Fr Pat Raleigh reports on the celebration of jubilees in Dalgan on 15th August 2023 which marked 70, 60 and 50 years of Columban outreach and missionary priesthood, while in the Philippines two Columbans celebrated their silver jubilees.
Celebrations of Jubilees are very happy and joyful occasions, particularly this year. Due to Covid we were not able to hold Jubilee celebrations for two years. This year was particularly special. It was so good to be able to invite the families of the Jubilarians to Dalgan for the occasion and we were blessed with good weather.
We celebrated 70, 60 and 50 years of Columban outreach. In the Philippines, two Filipino Columbans, celebrated their Silver Jubilees – Fr Rolly Aniscal and Fr Jude Genovia.
Fr Ed O’Connell from Britain, who has recently returned from mission in Peru was the chief celebrant of the thanksgiving Mass. Ed on behalf of the Jubilarians expressed his deep gratitude to God for the many blessings received over the years. He thanked the families for their support and encouragement as well as the people in the different countries where the Jubilarians ministered.
Ed made particular reference to the horrific Omagh bombing of 25 years ago which killed 31 people. He prayed for all who were killed and for the survivors who today bear the scars of such a cowardly event.
Fr Jim Fleming from Castleisland, Co Kerry was the homilist. Both Jim and Ed O’Connell are Golden Jubilarians.
Jim thanked all their families as well as his fellow Columbans. He said that the journey was long and had its ups and downs. On the whole he was able to look back with joy and gratitude. A jubilee day is a celebration of the Jubilarians’ to be faithful to the ‘God of Surprises’ – a God who is not remote.
God has been present in so many facets of our ministry – in the joyful moments but also in the confusion. God has done great things through us. Over the years it was one surprise after the other and God was an integral part of our journey.
After dinner Fr Raymond Husband, Regional Director in Ireland, thanked the Jubilarians for their faithful service and the generosity of their families. He congratulated all of the Jubilarians on their closeness to the people and their closeness with God.
Jubilee Sermon – Fr Jim Fleming SSC
Congrats to all of us and thanks to our fellow Cols and families and friends for supporting us over the years. It’s been a long journey with many ups and downs but hopefully more ups than downs. More than anything else it’s an opportunity to look back with joy on how God has been at work in our lives. It’s a time to celebrate accomplishments achieved and obstacles overcome in carrying out the mission entrusted to us by Jesus. Ultimately, it’s a celebration of our efforts to be faithful.
I was privileged to have the late Jesuit Gerard Hughes as my spiritual companion for a few years in Birmingham and one of his many books was called ‘The God of Surprises’. That’s what I reflected on when Tommy O’Hanlon and myself co-directed each other on a week’s retreat in the Hunza Valley of Pakistan in the foothills of the Himalayas in 1986.
In it is written: ‘God is the God of surprises, who in the darkness and the tears of things, breaks down our false images and securities. And as God breaks down the cocoon of our closed minds, he enters it. He is no longer remote and out there, no longer dwells only in tabernacles and temples of stone, but we meet him smiling at us in our bewilderment, beckoning to us in our confusion and revealing himself in our failure and disillusion as our only rock, refuge and strength.’
Isn’t it true to say that all of us have experienced the myriad ways in which God has surprised us in one way or the other. In fact, anyone who freely accepts a call from the Lord can expect to be surprised.
Mary was surprised when as a young girl the angel appeared to her. Also, when she heard about her cousin Elizabeth being pregnant in her old age. Here are two women reaching out to each other at a time when they found themselves in unexpected and surprising places. God has done great things for them, as Mary says. And it is these great things, these great encounters of surprise that we celebrate here today. Mary was also surprised when she found the boy Jesus with the elders in the temple and of course when Jesus rose from the dead. And I’m sure on many other occasions also.
And today I want to tell a surprise story I’ve been longing to tell for a long time, in fact for 57 years. I was on what was in those days called a ‘Vocations weekend’ with the Augustinians in July of 1966. 16 of us young men from around the country who had done our Leaving Cert that year were picked up at Heuston station in a minibus and brought to Cavan. As we passed Dalgan and saw the sign for St Cols I asked what was in there and the priest said: ‘Ah sure I’ll tell you another time!’
Anyway, on our way back to Dublin he told me that was the home of the Columbans, a religious organisation I’d never heard of and none of whom had visited St Brendan’s Killarney while I was there.
