Masses Today

6.30: Patrick Morrissey; (Anniv)
11.00: Maureen Loughnane, (Anniv)
6.30: Peter & Bridie Berry, Peter Berry (Jnr) & the Tierney family. (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING...

Concern for the Spirits of the Ancestors has deep roots in Celtic lore and culture. Over 4,000 years ago, our Celtic ancestors built Newgrange. It was "a house of eternity" for their royal dead. It is huge. And yet it is a theatre for a tiny drama that lasts only 17 minutes every year. On the deadest and shortest day of the year, 21 December, a shaft of sunlight travels the length of the passage, from a roof box above the door. For 17 minutes the chamber has light. Then, darkness. Not for another 12 months will sunlight warm the spirits of the dead. In this way, the Celts attempted to reach beyond death to some understanding of the afterlife.

In 1926, Howard Carter, the archaeologist, was working in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. He broke through to the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Inside the coffin he found the body of the king. On the forehead was a tiny garland of flowers, still coloured after 3,000 years. Pharaoh's young widow had put them there, as a gesture of belief in the afterlife. The year was 1342 BC.

There is a story told that in 627 AD a monk called Paulinus visited a King Edwin in the north of England to convert him to Christianity. The king was having a feast in his castle. When the servants told him about this strange man at the castle door, he ordered him to be sent on his way. But one of his advisers stood up and said: "Maybe that is not wise. You know when we sit at table here in the banquet hall, and the winter fire burns on the hearth and the winds howl outside, sometimes it happens of a sudden that a little bird flies into the hall. It lands on our tables, picks our food, soars to the rafters and flies against the walls in panic. Then, as suddenly as it came, it finds an open window and is gone. We know nothing of where it has been and where it flies to when it returns to the dark of winter. If the new doctrine can speak to us surely of these things, it is well for us to give a hearing to this stranger at the door."

The Feast of All Souls always reminds me of the room in Newgrange, the flowers on a pharaoh's forehead and that bird in the castle. The Celts believed that the world was "out of time" between sunset on the last day of October and sunrise the first day of November, Oiche Shamhna. On that night the veil between life and beyond was drawn back and the dead mingled with the living. Normality was suspended. We could communicate with our dead. In time, ease with the dead degenerated into fear of them and we filled the night with games to cover our fright. Halloween.

The church reclaimed the night and created All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Not to squash the wisdom of the Celts but to fill out what they had vaguely believed. Not to mock Newgrange but to honour its suspicion that we do survive death.

The Christians began to bury their dead in separate graves, not in huge mounds, to show that each life has a destiny. Over the graves they placed Celtic crosses.

The perspective changed. The ancient burial mounds were flat and hugged the earth. The Celtic cross pierced the sky. In Newgrange the sun travelled a narrow passage to pass pale light over the boulder in the chamber. With the Celtic cross, the circle connecting the arms was there all day every day. Carved in stone. Signs of eternity. I love these nights before Oiche Shamhna. They are Celtic. Half superstition, half Christian. Who knows which is which? Who cares? These are the days that feed the soul and imagination.

-Colm Kilcoyne.

LITURGY OF ALL SOULS:

All Souls Day will be celebrated on Tuesday at 7.30. A Mass for the Dead at which the following, who died during the last 12 months, will be remembered by name: (If you notice an omission, please inform us):

NAME DIED
1. Maureen Loughnane 06-11-03
2. Rosetta Keogh 10-11-03
3. Pearse O' Mahoney OSA 19-11-03
4. Sheila Keane 13-01-04
5. Joe McDonagh 13-01-04
6. John Faherty 15-01-04
7. Gerry Colgan 01-02-04
8. Maureen Kieran 03-02-04
9. Sarah O' Toole 03-02-04
10. Martin Haynes 03-03-04
11. James McElwain 04-03-04
12. Mary Mahoney 26-03-04
13. Paddy Ryan 13-04-04
14. Christina Skelton 15-04-04
15. Margaret Egan 15-05-04
16. Jack Melvin 27-05-04
17. Frank Berry 27-05-04
18. Eilish O' Brien 09-06-04
19. Michael McGraine 10-08-04
20. Peter Berry (Jnr.) 16-08-04
21. Martin Kelly 17-08-04
22. Mary Fahy 06-09-04
23. Bernard Tighe 17-10-04

EVENTS THIS WEEK AND LAST

GRAN'S GRAND EXIT

When Granny died three priests were kind enough to turn up for her High Mass. When it came to the Kyrie Eleison they sat down. Their chasubles were lifted over the backs of their chairs. Then they launched (lunged) into the most tuneless, raucous, unforgettably awful Kyrie ever heard, I would say, in the history of the diocese.

In all modesty I admit that at that time I was the most theologically informed member of the family. My professor had explained in graphic detail 'after-death procedures' and I had meditated long and gloomily over them. First would be Gran's particular judgement and that would seal her fate. It would be a private affair. Professor had explained that it would be a 'complete x-ray' . The general judgement would come later on when God would have decided that it was time to finish off the world. This would be the 'giant x-ray' . Everyone would know everything about everyone else. It would be a bad day for some; a day of calamity and misery. It all came alive when the three good fathers expressed it 'musically' in a chaotic Dies lrae, more painful than Liszt's great chords of doom.

Gran used to be at Mass every morning in the sixth seat from the front on the pulpit side. Every night she said prayers down in the kitchen especially for Peter that he wouldn' t be foolish. When she poured lemonade for us she wouldn't stop until some of it came out over the brim and down on the table. But with God you never knew. God could know bad things about that you didn't know yourself. Several times during the Mass words from the last mission rattled in my head:

I must die, I do not know when or how or where;
but if I die in mortal sin, I am lost forever.

Gran was a goldmine of decency to all of us and many another. At the funeral I couldn't bear to think any more about my theological 'information' .

All of this is now forty years ago. Since then I have learned to hope that things might be different:

The three 'musical' fathers have since followed Gran into the loving kindness of God. Yes Gran would have warned the Lord that under no circumstances were they to be invited to join the choirs of angels.

I remember a sermon phrase from one of the singing culprits at Gran' s funeral: 'The whole thing is no good at all if only the saints are saved.'

-Fr. Ned Crosby.

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