Bishop Leo O’Reilly’s Homily

at the Mass for deceased Bishops and Priests of Kilmore

Diocesan Pastoral Centre, Cavan, 16 November 2011

During the past year, you’ll recall, Brother Gerard Smith published his book containing all the names and biographical details of the religious sisters and brothers from the diocese for the past 150 years. His book completed the trilogy of books about the priests and religious of the diocese – the others being Bishop MacKiernan’s book on the priests of the diocese and Fr Mitchell’s book on the religious priests and missionaries. The books are here as a reminder of all those we are praying for in this Mass – all those from our diocese who have dedicated their lives to preaching the gospel and especially the deceased bishops and priests of the diocese.

We remember especially of course our three brother priests of the diocese who died in the past year and it is good to have representatives of their families with us to celebrate this Mass for them. Between the three of them they gave the best part of 200 years priestly service to the Church and did so with extraordinary devotion and dedication. We thank God again for their ministries and for all whose lives they touched for good. We thank God for their personal influence for good in our own lives. And we ask God to purify them of all sin and to take them into the fullness of life and love in his Kingdom for ever.

Those men’s lives all but spanned the era between two Eucharistic Congresses. Two of them would have been aware of the 1932 Congress as teenagers. They saw unimaginable changes in the course of their lifetimes – in technology, in society and in the Church. They kept steadfast through it all. They fought the good fight, they finished the course, the kept the faith. As we remember them and so many others who have gone before us today, we ask them to pray for us.

We are living through a crisis in the Church and in society which our predecessors could not have imagined. When we think our faith has been tested to the utmost it is tested again. When we have been stretched to what we thought was breaking point, we are stretched still further. Our Church has been marginalised, at times deliberately excluded you feel, airbrushed out of the picture. A recent example was the report of the Inauguration of the new President on the 9 o’clock news on the night of the Inauguration. Part of the report was on the religious side of the celebration. It reported some words from the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church. It showed some other representative of a small religious group and there was a clip reporting words from the representative of the Humanists. You’d have thought that the Cardinal or the Archbishop of Dublin might have been seen or got a mention, but you’d be wrong. If you saw nothing but the report you would think that there was no Catholic leader present at all.

The reversal has been complete. But let’s not lament that. If today’s gospel is any guide – and it’s meant to be the guide to what we are about – then we perhaps we are getting much nearer the kind of Church Christ wants us to be than we have been for a very long time. What sense could we make of the 8^th Beatitude at a time when we sat on the pedestal and enjoyed the respect and deference of all? What could be make of, “Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you on my account”, when everyone was singing our praises and no one would dare contradict us?

It makes a lot more sense now. It’s hard to believe and to accept of course. It doesn’t feel very blessed to be abused and persecuted and to be the subject of calumny. But the gospel is not about feeling. It’s about faith. And we pray today for the faith that will assure us that God is in this crisis. Christ is right here sharing our humiliation. We are learning – painfully – what it means to be poor in Spirit. We are learning that it means relying on God rather than ourselves. Putting all our trust in him. And we don’t usually learn that lesson until we have to. Until all the other props we relied on have been swept away. In our present situation we haven’t much choice but rely on God and look to God for our support. That is a grace and that is why we are blessed.

No one prayed so eloquently for God’s support as John Henry Newman and his prayer is fitting for this occasion: