Today’s feast celebrates the manifestation of Jesus to the Magi, the strangers, the gentiles. The message of the saviour would have universal significance, it would travel well, and it would shine in the world like a bright star. Today too, we honour the body of Jeanne Byrne with Christian burial. Jeanne did much to make the star of Christianity shine in this littlie Church. She was organist here for over forty years. She made her contribution, and we honour that contribution today.

On the Church wall, to your left, to my right, is TS Eliot's famous poem, 'Journey of the Magi.' Gerry Ferguson put his calligraphy at the disposal of the community. It worked well, visually. I hope the words and the words and the message sank in to two or three people spiritually. That alone would have justified Gerry’s hours of toil.

Traditionally, we have seen the Three Wise Men as romantic figures, called from the east by a moving star, driven on by dreams, bearing exotic gifts with strange sounding names to the infant in the stable. The magi and magic are closely aligned. The genius of Eliot's poem lies in its power to puncture that dream. And he does so in the first few lines:

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
for a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'

While the star of romance, or idealism, or dreamland, will at various points in our lives nudge us to walk towards the Saviour, it will be a long journey, and at times a difficult journey. Our camels too will be ‘galled, sore-footed, refractory’. They will ‘lie down in the melting snow’. But there will be many surprises on the way too as we walk towards the manifestation of God. We will reach at dawn our ‘temperate valleys, wet below the snow-line’. That is the challenge facing each of us: how will Jesus and his saving message going to manifest itself in my own life? What is my epiphany? We will occasionally spot the star. But the star may appear in a different manner to different people. Given the nature of humanity, many of us will find that star shining through the eyes of a lover, a close friend, or the odd saint. Others will be led along a different path: For some, it will be the pure scriptures; others will find the star in the liturgy of the Church. Others will find it in literature, in art, in poetry, or in music. Anything that has power to move the soul is from God, and whatever it is moves the soul towards God. Whatever it may be, it is our star of wonder. May I refer you to the quotation from Julain of Norwich, in today's Newsletter? Julian assures us that God is "completely relaxed and courteous, himself the happiness and peace of his dear friends, his beautiful face, radiating measureless love, like a marvellous symphony." Don't serve any other God than this One. Don't bow to any molten calf, created in the image and likeness of our own tensions, bitterness and twisted jealousy. Never forget the insight of Athanasius: "The glory of God is man fully alive!"

Jeanne Byrne was fortunate in having music as her guiding star. And she passed on the light with great generosity. She was born in Westport 84 years ago. An accomplished musician, she found herself playing the organ in the Protestant Church in Westport at the tender age of 16. Jeanne came from a Protestant family. Yet, before her marriage to Richard, she ‘turned’ as we said in those days. She ‘turned’ to marry him, obviously. It must have been a very wrenching decision, and emotionally demanding. But it is a measure of her character that love and humanity won out over ideology. Because this was a time when young Catholic children would gaze through the windows of a Protestant Church in search of cloven hooves and fiery dragons. How ignorant and how warped we were as a people! When Catholic leadership was needed, tyranny was substituted.

Jeanne married Richard at 17 and came to Galway where she began playing the organ in the Jesuit Church, not a huge improvement on the Protestant Church in Westport, you will all agree!! I hope Neil O’Driscoll, S.J. is in the congregation this morning, because I'm sure he would chuckle at the joke!

However, in 1947, Jeanne eventually saw the light and followed the star that stopped over the Augustinian Church. There she placed her considerable talents at the disposal of this inner city community, and with the help of an eccentric Augustinian, Fr Mansfield they laid the foundations for a choir that was to become the envy of every Church in the city. Mansfield had two interests in life: music and boxing. I presume he found expression for both his talents in his encounters with Jeanne. Apparently, Jeanne had an impressive left-hook, intellectually and artistically.

Then of course came the 2nd Vatican Council, with the introduction of sung psalms and scriptural antiphons. Jeanne must have felt that her journey had come full circle, that she was back again in the Protestant Church in Westport!!

Her husband Richard died in 1977 and Jeanne pulled up the stumps and went to retirement in Dublin. She eventually came back to Moycullen and, over the last few years has been in very poor health. The challenge then was to find the star in suffering, to find God through in suffering. And that is the hardest star of all to follow. But the God who suffers was with her in her suffering. Those who have seen suffering at close quarters will walk from the cross beating their breasts and saying with the Roman soldier: "This man indeed, or this woman indeed, was a son or daughter of God." Eliot concludes his poem with the same insight:

“All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Birth and Death, joy and sorrow, ambiguity rules. The Cross and the Crib! Jeanne has now seen the light in all its glory. We thank God that she had in her life, and in this church, given the rest of us a hint of what things might be. May she rest in peace.

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