EVENTS THIS WEEK
- KNOCK SATURDAY: Saturday next, July 19th is the annual Augustinian pilgrimage to Knock. A bus will leave Merchant's Road at 12.00 noon. If you intend travelling, please hand your name in at the Priory Office during the week. We do need to forward some estimate of numbers.
- THANK YOU: Thanks to Fr Eugene Duffy and Padre Adolfo Silva, a visiting priest from Mexico. Both men kindly helped us out with Masses during the week when the Augustinian community was attending the meeting in Limerick.
- THE PLAY: As you are no doubt aware, our Festival Play, 'The Trouble with Wardens', takes place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night of this week at 9.00. The action will begin outside the Church so there is no point in being in situ in the Church before that time. While there will be no charge on the door, you may make a contribution on your way out.
- PLAY REHEARSAL: The final Dress Rehearsal for the play will take place this Sunday evening at 7.30. While the work itself has by now reached an astonishing degree of artistic excellence, it is still vital that the cast shows up for rehearsals and performances! The absence of actors tends to constrain most Directors!
- PLAY POSTERS: We have a collection of posters promoting our play. We do need to publicise it around the city. So we would appreciate if you could take away a poster from the Priory after Mass today and place it in some prominent location in your neighbourhood.
- STAGES, PROPS & PERSONNEL: The usual rhythm of the Augustinian Church will be disturbed these few days for obvious reasons. The noise level will be higher than usual. We do hope to keep the Sacred Heart Chapel free of all clutter and distractions.
AS I WAS SAYING...
Up to eighty Augustinians me in Limerick for three days this week. We gather every two years to enact and review policies. Of course the matter uppermost in our minds in recent years has been our increasing age profile and our declining numbers. Our total in the Irish Province is now 134. The median age is 65 years. We have four men under 40, not one under 30; 10 are over 80 years; the bulk of our members (47 in all) are aged between 61 and 70.
The Provincial, Desmond Foley, considered the problem directly in his opening address:I will outline how I see the times in which Irish Augustinians are living, from a particular viewpoint, as seen over the past six, and especially the past two years. It is obvious that we are in serious decline, numerically. That goes without saying. It is not just a question of numbers: the "age-profile" is completely different from what many of us grew up considering "normal". To illustrate: When I was a young Augustinian, every year the Provincial Council sat down and gave appointments to the 6,7,8,9 or 10 newly-ordained who were returning from Rome: to schools, to Africa, Australia, England, other houses. In my 6 years as Provincial, we have appointed one newly-ordained, and he left within a year. This "decline", of course, is not unique to the Augustinians. We share it with all religious institutions, in Ireland, and also in most of North Atlantic culture. But our experience of it is our own. And the pain is our own.Des pointed out that this situation is by no means new in the experience of the Church. On the feast of St. Cyprian in the year 421, Augustine reminded his congregation at Hippo: "You say the times are troublesome, The times are burdensome, the times are miserable. Live rightly and you will change the times. "
Augustine holds Cyprian up as an example of one who 'lived rightly and changed the times'. "He got in tune with the new song; he loved, he persevered, he strove, he overcame." Augustine is telling his congregation that the response to difficult times is to get in tune and sing with the music of the new times. Each time requires its own response, requires learning a new tune. Attempts at reconstructing the past is a waste of energy.
That new tune of the future will be sung by lay people and learned by whatever clergy are available for service. A group of people from this Church here in Galway addressed the Chapter. They outlined their experiences of working with Augustinians. They demonstrated convincingly that lay people have both the talent and the commitment to sing this new tune. The challenge facing Augustinians and indeed all clergy in Ireland will be quite distinct but no less demanding: to leave go gracefully, to facilitate lay people in singing this new tune, and to join in the singing!
But if we are to move on to sing that new song, we must first acknowledge the pain of parting, of loss. If we fail to acknowledge our loss, we are limiting our response to attempts to restore what has been, never having accepted that it is gone. We are closing ourselves to what is new and refusing the future.
-Dick Lyng.
FOR YOUR ATTENTION
- RENOVATION OF CHURCH: A lot of drawings, maps and proposals have now come to hand and deserve our consideration. In fact matters are now moving quite rapidly and some serious decisions are pending. So the full Parish Steering Committee will meet in the Priory on Monday week next, July 21st at 8.00. The Renovations group will bring us up to date on developments so far. We must then devise the best method of getting that information out to the general body of patrons and parishioners.
MAYNOOTH REUNION
A venerable establishment like Maynooth can afford to think in centuries. I found my mind dwelling yesterday on the College in 1903 - a hundred years ago. The contrast with today is interesting and, perhaps, to some degree informative. There were 564 seminarians living in this College in 1903; that, I should imagine, is about 500 more than reside here at present. Such a figure, such a contrast, helps to concretize the phrase, 'fall in vocations'.
The Maynooth Union Day in 1903 was held on Thursday, June 25. The previous day King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were received in the College by Archbishop William Walsh of Dublin and by many bishops and members of staff. At the Union Dinner in 1903 Cardinal Logue of Armagh was absent, having gone to Rome for the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Leo XIII.
We in the Ireland of 2003 have our troubles. But we must plan for a future that does not have to be bleak. We must be on our guard lest all our energy gets trapped into the sad task of remedying the sins of the past, however important that task may be. We must be prepared to plan for the day when there may be less faith in our land than there is at present. But, regardless of our circumstances, we should always bear in mind that a gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms.
-Father Michael Olden. (The Furrow, July, 2003)
SISTER CONCILIO
Over the last few weeks we have been presenting here little pen-pictures of those who are generally regarded as contemporary prophetic figures. We presented Jean Vanier, Nelson Mandela and Willie Bermingham in that light. They had a clear vision; they identified a crying need; and they responded to that need, regardless of the cost to themselves. And the world is a far better place because of them.
Sr. Consillio is one of those rare people who has a vision, a desire to help and who just gets up and goes for it. As a nurse many years ago in St. Vincent's Hospital in Athy, County Kildare, she took a keen interest in the 'Knights of the Road' most of whom had drink problems. At the time she thought that the sure success was to provide a roof over their heads. But she soon realized that the true road to success lay in helping them to learn to love and respect themselves and accept that they are worthy and valuable members of society.
34 years ago she opened her first treatment center for alcohol addiction in Athy. Today she runs a network of residential treatment centers, the most recent venture Cuan Mhuire in Coolarne, the former Sacred Heart Missionary House, and about 10 miles from Galway city. This project includes family units allowing family ties to be re-established, strengthened and developed for many, often with huge reconciliation for some broken families.
The boom in the building industry has worked to her advantage rather than the other way round. Boom means more money, more money means more drink, more drink means more problems and her workforce turned up at her door seeking help. The pride, joy and self-satisfaction they have gained in being able to employ their skills so well within the caring atmosphere of the residential unit has helped these men to turn around their whole lives, in fact probably saved the lives of some.
Most of those who worked on the building of Cuan Mhuire have returned to the workforce and are doing well, knowing that they have the support of Cuan Mhuire in the background if they ever need it. Sr. Concilio has a clear Christian vision: "In today's world we are all looking in the bright light while all the time everything we need is within us, in the depths of our souls. No matter how bruised or battered anybody might be coming in through our doors, we know that everything that they need for recovery is within themselves. There is no such thing as a lost cause" It is no wonder that accolades have been showered on this woman of visionary action. She has received the Person of the year award, among many others, and more recently was awarded an honorary Fellowship by the College of Surgeons for her work.
She is a true prophetic voice in a prosperous Ireland that has lost its way. May she continue to serve and to heal.
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