Anyway, having dropped us off at Heuston for our journey home, I hopped on a bus for Dalgan and was met at the front door by the late Joe Whelan who warmly welcomed me and told me to stay as long as I liked. He introduced me to another prospective student Don McKenna from Belfast who later joined the guerrillas in the hills of El Salvador.
Well, we had a fantastic 7 or 8 days in Dalgan, swimming in the pool, cycling all over the place and playing loads of tennis. And I thought to myself: surely this must be a foretaste of the real missionary life – and it looks good!
And it surprised me that during that time not one of the Cols in Dalgan tried in any way to influence our decision about our future. In fact, if there was anything we wanted to know about the Cols we had to ask rather than be told.
Finally, I had to ask how to join up and two months later Tom Roche and myself hitchhiked from Kerry to Dalgan. And what a start that was on my missionary journey and what a change it was from the dull and difficult life of boarding school in Killarney. From then on and for over 50 years it was one surprise after the other – and don’t tell me God wasn’t part of it.
From being consulted about where we’d like to go on mission and me getting my first preference, the RP to being told after 5 years that I’ll be off to Pakistan, to being told after 10 years there that I’ll be off to an entirely different part of Pakistan, i.e. the tribal ministry to finally head for the UK where I’ve spent the past almost 24 years in a whole variety of ministries from Asylum support to interfaith work to parish ministry. And through all the ups and downs I can truly say that it’s been an incredible life of challenges, success and failures.
As Pope Francis said: “Truly we have received much, so many graces, so many blessings and we rejoice in this. It will do us good to look back on our lives with the grace of remembrance. Rem of when we first felt the call, Rem of the road travelled and above all Rem of our encounter with Jesus so often along the way.”
I’m sure a lot of this will resonate with the other Jubs here today and as I look around at my brothers here in the sanctuary, I realise that we’re all remembering, sifting through the memories of our many years as Cols and the many surprise moments we’ve encountered along the way.
On another note, as you know, whenever we look at a picture of Mary and the child Jesus, she’s always pointing her right hand in his direction – in other words, she is saying, he’s the focus of our attention, not me.
And the only time that God the Father speaks directly to the disciples of Jesus is on Mt Tabor when he points them to Jesus and says: ‘This is my Son, the beloved. Listen to him’. Long before that at his baptism the voice from heaven said the same thing but then to the disciples of John not Jesus who was just beginning his ministry.
Anyway, from the start I was convinced that it was my job to point Jesus out to others and it wasn’t my job to try to convert anyone. You know whenever I came home from Pakistan and especially in the early years there, I was always asked how many Muslims I had converted. Invariably I replied: One – Me – and I’m not finished yet.
Indeed, how arrogant it is to try to win someone over to what WE believe in. Rather our task is to try to be faithful to the Call and to the Way pointed out by Jesus. The rest is in God’s hands. And so that is our mission – to point Jesus out to others, just like the Father, Mary and John the Baptist: there he is the Lamb of God. And then John faded into the background with the words: he must increase while I must decrease.
These words from the Vatican II Document: Gaudium et Spes have always been for me a guiding and challenging light throughout my life: “One is right in thinking that the future of humanity rests with people who are capable of providing the generations to come with reasons for living and reasons for hoping.”
Reasons for living and reasons for hoping. We Columbans have always set out to do that, to never give up but to hang in there at the toughest of times doing our best to make a difference, to be enablers, to be supportive of everyone who’s trying to make this world a better place for all to live in.
This is very much part of our ministry – to continue to work with peoples of all religious traditions for the integrity of creation, to bring about justice and peace in our world and to struggle for the basic human rights of others including migrants and those who’ve been trafficked. And to never give up but to be patient and believe that no matter how bad things may look at times, it’s all part of a greater plan of which we’re not aware right now but may be in the future.
The editorial of the most recent issue of The Tablet this past weekend says: “This is the Church we belong to and in many ways the society we’re members of.”
And so, with the passage of years and the larger perspective we can see how even difficult moments could have been occasions for joy and part of the beautiful tapestry of God’s loving providence unfolding throughout our lives. And this is what prompts us to be grateful for every moment of the past 50/60/70 years.
It’s also that which invites us to look to the future where there are still many steps to be taken on our journeys ahead. And as we do so, let us be grateful for having been part of a wonderful bunch of people, ‘The Columbans’, people who are down to earth, hospitable and always open to new challenges.
And so, as we celebrate our jubilees on this special day, we pray that the warmth of all our memories may bring lots of happiness our way. Inshaallah! Al ham dol illah. May God bless us all. Amen!
