- Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and Saint Nicholas, Galway
“It is when we cry from the heart that we are believers. Faith and prayer. You cannot have one without the other” – Bishop Brendan Kelly
Words of welcome
A phobail Dé na páirte, fáiltím romhaibh ar fad chuig Ardeaglais Muire na Deastógala agus Naomh Nioclás anseo i gCathair ársa na dTreabh. Is aoibheann liom bhúr dteacht.
Is mór linn go bhfuil Uachtarán ar dtíre, a Shoillse Míchéal D Ó hUiginn anseo, in éineacht le bean Uí Uigín – fáilte Uí Cheallaigh agus chuile fháilte eile romhaibh.
I welcome also, representing all the people of this great city, the Mayor of Galway, Mr Pearse Flannery, along with the members of the City Council of Galway.
I welcome all the public representatives, both local and national, from the city and the various electoral areas within the diocese.
Fáiltím roimh na Priomh-Oidí Scoile atá anseo from this diocese and those representing Catholic education from Achonry.
Our brothers and sisters from other Christian churches and communions, thank you for honouring us with your presence. An Arddeochan Gary Hastings ó séipéal ársa San Nioclás í gcroí na Cathrach, tá mile fáilte romhat. And a most particular welcome to the Rev Andrea Wills here with her husband Charles from Foxford. I am glad to see you both today. I welcome also Rev Helen Freeburn from the local Presbyterian and Methodist community; Father Tudor Ghita from the Romanian Orthodox community and Abba Pauls Antony of the Coptic Church. I am happy that we are welcoming a local Imam from the Muslim community. What an incredibly rich and diverse religious and Christian reality in this city you represent. I look forward to us working together for the welfare of all the people of Galway and the generations who come after us.
My brother bishops, thank you for coming, and the many priests and religious from this diocese. A particular welcome to the priests who have come from Achonry, with whom I have had the privilege of working for the last ten years, a very special welcome to you today, I will never forget your kindness agus míle míle buíochas.
I welcome all the people who are here from the various diocesan pastoral services and the Marriage Tribunal.
I thank all the people who are here from the Diocese of Achonry. I have been so happy living amongst you these past ten years.
I welcome the family members of recent bishops.
I welcome and have been welcomed by the priests of this diocese – my old diocese and now, again, my new diocese. I look forward very much indeed to working with you.
Most of all though, I welcome the representatives of all the parishes of this diocese. And I am sure the rest won’t mind if I make special mention of all those who have come from Kinvara, Coláiste Einde, Gort, Lisdoonvarna, agus An Spidéal.
I, of course, welcome my own family members and finally I welcome all my friends, some of whom have come a long distance and from overseas, and in a very particular way, I welcome all those from Faith and Light, and other services, who are so ably represented on the altar today by Jose, who began serving Mass with me over forty years ago.
Homily notes
I dtús báire … mo bhuíochas ó chroí daoibh ar fad as a bheith anseo inniu: comhluadar ós cionn dhá mhile duine le chéile ag ceiliúradh Aifreann Dé agus ag gabháil buíochas le Dia. We gather on this occasion to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, so we gather to prayer and worship, always an act of profound humility. And so critical for all of us in this world of too much waste and too much want.
To pray and worship is to become our best possible selves as rational human beings. It is for this we have been created. And for me to be in the middle of this great wellspring means everything today. I am so happy to be with and I thank you all, and bheirim míle moladh agus altú le Dia.
The Cathedral
I would like first of all to invite us all to become aware, in the silence, of this great structure that surrounds us, this Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and Saint Nicholas, that is giving us sanctuary this afternoon.
I invite you to feel the size, the great height, the light and the colour through the beautiful windows, as we listen to the life-giving Word, the uplifting music, aware of the strength and spaciousness, the stark beauty and the safety of this sacred place.
