Me? A Catholic?

This is the text of a talk to Sixth Year students on the occasion of Catholic Schools Week in March 2018.

As the title of this talk implies, this is going to be a personal response to Catholicism, how it has affected and influenced my life and ultimately brought me to where I am now. I would like to highlight here in my talk, the joy of being a Catholic and how it is ultimately for my happiness.

So let me answer the question within the title. Why of course, yes! IF I could paraphrase the ending of James Joyces’ great novel Ulysses: “Yes I said Yes I am Yes”. For me, it is my faith, my Catholicism, my belief in Jesus Christ who died for my sins and rose from the dead that animates and orientates my whole life. It is this faith which gives me my primary identity. I would like to share with you something very intimate which not even my family have read. IT is something I came across written as a young man in my early twenties. It is my mission statement (you all know what a mission statement is don’t you? – in business terms it is a formal summary of the aims and values of a company. I made out a mission statement for me as a person, summarising who I am and what I stood for.) So here goes: “I acknowledge that my whole life and being comes from God and that I want to strive to live a life worthy of a son of God. I want to be a loving and caring son to my parents, the best brother to my brother and sister, and a loyal friend to my friends.” Despite the passage of more years than I quite realise, I don’t think I would change very much of that mission statement, apart from adding now about being a loving and caring husband and father which correspond to my new vocation in life.

Do you notice how I use the word vocation? Perhaps you only thought that priests had vocations. Well, they do, but so do we all. I would like to say to you boys, that each one of you has a unique and special role that God has mapped out for you and that only you can play it. Perhaps we are frightened and scared of this idea. But we shouldn’t be. Do you know how many times the phrase “Do not be afraid” is mentioned in the Bible? 365 times. That’s it boys. Once for every day of the year. God is telling us not to be disheartened, not to be frightened, not to give in to despair. Because it is our vocations and our fulfilling of our vocations that will give us the greatest joy and true happiness in life.

In this talk, I would like to take four sacraments: Confession, Eucharist, Marriage and the Sacrament of the Sick, flag key points in my life in my journey as a Catholic where these sacraments have really touched my life. I would like to draw conclusions for you that might be useful ideas as you move onto university and your working life.

Confession: If there is one thing I really learned in Rockbrook School, it was the concept of confession. I am not sure if any of you have seen the excellent series called Prison Break? Highly addictive, so don’t watch it while you are studying for the Leaving Cert, but afterwards it’s worthwhile. In the second season, one of the rogue CIA agents who in the process of trying to indict a criminal, talks to him about confession. “You know what the best thing about Catholicism is? It’s confession. You can go into a box and tell a priest all your sins and then you’re free, your slate is wiped clean.” It’s rare that one can learn orthodox theology from TV. It’s a sacrament of great joy. I can still remember the times coming out of confession leaping for joy, a great weight having been lifted from my mind. And the grace of the sacrament can really help you work on small faults of character. So for instance, I remember finding it difficult not to get distracted by books or TV when studying for my Leaving Cert. It’s not a sin per se, but you will agree it is a weakness. Well, with the help of confession, God gave me the grace to overcome this weakness. And remember, human nature doesn’t change – there’s no sin you can say that the priest hasn’t heard hundreds of times before. But don’t take my word for it: experience the love and the joy by going to confession this Lent.

University life: In a very short time, you may well be off to university or some other college pursuing the dream, the subject you always wanted to study in depth. I loved my time at university: there is a heady combination of freedom and youth. Certainly, it is a time, where you will have no one telling you what to do: go to Mass, to pray. It was at university that I really became inspired by my faith in two ways: both intellectually and emotionally.

I remember attending a talk by the Catholic Chaplain at Cambridge University on human flourishing. The concept could be simplified to this: that God is not some policeman in the sky who is trying to catch us out with the commandments. No, rather he is a loving father who wills our happiness, who wills us to flourish humanly. I cannot say how much this idea revolutionised my faith. Instead of seeing religion in purely binary legalistic terms of whether some action was a sin or not, I now had the blueprint to live well all the myriad moments and actions that constitute life. Whether it be sipping champagne, fine dining, gallant balls – provided they were in accordance to one’s dignity and state in life – then they were absolutely willed by God and something we should rejoice in as goods of the earth.

That’s not to state that university is one big party – much as I love parties, I think that would be rather dull, don’t you? Life must have its balance. There is a serious obligation on you as a student to study to the best of your abilities: so when you are working, you work assiduously, producing a brilliant essay, a masterful thesis or whatever is appropriate in your field of study. Because that too, it is part of human flourishing. God wills that we should give the time needed to our studies.

It is important at university to be able to tap into the Catholic world. It is this community that will help you live out your faith. I would like to share a very personal experience of God’s revelation to me in my heart. At university I had joined a Catholic group called Youth 2000. IF the truth be told, I fancied the girl who had invited me to join and I felt this was an excellent way of getting to meet her regularly! Anyway, on one of these retreats there was Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in silence. As I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I became aware of a burning heat within my heart area and an intuition that God is love and that in order to love Him worthily we must allow him to fill our hearts with His Love.

That experience has stayed with me: I recall it as vividly now as it was when it happened. As I was to discover a long time afterwards, and after much reading, this is very much the essence of our Christian vocation and it had all been revealed to me within an instant, an extraordinary grace, bestowed with the generosity of a God who gives back a hundred fold. “No one who has left Father, mother, brother, sister, house or land for my sake will receive one hundred times and will inherit eternal life.” I don’t know about you but these words from the Gospel have always struck a pleasant chord within me. Maybe, it is the happy knowledge that we have got the sweet end of the bargain. Imagine going up to the bank and putting in one euro and then a week later being able to draw down one hundred euro! It sounds like Bitcoin but with only the upswing to it. Imagine if I give God ten or twenty minutes of my time to prayer each day how much more will God give back to me! I can say that from years of personal experience. The days when I am tired and don’t want to pray, I get nothing done, I mope re lack of time and the unending chores of life. The other times when I do set aside some time for personal prayer, I feel so much happier and joyful and it is funny but it also seems that I have much more energy. My to-do list shrinks wonderfully and I get so much more from my time than I would have if I hadn’t of prayed. When I was in Sixth Year I prayed that I would study well and then as I got closer to the exams that I would study the things that would come particularly attentively. I think we can say that God gave me that help to study very well indeed.

And think about the second half of the bargain – eternal life. What a magnificent prospect! Only God could be so generous in giving us so much for so little in return.