Fr Andrew Hart's 210th Anniversary, died 20.11.1815

Ten years ago we celebrated the bicentenary of the death of Fr Andrew Hart, P.P. of the United Parishes of Saggart, Rathcoole and Newcastle. He died at the age of 30 after only three years in office. His striking and life-like effigy is to be seen in St Mary's on the right-hand side of the nave, head turned towards the altar. The pull-up nearby (designed by the writer) gives us a summary of his short but fruitful life. (For more reading, about Andrew Hart's bicentenary as well as about the bicentenary two years earlier of the church which he erected, i.e. St Finian's, Newcastle, use the Search box on this page.)

Now we have something small but very original to mark this 210th. It is the brief but eloquent announcement of his death in Saunders's News Letter, Tuesday, 21st November 1815, here being re-read in the original (now digitized) for the first time since its publication. The holdings for this paper in our National Library are from 1828 (see here), whereas the British Library ones are complete.

From www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

As well, then, as our parishioners being remembered this month at special Masses (tomorrow in Rathcoole, near 'Greenoak' (i.e. Greenogue)), we can spare a thought and prayer for the deceased of times gone by, even very long gone by, as is the case with Andrew Hart. 

Feast of All Souls, Sunday 2nd November

We remember at this time of year our loved ones who have left us. They lived out their vocation as best they could and, in doing so, contributed a small but inestimably valuable part to mankind's onward progress -- in Christian terms, the building up of the mystical body of Christ. We will remember them on Sunday, the Feast of All Souls, and throughout the month, in particular at the annual Masses for the Dead taking place in Newcastle (Friday 14th., 7.30 p.m.) and Rathcoole (Friday 21st, 7.30 p.m.). 

Each person, lay or clerical, has an unfathomably rich and mysterious life-story or vocaton. We focused in our last post on vocations to the diocesan priesthood yesterday and today. The photo of the Clonliffe students in 1960 showed our own John Jacob (died 8th March this year). Martin Tierney was ordained in the same year as Fr John (1964). From Clare, he served in the diocese of Dublin. He can be seen on the very right, fourth row from the front (with glasses). He wrote several books, two of them in his final years (click on photos below to enlarge): No Second Chance: Reflections of a Dublin Priest (Columba Press, 2010) and Battling the Storm: A Cancer Patient's Diary (written as a series for the Irish Catholic newspaper in 2009, published in 2010 by Veritas after his death that year in May, aged 71 -- click on the Read More bar below for final two pages, 102-03).

Each one of us sees (or 'discerns') a chance or opportunity (offered by Providence, as faith says and hope clings to) and goes on to live out their life in service to others as best they can, finding fulfilment in what comes but also, at times, no doubt, like Fr Martin here, 'battling storms'. 'I am left trying to answer the deeper questions like, what is God's plan for my life? I must believe that, somehow, God is directing what is happening at the moment.'  Over the coming weeks we will remember in our thoughts and prayers all those in our parish cemeteries and beyond who followed their call (all the time trying to make it out more clearly) and gave it their all.

News about Maynooth

Dunboyne House, Maynooth College

Students are starting their studies in colleges all over Ireland right now, many in Maynooth University, others in Maynooth's Pontifical University, others still (very few) in the National Seminary of Maynooth. Yes, the College is unique in having these three constituent parts, i.e. secular university, pontifical university (i.e. offering courses approved by Rome) and seminary for the training of priests for all the Irish dioceses (and some foreign ones too). Now up to the year 2000, Dublin diocese had its own seminary, a fine account of which was published in 1962 all about the centenary celebrations in 1959. It contains a photo taken in 1960 of the college's 109 clerical students (pick out our own John Jacob (second row from front, fourth in from the right) who died on 8th March this year and is buried in Saggart graveyard): 

Fr Richard Sherry, Holy Cross College Clonliffe, 
Dublin: Irish Printers Ltd, 1962, p.188

  

Now for the news about Maynooth. There are 2 students for the Dublin diocese in Maynooth this coming academic year, compared to over 100 in Clonliffe in 1960. That fact must make us all think about and try to understand the great changes that have taken place since those flourishing times for priestly vocations sixty years ago.