While still in primary school fadó, at the end of the 1950’s of the last century, myself and my sister Mary went round the byroads and townlands in the parish of Craughwell on our bicycles collecting the half-crown a week or less – whatever people could afford – to fund the building of this mighty edifice. We enjoyed the task very much as we got to know the parish and its people. And somehow we knew that like those contributing, we were all part of a great project. ’Twas all long before health and safety was heard of!
Teach Dé agus Teach an Phobail. House of God and of God’s people. I could never imagine then a day like this, presiding here with so many people at this great banquet of life and joy and welcome. God is here. And we are here. Meeting. Cathedral and Church are built so that we can remember who we are and what we are for in this world. And the immense dignity, respect and reverence that is due to every living person, regardless of ability, health, colour, size, nationality, or otherwise. This place exists lest we forget the nobility and dignity, the wonder of human life from its tiniest origins. It is prayer, that meeting with our Maker, that matters, all that this place invites us to, to pray and be ourselves, ‘pray – ers’.
Recently I have been asked to do quite a few interviews with journalists. Invariably I am asked about my plans and hopes and, invariably, I find myself talking about prayer as the first thing, sitting, resting, finding the quiet and lonely place like Jesus, away from it all, time out from all the bustle and business to be silent, to reflect and be with God and Jesus, the Word and Mary, that we might recognise and become alive to God’s plan for us now.
Prayer
In a world of too much speed and debilitating stress and pressure, we need to discover prayer anew, all of us, to begin again. And we have no shortage of places thanks to the humbler and more eternal view of the generations that went before us. Places like this Cathedral. Built for our restoration and healing. For all that Jesus gave to the poor leper in answer to that desperate cry, his prayer in today’s Gospel: “If you want to, you can cure me.” The reply is immediate, spontaneous, “Of course I want to. Be cured.” And he was. It is the gift of Jesus to all who come to Him. It is when we cry from the heart that we are believers. Faith and prayer. You cannot have one without the other.
Thinking beyond ourselves
Back in 1965, at the opening of this great Cathedral, Cardinal Cushing of Boston asked the packed congregation, (just like today), rhetorically over and over again: “Why did you build this Cathedral?” I remember the question resounding out, though I cannot recall any of his answers. It is a question that I invite us all to ask ourselves today. And let us give thanks for the generations gone before us from whom we have inherited the sustaining treasure of our Christian and Catholic Faith and the knowledge of Jesus Christ; those ancestors of ours, who built this and so many other churches in more frugal times. They were thinking of the future, too, and the generations to come. Thinking of us.
Do we sufficiently think of our children and those who come after us, and what sort of world are we going to leave them?
We are now commonly known and referred to, all of us, in certain circles especially, as “consumers”. Merely that. And there is great evidence that we have succumbed to the designation, and will leave this world as a much more desert place than we found it. The leper today came from a deserted place. Hordes of desperate people are clamouring at the shores of Europe today as their homelands cannot sustain them anymore, ravaged as they are by modern wars and the excess consumption of resources by the ironically titled “developed world” of which we are part, that same world that supplies all the weapons of destruction and death. Pope Francis has written much about the cry of the poor – and of all people whose lives in their defenceless innocence and vulnerability – being under threat in these times.
We follow Jesus. Or do we? It is not easy today. It never was, in fact. He challenges and invites us to assume a responsibility that we can find too burdensome, unrealistic and even impossible.
World Day of the Sick
Today the Universal Church celebrates the World Day of the Sick. It is also the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes. ‘Twas on this day, 160 years ago, that the beautiful woman appeared to an impoverished, asthmatic, and sickly child, Bernadette, and prayed with her as she foraged in the local dump at Lourdes for firewood so her misfortunate family might be warm. Nowadays many of us love to visit Lourdes. We go there on pilgrimage. It is a place where people who are sick, disabled, and utterly dependent on others, are at the centre, given the place of honour. Wheelchairs have priority on the roads. And it is a place of miracles, not so much physically, but miracles of the heart. People like you and I transformed inside, discovering a new joy in giving themselves to the point of exhaustion frequently to help and support and accompany those who are in need. We return home, like the Three Wise Men, ‘by a different way’.
