Homily of Bishop Niall Coll at the St Kieran’s College Annual Reunion 2024

20 August 2024

It is hard to believe that the seminary here has been suspended for thirty years. Thankfully, the work of St Kieran’s College continues through a thriving secondary school and as a hub for both diocesan activities in Catholic education and adult faith development. And this work will most certainly increase over the years ahead in light of the changes in church life and new approaches to ministry which will roll out in the Diocese of Ossory.

I would like to say that I personally felt a connection to St Kieran’s College long before I became bishop here. As a student in Maynooth College in the 1980s, I came here on several occasions to visit my co-diocesan Raphoe students who were studying here. And I recall with great affection my first visits around those times to nearby Jerpoint Abbey and Graiguenamanagh Abbey – gems of the Irish Catholic landscape – surviving testimonies in stone to the long history of Christian witness in these parts, one which deserve a special mention today on the feast of St Bernard, one of the founders of the Cistercian Order.

Back to St Kieran’s College: I would like to express gratitude for the past students and professors of St Kieran’s who were my lecturers in Maynooth: Tom Norris memorably taught the very first theology class that I attended on the day, coincidentally, that he began his long years of service there. The late Martin Drennan taught me Old Testament and the indefatigable Willie Dalton, Canon Law.

You past students of St Kieran’s – school, seminary or both – have your own memories of this place and the fellow students and staff who graced its corridors with you. No doubt those memories are a mix of happy and not so happy ones. Hopefully, more the former than the latter. Thankfully, on this day you can reminisce in the company of old friends.

Interestingly, I thought about Martin Drennan and his teaching when I cast my eye over todays’ first reading from the prophet Ezekiel. As my Old Testament lecturer in Maynooth, I remember well his introducing us to today’s text, one which lamented those Hebrew people who were swollen with pride and lived lives which seemed to suggest that they themselves were god. People who either had no ultimate sense of the presence of God in their lives or were so pumped up with their own self-importance and self-sufficiency that they felt no need for God and his grace.

The gospel today also touches on a similar theme when we hear Jesus say that ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven’. By rich I don’t think he was referring just to money, wealth or possessions, but also to an outlook on life that was self-sufficient, self-satisfied and unreflective, seemingly unneedful of God.

Back to Martin Drennan. His insistence in his teaching and preaching on the spiritual grounding that is required for the priest used to strike me (then a callow youth) as a bit grim and demanding. We used to scoff light-heartedly at this insistence that the life of discipleship, especially one devoted to priestly service would inevitably involve the desert, namely an experience of abandonment, hurt and suffering.

Most of us, on mature reflection, would probably concur now that he was correct. In the face of the increasing secularising trends that have been a feature of our parishes and wider society throughout our time of ministry. Developments, too, in our own families and indeed personally in our own hearts, whereby matters of God and faith are marginalised. In addition, we must include recognition of own failures too.

Pope Francis spoke insightfully a couple of years ago about priests who have lost the flame of their first love and whose ministries have become ‘barren, repetitive and almost meaningless’. In fact, he mentioned that he personally has passed through a variety of times and situations that were challenging, and then went on to say that ‘in ruminating on these movements of the Spirit, I have come to realise that in some of those situations, which included moments of trial, difficulty and desolation, somehow there always remained a sense of peace in my life’.

Pope Francis went on to indicate that it was concrete closeness to God that sustained him in his life and ministry especially in the dark moments.  This closeness he speaks of as an ‘intimacy born of prayer, the spiritual life, a concreteness closeness to God [made possible] through listening to the word, the celebration of the Eucharist, the silence of adoration, entrustment to Mary, the wise accompaniment of a [spiritual] guide and the sacrament of Reconciliation.’ Without these concrete forms of closeness a priest, he warned, is merely ‘a weary hireling … one who has none of the benefits of the Lord’s friends’.

On this St Kieran’s College Reunion Day, in the company of old friends and colleagues, we look back with gratitude for the parents and siblings who loved us and helped us discern a vocation to the priesthood. We give thanks too for the fellow students (living and dead) who journeyed with us here and later as priests in this Diocese and elsewhere. We give thanks too for the people of our parishes who drew out, and still draw out the priestly gifts in us, shaping us to be the pastors and preachers whom we have become.

While we know that the new shape of Church that is emerging in our communities now will look very different from the one that we were ordained into, let us pray that, as we return home from this celebration of faith and friendship, our priestly hearts may be rekindled in their missionary zeal and be characterised by a closeness to God, to brother priests and bishop and to the people entrusted to our pastoral care. May it be a closeness that is compassionate, tender and faithful to the end!