- Homily of Archbishop Dermot Farrell at Mass to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the canonisation of Laurence O’Toole in Eu, Normandy
Homily
“The Lamb … will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Our faith is gospel, it is good news. “The Lamb will be their shepherd,” says today’s second reading. An image of hope, of warmth, of reassurance. Christ is good news, and he is hope: “the Lamb will lead [his flock] to springs of living water.” He is God’s true face: “and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
We gather to celebrate someone who was a shepherd, a pastor of the Lord’s flock in the true sense of the word. Saint Laurence O’Toole is not the easiest of people to preach about; he left us no large body of writings, which we can read, and re-read for our own time. But he left us something even more human and more divine: he left us the witness of his life.
Laurence O’Toole was a Gaelic bishop who found himself in exile in France. Laurence did not seek the office of bishop. He reluctantly gave his consent and was consecrated in Christ Church Cathedral in 1162. The movement for Laurence’s canonisation commenced shortly after his death. It began at this tomb which became a centre of pilgrimage for the whole of the north of France. While there is undoubtedly, a popular dimension – many miracles were attributed to his intercession, the heart of the movement was in the resonance of Laurence’s life with the inner life of those who survived him. It was after many unsuccessful attempts that Pope Honorius III formally canonised him on 5 December 1225, forty-five years after his death.
Laurence never returned home from his final journey in 1180. Were Laurence to return today, the Dublin he would find would be unrecognisable. In the twelfth century, Dublin was a turbulent place, and the diocese was small by today’s standards. While Dublin can still be ‘turbulent’ at times, it is no longer a small city, or a small diocese. In 1180, Dublin was a city in transition; Dublin today is still a city in transition. In 1180, Dublin was still practically under Viking control, but was being brought more and more under Norman influence. With the change of cultures, came also a change of religiosity.
Dublin today
Today Dublin is a large city, and the Archdiocese is even larger. The population of the Catholic Archdiocese is 1.6 million, a significant metropolitan area, by any standards.
Perhaps it would also strike Laurence that the Christian faith he knew is on the wane. In Laurence’s Dublin, the faith was arriving. In today’s Dublin, it could be easily said that the faith “is departing.” Some would say that it has departed! However, while the religious expression that was so characteristic of Irish Catholicism from the mid-19th Century almost to the end of the 20th Century has certainly evaporated in the last 25 years, it would be too narrow to say that faith has departed our city and our land. Permit me to explain.
Of the 1.6 million in the Archdiocese, just under one million identify as Catholic. Of those aged 25-29, just over half identify as Catholic, while one-fifth of the total population recorded no religion. In terms of religious practice, a minority of marriages are now solemnised in religious ceremonies. We are beginning to see the same in the celebration of funerals.
Both these trends will undoubtedly continue, and will almost certainly continue to grow. They point to one of the key challenges of Christian mission: the need to make sense of life, the call to hear what God is saying to us not only in Jesus, but within us, and among us. It is not only too facile, but also too narrow, to categorise this as the effect of “secularisation.” As the French Church knows far better than the Irish Church, what people call “secularisation” has been happening for over 200 years. The Church in developing Western societies, falling Church attendance, transformed religiosities, and institutional distancing from churches, has been a sociological and cultural phenomenon for the last two centuries.
To see this as the demise of religion has been shown to be illusory. Such an analysis takes little account of the diversity of contemporary religious expression. Yes, there is a loss of what some call “enchantment,” but the loss of a magical world view, with its simplistic views of the world and transactional approach to the divine, is certainly not the loss of God. There is undoubtedly an unaddressed hunger for the spiritual. Our churches may not be as full at Christmas; however, there is a hunger for something beyond the perfect gift, for the perfect table, for the perfect day. The ashrams of the East are filled with young and not-so-young of the West, seeking the treasures of the heart, which the dynamics of our Churches can no longer give to them. Does “the Spirit of God that hovered over the waters” (see Gen 1:1), not beat in the hearts of those who hear the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor? (see Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes 11 & 26), and Pope Francis, Laudato Sì (49 & 117).
The Brightening Air, the latest play of Irish playwright Conor McPherson (born in Dublin in 1971), is currently having its opening run in London. It is a story of lostness and disconnection in what might be termed the post-Catholic Ireland of the 1980s. Of course, it is really a reflection on Irish – and British – life today. What is noteworthy is that the very grammar of this most contemporary of Irish plays, by an exceptionally gifted Irish playwright, is profoundly religious, not only having an alienated priest as a central character, but even more so, in the very categories and framing of its discourse.
Here is one of the ironies of our world: that many of those who on the surface have left their Christian faith behind, hunger for what they consider as depassé, for a way of living that was characterised, not without a certain justification, as controlling, constricting, and removed from the realities of real people’s lives. While it would be blind and foolish, to dismiss the change in Irish religiosity, there is still a longing and a hunger for something not so easily named, as the late poet Dennis O’Driscoll (d. 2012) so poignantly captured:
Miss Him when we call out His name
spontaneously in awe or anger
as a woman in the birth ward bawls
her long-dead mother’s name. (Missing God [2002])
Easter Week just passed saw the quiet and genuine outpouring of loss, by those who were touched by the deep and inclusive faith of Pope Francis. The other side of this irony is that many “baptized Christians … end up living … in a state of practical atheism,” as Pope Leo, pointed out in his homily at Mass with the College of Cardinals on Friday last. One religious world, the one we have known, is passing away. Did Jesus not speak of “new wine needing fresh skins” (see Mark 2:22)?
Beneath the surface in Dublin, another story also emerges, albeit faintly. There are small numbers of young adults discovering their faith and gathering to celebrate it. While the last population census is clear that those in the age range of 24–29 years are the most disaffected, all are not in the same place with respect to faith. During this Jubilee of Hope, Dublin had the largest group ever seeking adult baptism, most of whom are young adults who had come to our country. It is among the new Irish that renewal is most evident, and there is undoubtedly a pastoral challenge to integrating their gifts into the structures of established parishes. It is important that we gain a sense of how the Church really is.
For all his episcopal profile and responsibilities, Laurence was a monk at heart. The comfortable lifestyle of a medieval prince-bishop was not for him. His decision to become an Arroasian monk – we might call them Augustinians today – was not surprising, as his prayer life demanded a life that was marked by simplicity and self-discipline.
Laurence and the Mission of the Church today
The opening line of today’s Gospel, “the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice…” (John 10:27), would certainly have resonated deeply with Laurence. His life was one of profound listening for and to the voice of the Lord. As we listen attentively to this Gospel, we might note that the Lord does not say, “the shepherds that belong to me listen to my voice!” He says, “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice…” One of the foundational layers of the Church’s mission – the rock on which our hope is built – is the listening to (and for) the voice of the Shepherd.
Before one can listen to the voice, one has to listen for the voice! What is love without longing for the voice of the Beloved? Is this not one of the great mystical and ecclesial insights of the medieval Church, with its sensitivity to the emotive and transformative power of the Song of Songs, and its language of desire. This longing for the voice of the Shepherd lay at the core of Laurence’s life and ministry and mission.
For two centuries, the mission reflex of the Church in the developed world has been a missio ad extra, a giving of Good News to others. Today’s mission must also be missio ad intra, a mission to ourselves who are baptised, towards a renewed reception of a way of living out the gifts that have been given to us in Christ. This not possible without our own journey inwards, a journey in service and in prayer nourished by Word and Sacrament, as the Second Vatican Council taught (see Dei Verbum, no 26).
Would Laurence find this strange? Dublin he’d find strange, of that there is little doubt. But our mission? Surely this bishop who bridged two worlds – the Gaelic and the Norman – would encourage us to continue to find ways to reach the hearts of the today’s peoples of Dublin, and beyond with the gift of the gospel, “God’s open door”, in the words of one recent Archbishop of Canterbury: “God’s open door” for us all.
Saint Laurence O’Toole, pray for us. Amen.
ENDS
- Archbishop Dermot Farrell is Archbishop of Dublin. This homily was delivered by Archbishop Farrell during Mass on Good Shepherd Sunday, 11 May 2025, in Eu, Normandy.
