Year C: Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord

Mass Marking Fifty Years of the Dedication of St. Brigid’s Church

Homily Notes of Bishop Brendan Leahy

Fifty years ago, Bishop Jeremiah Newman dedicated this lovely church to St Brigid. Built under the leadership of Fr David Rea PP, this building on the townland of Singland, one of the high places of Limerick Diocese, lies in a site that is linked to a thousand-year-old tradition that St. Patrick himself visited this place. Indeed, a notice inside the main door of the church states that the first church on this hill was built after the visit of St Patrick to the area in the fifth century. I am conscious too that two of my predecessors, Bishops Conway and Young from the eighteenth century, are buried in the graveyard that adjoins this church in the reputed site of an early monastic settlement. So we are in sacred ground and it is good to celebrate fifty years since the dedication of this church.

Our celebration is taking place during a Holy Year, a Jubilee Year to which Pope Francis has given as a theme: pilgrims of hope. Today, we can remember and lift up in prayer the generations who came to this church as pilgrims of hope over the past fifty years – for baptism ceremonies, for First Holy Communion days, for Confirmation ceremonies and then too for weddings and, of course, for funeral liturgies. Maybe they wouldn’t have put words on it, but they came here because the Catholic faith gives hope to us. Christ is the anchor of hope, as Scripture puts it. And we need that anchor in our lives. We know we can’t manage on our own. We need hope to be able to love one another. We need hope when life gets complicated. That’s why too, many have come here to this church building simply to bow their head in silent prayer, offering to God their lives, their troubles, their dreams and their hopes. Opening their hearts to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, represented in statues in this chapel, they have listened out for the Lord’s word: “do not be afraid, I am with you always”. Yes, this church has seen good happy days of celebration and dreams, and it has heard the cry of those suffering bereavement, loss and pain. So, today we are remembering the pilgrims of hope of the past fifty years. I know a book has been published with wonderful photographs that help us recall memories of days gone by.

There’s a story from the life of St. Brigid that I’d like to share as we recall those who have come to this church over the years. It seems that one day when she was on the way back to Kildare, St. Brigid stayed for a night in the house of the local king of Teffia. It happened that a servant, so much in awe of serving the saint and the king, was carrying most precious bowl that belonged to the king. But he was probably so nervous that he dropped the bowl and it broke into pieces. The king was furious and threw him into prison. When Brigid heard of this she asked the king to set the servant free, but the king refused her. “In that case”, said St. Brigid, “give me the pieces of the bowl”. “You can them okay” said the king. When Brigid took pieces in her hands she breathed upon them and the miracle happened, they were restored as if they had never been broken. Brigid said, “that’s how it is with us. We may be easily broken but we can be restored”. At that, the king sent word to release his servant. The story I would like to suggest has a message for us all. People come to church bringing with them the broken pieces of their lives – their dreams and hopes, their disappointments and failures, with the desire that somehow Jesus will breathe on them, giving new life and strength. The Church community has the vocation – to be the community with Jesus present among us restoring the broken-hearted, healing wounds, reconciling the estranged. This is what has been going on in various ways in this church building and its community for the past fifty years. And we thank God for all the healing, consolation, spiritual strength people found here.

Today I want to say “thanks” also to the many who have contributed or are contributing in one way or another to the life of this community. Of course, I am thinking of the many priests, past and present, who have ministered generously here throughout the past fifty years. I think of the sacristans, readers, Eucharistic ministers, members of committees, people involved in funding, in the schools, in stewarding and in the many initiatives down through the years. But since St. Brigid, whose Feast Day we celebrated yesterday, dominates this church – with the stained glass window of the saint and then also the stained glass window with its image of St. Brigid’s cross, I want to put tribute to the many women who have built up this church, kept it looking so good and built up the community spirit in various ways, not least in providing hospitality and warm welcome to those who come here.

Fifty years. We look back. We thank God. But today is also a time to look ahead. The Feast Day we are celebrating, the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, provides us with an important message for today. The story is of the baby Jesus being brought to the Temple. But remember this is God entering his Temple. As Christians we believe God always wants to be present in his Temple, not only in the sense of the church building, but among the People who make up the Temple of God. That is us, each of us individually and all together, we form the Temple of God. We need to let God enter!

Simeon and Anna were old that day when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus into the Temple. They were not only old but probably worn down a little by life with its trials, disappointments and setbacks. It would have been easy for them to feel nothing much was going to happen for them and for the Temple. But that’s not how it was. Simeon and Anna kept hope alive in their heart. They kept believing that the Lord can come in ways we might not expect. And hope did not disappoint them. They got to see the child Jesus. They were open to God entering his Temple in a new way.

That’s a message to us too. We’re all older now than we were fifty years ago. At times we feel more tired. Maybe young people don’t come as much now as in the past. Maybe we’ve been disappointed that initiatives we’ve tried haven’t worked as much as we’d like. It can be that we feel the church hasn’t much of a future. The Devil will always try to discourage us – that’s the Devil’s favourite trick. But let’s learn from Simeon and Anna. The important thing is to be like them - awake, vigilant, waiting in patience for the new things God wants to do. We can’t doze off in our Catholic faith. Either we go ahead, or we just go backwards. Today’s celebration is an invitation to go forward in hope, to believe God can still do new things in our parish community. We are not to lose hope but rather to trust, like Simeon and Anna did, that God can do new things if we let him. The question for us is: are we open to welcoming Jesus among us in a new way?

Some years ago, in referring to Simeon, the late Cardinal Martini wrote about how this applies to us: “It is not easy for the old man in us to welcome the child, the new one. The newness of God presents itself as a child and we, with all our habits, fears, misgivings, envies, worries, come face to face with this child. Will we embrace the child, welcome the child, make room for the child? Will this newness really enter our lives or will we rather try to combine old and new, trying to let ourselves be disturbed as little as possible by the presence of God’s newness?”

On this Golden Anniversary, let’s be open to the new things God wants to do for our parish community. Notice in the Gospel reading today, we are told that Simeon was “prompted by the Spirit” to come to the Temple. We need the Holy Spirit always. So let’s pray a lot to the Holy Spirit so that, like St. Brigid, we can help restore many in the future with hope.