in spite of poverty and persecution. It is to all of them that we owe this beautiful church and that we owe the faith we are privileged to celebrate and share today.
It’s not fashionable to say too much about faith if you are involved in public life today. A few years ago our Minister for Justice said, with some pride, that when he went into the Dail he left his faith outside. Now the United States is a country with very strict separation of Church and State. Nevertheless, when the U.S. President was here a few weeks ago he spoke about the importance of faith – faith in God and faith in ourselves – and he spoke about the importance of handing on that faith through the generations. He told about how his great-great-great grandfather emigrated from Monegall at the time of the famine. When they boarded the emigrants ships, he said:
“…they often did so with no family, no friends, no money, nothing to sustain their journey but faith – faith in the Almighty; faith in the idea of America… And as they worked and struggled and sacrificed and sometimes experienced great discrimination, to build that better life for the next generation, they passed on that faith to their children and to their children’s children – an inheritance that their great-great-great grandchildren like me still carry with them – we call it the American dream.”
For the U.S. President, part of that dream is clearly faith in God.
As we celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the building of this church in Mullies it is an occasion to reflect on the huge sacrifices that our ancestors made to practice the faith and to build suitable places of worship. It is a time to reflect on our own faith and what it means to us. We live in a very different time than they did. We won’t have to face the question, would I die for my faith. That’s not likely to arise in our situation. But we do need to ask the question, am I prepared to live for my faith. I’ll not be asked to sacrifice my life or my livelihood for going to Mass on Saturday evening or Sunday, but would I sacrifice a football match or a training session or an episode of my favourite TV serial, to go to Mass? Where our ancestors had to sometimes risk their lives for their faith, we are more likely to risk ridicule or isolation. As we remember their sacrifices today let us also renew our own commitment to the faith they passed on to us. Let us renew our appreciation of the value of our faith and the crucial place it has in our lives.
This church is the place where many of you here marked the most important occasions in your lives. Many of you were carried here as infants to be baptized. Later you made your First Confession and First Communion here. Many of you walked up the aisle on your wedding day, or walked behind the coffin of a loved one on the day of a family funeral. This church is not just the sanctuary of God’s presence, but the repository of the most precious memories of your lives. Most importantly of all, this church is the place where you as a community gather to worship and pray. You come together as God’s people to celebrate the Mass, the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection and his continuing presence among us until the end of time.
You have had a long line of dedicated priests serving this church – many of them happily still with us and some of them here today. The most distinguished, Fr Stephen McTiernan, was known nationally for his involvement in the politics of the day, the Land League, the Co-operative Movement and the promotion of Irish language and culture. Others were less famous but equally devoted to the pastoral care of the people of this area. As we remember them today, we might ask ourselves who will follow them in the future? And as we reflect on that, we pray today that someone from this community, from your family, will offer themselves for service as priests or religious.
As we celebrate the centenary of this church today our strongest sentiment is one of gratitude. We thank God for this church and this community of faith. We thank God for the faith we have received from those who went before us. We thank God for the way our faith has been given concrete expression in these walls and in the beautiful stained glass windows, in the timbers, the marble and the metal, and in everything that went to making this a house of God.
Can I leave you with the words of the poet T.S. Eliot who expressed these sentiments much more eloquently than I can. He sees every light, and especially the lights in churches, as a reflection of God, the Eternal Light. We are like swimmers under water who catch glimpses of this great light as we look upwards:
