While making a Holy Hour before the noon Mass in Knock parish church last November, I experienced the truth of Isaiah 11:6 unexpectedly from a girl of Indian ancestry dressed in pink, aged between two and three.
Two young women, whom I presumed to be her mother and aunt and from Kerala, were with the child. One of them went to write a petition at a side altar where there were pens and paper. The girl took one of the pens and prodded an older Irish woman with it, with the playful exuberance of a child going through the ‘Terrible Twos’. However, the mother or aunt took the pen off her and the ‘victim’ saw the humour in the situation. Then a young man arrived, clearly the father of the girl, who was still running around, though never out of control.
Instead of distracting me this incident filled me with a deep sense of joyful gratitude for the gift that so many immigrants are to Ireland, especially those with a deep Catholic faith from Kerala, the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa and eastern Europe. I saw the young adults from India passing on the Catholic faith to their Irish-born daughter and strengthening and renewing the faith of the Irish. I prayed for the many immigrants, especially Syro-Malabar Catholics from Kerala, who practise their Catholic faith with fervour.
The girl reminded me of when I was her age. We lived in Drimnagh, Dublin, at the time. One weekday morning after Christmas 1945 my mother, pregnant with my brother Paddy, took me to Mass. I shouted ‘bah’ at the Infant in the crib and the priest ordered us out of the church. I know of the incident from my mother’s recounting of it. From my own experience I can understand the priest’s ‘getting out of bed on the wrong side’ that morning. Sadly, he didn’t apologise when my father, who hated confrontation of any kind, went to see him.
We left the parish after my brother’s birth six months later and the priest moved to the parish where my mother grew up. When telling the story she always added that the same priest couldn’t have been kinder to her youngest sister, my Auntie Madge, in her last illness early in 1950.
Fast forward to Lent 1991 when I was on a sabbatical in Ireland. Drimnagh parish had asked for a Columban to preach at all the Massed on a weekend in Lent when senior secondary school students were making a 24-hour fast for Trócaiire, the overseas development agency of the Irish bishops. The superior who invited me to do this knew nothing of my connection with Drimnagh. I jumped at the invitation.
I had the best opening line ever for a homily: ‘I was thrown out of this church with my pregnant mother when I was two-and-a-half!’ By the time I’d preached for the fourth or fifth time I felt a vicarious healing on behalf of my mother who died in 1970.
‘And a little child shall lead them’, says Isaiah. A little Catholic girl who can trace the gift of her faith back to St Thomas the Apostle led me on a graced journey that morning in Knock without any awareness whatever that just by being a ‘Terrible Two’ she was proclaiming the Gospel to me as were her parents and aunt by their quiet piety.
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How wonderful it must have been seeing that child in church and reminding you of the story about you as a child. Thank you for this heart-warming post.
ReplyDeleteGod bless you.