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Canon Sheehan Commemorative Mass, Doneraile
Homily
March 15, 2002.
Outsiders are so often a threat. People of another culture, another colour seem strange. We tend to highlight their differences, their different-ness. Sometime this gives rise to hostility, violence and even murder. We have sadly seen instances of this irrational fear and even more irrational reaction to those who are different in our own country.
Perhaps little has changed in human nature since the time of Jesus. In today’s Gospel St. John tells us of Jesus that the Jews “were out to kill him”. He was different. In the first reading we are told the godless say: “He annoys us and opposes our way of life. Before us he stands, a reproach to our way of thinking”. And so they set out to kill him. Yet it was through this very suffering and death that Jesus entered the glory of the resurrection. As we approach the week we call Holy Week we also remember that following Jesus does not always meaning running with the crowd, following the popular fashion. It means living by the message Jesus has given us, even if that means having a different set of priorities to that of the culture around us.
Over sixteen hundred years ago a ‘ stranger’ came to our shores, cared for the sheep on our hills, came close to God in his nights of prayer on Mount Slemish and, when the opportunity presented itself he returned to his homeland relishing the experience he had had ‘abroad’. As a result of that experience he gave himself to the God he had come to know so well on the cold hills of Ireland and prepared for Priesthood. The cry of the Irish continued to ring in his ears and heart as he heard their voice calling out: “ Come and walk among us once more”. Back he came and, this time no longer a ‘stranger’, he came in the name of Christ and, through his ministry to the People of Ireland, he became our National Apostle and Patron, Saint Patrick. This weekend we celebrate this great figure who gave his life so that the People of Ireland might come to know, love and cherish a God who loved us so much as to give His only Son, Jesus Christ, as our Saviour.
One hundred and seven years ago another Patrick came to this Parish, a Priest of God, Fr. Patrick Sheehan. He came to nurture the faith of the people of this parish. We still have many of the sermons he preached, telling of the gentleness of Christ. His sermons were remembered long after he died and people today can still quote fragments they heard from their parents. Above all he preached the Christian way of life to a people for whom life was difficult through the poverty of their conditions. The famine and the penal laws were still a close memory. He saw in the medium of writing the chance to reach a wider congregation, and so by pen and pulpit he preached to a worldwide audience. While Parish priest of Doneraile he wove the stories of Doneraile and of rural Irish life of that time into his 21 books. These were read avidly and translated into several European languages. The characters of his stories became household names, history and fiction sometimes becoming inseparable. But his purpose was the same in all his writings – to nurture the faith of people in a God of love, a God who walked the highways and byways of their lives.
This weekend we honour the memory of Canon Sheehan here in Doneraile and in the Diocese of Cloyne where he served also in the parishes of Mallow and Cobh. Times have changed since the world in which Canon Sheehan wrote, but the message is unchanged. To follow Christ we must walk a gospel road that requires courage and conviction, as true today as a century ago. As we prepare to celebrate Holy Week and follow the last journey of Jesus may we appreciate the heritage of faith we have received down through the ages from Saint Patrick through Patrick Sheehan to our own day and share it with our Sisters and Brothers..