Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Austin Doak, (Anniv).
11.00: Robert Pierce, (Month's Mind).
6.30: Jack Melvin, (Merchant's Road), (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Julian Barnes' 1989 novel, 'A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters' was at once playful and provocative. It opens with an account of Noah and the Flood and it closes with an offbeat vision of the Hereafter. Each chapter has a different narrator, providing a different, unconventional view of history.

At the end of Chapter One, we discover that a woodworm has been the narrator. He and his six siblings, having failed to be selected by Noah, sneaked aboard the Ark unknown to the Patriarch. Woodworm aboard the Ark! Oh Horror! They escaped undetected after the Flood to continue their undermining mission in 'the renewed world'. Even after the Flood, there is very little security, as the politicians are learning this weekend! The floating vote is elusive!

The woodworm has a lot to teach us in this culture obsessed with fame and celebrity. This obsession verges on the religious. Celebrities are worshipped and treated like gods. Cups they've drunk from, or clothing they once wore, are sold on the Internet as holy relics, worthy of veneration. And at the upper reaches of the celebrity tree some are deemed to have entered into immortality itself. Their names will live forever. Little wonder so many of our children desperately want to be famous.

And yet, for all the glamour of this religion, there is something empty at its heart.

Chapter 10 of Barnes' wonderful book pictures heaven as a dreamlike state in which dreamers "get the sort of Heaven they want". He will live on forever and have everything his heart desires. He can eat whatever he wants, have imaginative sex with whomsoever he wants, he plays a round of golf in 18 shots every time, and Leicester City always wins the FA Cup. In his dream, he gets everything he wants just by wanting it. This, in a sense, is the fantasy of modern celebrity.

And yet at some point this endless round of satisfied desire comes to seem utterly futile. "They can't believe their good luck at first," says the proprietor of heaven, "and then a few hundred years later, they can't believe their bad luck. They're stuck with being themselves." These 'saints' are so bored that they opt to die off a second time!

Too many people think of Christianity as offering a similar version of this immortality. In popular piety, Christianity is just another calculation about what's best for me - a cosmic life insurance policy: believe and you'll live on forever and ever. In fact, authentic Christianity is something quite different.

Jesus calls his followers to forget themselves, to transfer the centre of interest in their lives from self to God, to love others more than they love themselves. People in this condition are not focused upon what's going to become of them. And that's precisely why, as St Paul puts it, death loses its sting.

This is the very opposite of the celebrity desire for immortality. For my life is small and petty when it's centred on itself. True joy lies in the other direction. Beyond self-absorption there opens up another world entirely. The great religions of the world supply many colourful descriptions. Yet in its everyday form, it goes by simple names like love and compassion. These qualities are eternal, surviving even the woodworm!

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Corrib Cruise

Full Moon BBQ river Cruise

The Africa Challenge 2007 for Jesuit school leavers Fundraising trip on the Corrib Princess

Sunday 3rd June 2007

7-11pm Boarding at 6.45pm

Tickets €35 include BBQ, full bar, really good music, raffle.

Contact Mary Whelan 087 2931873 for tickets.

The Late Gerry Meehan

Gerry Meehan, a friend of the Augustinian here, was buried from his parish church in Salthill on Tuesday last. Gerry was born in Annaghdown 73 years ago. Both his parents were national teachers in nearby Corrandrum. He and Sighle would have been married 40 years next November. But Gerry was diagnosed with cancer over three years ago. With the help of treatment, he managed to live a full and active life for most of that period. In fact he served for a brief period on the Augustinian Project Finance team, resigning reluctantly in early 2006 on medical advice.

He climbed to the top of the ladder in his chosen profession, having served as President of the Irish Dental Association. He was also quite an accomplished sportsman in his youth, having represented his county in both codes of the GAA at minor level. He was, apparently, a feared and formidable presence on the Annaghdown football team for many years. 'He wielded that elbow like a scythe' a former GAA colleague remarked at the funeral. But his interests were not confined to the GAA. He was an avid follower of rugby, and he dearly loved his golf. But topping his long list of interests was fishing on Lough Corrib. He kept his boat in Annaghdown and he exploited fully his encyclopedic knowledge of the lake and the locality.

I think I will remember Gerry best as a storyteller. He was an absolutely brilliant raconteur who revelled in painting the full picture in all its detail. One of my favourite stories (and his too, I think) involved Nell McCafferty. She and Frank Crummey of the Irish Family Planning Association arrived in Annaghdown at 10.00pm on a wet winter's night in 1973. They were taking the battle for the Enlightenment to 'the wilds of Connemara' as Nell put it. A bridgehead would be established in the thatched cottage of Margaretta D'Arcy at Annaghdown. And the Enlightenment would be smuggled in at dead of night through the Trojan Horse of 'artificial contraception'! The local parish priest ensured a reasonable audience by warning his parishioners not to attend. Dr. Gerry Meehan attended in a professional capacity, of course! According to him, the wet conditions caused 'a great fog of steam to rise from the buttoned overcoats'.

Nell, in her eponymous autobiography, claims to have been surprised by her congregation: 'Every pensioner in the district was there, all fifteen of them. They had walking sticks and false teeth or no teeth. They were, in a phrase, past it!' (P.247) But Nell demonstrated the unreliability of her recollections when she wrote: 'These lifelong Gaelic speakers didn't speak English!'

Ouch! In Annaghdown in the 1970s? Gerry's account of the meeting was informed by local knowledge, and far more plausible. According to him, the night was saved (in terms of entertainment at least) by some robust interventions by a local theological heavyweight named 'Wildo' Fahy. And, whatever about Wildo's logic, his English remained unbroken!

Gerry was great fun and a lovely, gentle man. He was a very exact, organised individual; yet he greatly enjoyed the foibles of his fellow human beings. He had the strong faith of a countryman and it served him well at the end too. Sighle and the family will miss him terribly. May he rest in peace. D.L.

You know you are old when

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