The Church, the followers of Jesus, has from the beginning given the place of honour to those whose lives in their weakness and innocence are under threat. And it is in giving life that we ourselves become all that God has made us to be. “I try,” Saint Paul says in the second reading today, “to be helpful to everyone at all times, not anxious for my own advantage, but for the advantage of everyone else, so that they may be saved.” He then goes on to say, “take me for your model, as I take Christ.” If there is a programme or a plan that we must have today, it is the plan of God, already revealed in the man, Jesus, who today, on this World Day of the Sick, in our Gospel reached out to the one who was discarded and feared, and gave life … to His own terrible cost.
So, may our prayer and worship this day, together and in each heart, inspire us not to be afraid ever but rather to be renewed in our determination to joyfully love one another as Jesus loves us and gives His life still for our sake. For that is what we are now about to celebrate in this mystery of the Holy Eucharist.
Amen.
ENDS
Notes for Editors
· On 11 December 2017 the Holy Father Pope Francis appointed Bishop Brendan Kelly as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora. The diocese includes portions of counties Galway, Mayo and Clare. Bishop Martin Drennan is Bishop Emeritus of Galway, having retired in July of 2016.
· Brief biography of the life and ministry to date of Bishop Brendan Kelly
Born in Derrybrien in the parish of Ballinakill, Co Galway on 20 May 1946 to Sean and Annie Kelly, Bishop Brendan was the second of nine children. He attended Craughwell National School
and subsequently boarded at Saint Mary’s Diocesan College in Galway city.
Following the completion of his Leaving Certificate examination in 1964, he applied to and was accepted
by the then bishop, Michael Brown, to study for diocesan priesthood in the Diocese of Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora. He started his studies in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth in September of that year.
As a seminarian Bishop Brendan completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1967 and a Bachelor of Divinity Degree in 1970.
He was ordained to the priesthood on 20 June 1971 by Bishop Brown in the Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and Saint Nicholas in Galway city.
His first appointment was to the parish of Kinvara as a curate before being appointed to the teaching staff of Coláiste Éinde in Salthill in 1972, completing a Higher Diploma in Education in the then University College Galway (now the National University of Ireland, Galway) in 1973.
Bishop Brendan remained on the staff of Coláiste Éinde until 1980 when he was transferred to the teaching staff of Our Lady’s College, Gort, becoming President in 1986.
Following the 1995 amalgamation of the three Gort secondary schools, Bishop Brendan applied for and was granted sabbatical leave from his diocese for one year and went to live with the L’Arche Community at Cuise-la-Motte in France. Founded by Jean Vanier in 1964, the worldwide L’Arche movement seeks to create inclusive, creative and caring families where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work in friendship, joy and mutual respect.
Returning to his diocese in 1996, Bishop Brendan was appointed by Bishop James McLoughlin as Parish Priest of Lisdoonvarna in Co Clare and subsequently as Parish Priest of An Spidéal in 2003.
On 20 November 2007, Bishop Brendan was named by Pope Benedict XVI as the Bishop of Achonry, succeeding recently retired Bishop Thomas Flynn. On 27 January 2008 he was ordained to the episcopate by Cardinal Seán Brady in the Cathedral of the Annunciation and Saint Nathy in Ballaghaderreen.
Bishop Brendan’s episcopal motto is ‘De réir d’fhocail’ (‘According to your word’ Lk 1:38). He:
– is a fluent Irish speaker and has a working knowledge of the French language;
– was a member of the Standing Committee of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference for six years;
– is a member of the Bishops’ Council of the Liturgy;
– is a member of the Bishops’ An Coiste Comhairleach um Liotúirge i nGaeilge;
– is a member of the Bishops’ Commission for Catholic Education and Formation;
– is Chairman of the Bishops’ Council for Education;
– is a member of The Council for the West.
For media contact: Catholic Communications Office Maynooth: Martin Long 00353 (0) 86 172 7678
