26.08.2014
Parishioners of Rathdrum and Derralossary with Glenealy Welcome New Rector
The new Rector of Rathdrum and Derralossary with Glenealy, the Revd Brian O’Reilly, his wife Karen and son Cillian received a warm welcome to the heart of the Diocese of Glendalough last night (Monday August 25). Brian was instituted as the new Rector by Archbishop Michael Jackson in St Saviour’s Church which was full to capacity of parishioners and family, friends and supporters who had travelled the length and breadth of the country to wish Brian and his family well.
The service was attended by local public and community representatives including Cllr Pat Kennedy and Deputy Andrew Doyle, clergy from parishes in Dublin and Glendalough and beyond and representatives of other traditions including, Fr Oliver Crotty of St Kevin’s in Laragh.
Brian comes to Rathdrum from Cobh and Glamire in Cork, Cloyne and Ross where he had been Rector since 2010. He was ordained a Deacon in 2007 and served his curacy in the Parish of Seagoe in Down and Dromore. Prior to his ordination, he worked as a land surveyor, having completed his surveying studies in the College of Technology, Bolton Street (now DIT) in 1984. Brian grew up in Dublin, but spent some of his early working years in the UK.
The sermon was delivered by Canon Horace McKinley, Rector of Whitechurch, Dublin, where Brian was formerly a parishioner. He set out what he saw as the main priorities of parish life. He stated that the over–riding and primary activity of any parish was its public worship, particularly on Sunday. He referred to the mis sional challenge presented by the results of the Church of Ireland Census.
“The Census result suggests that there is a significant church–wide deficiency in terms of there being an essential grasp of the grace–filled nature of the Sacraments, or the whole role in the Christian economy of Sabbath ‘Mindfulness’ or what the lived out responsibilities and implications are of having been born or baptized, and confirmed in to the body of Christ,” he said.
The second priority, he said, was to make opportunity for the exploration of the Faith in an environment that was safe, open and honest. Canon McKinley suggested that the Irish were living in a pre–Christian society in which even the most simple basics of Faith seem to have become unknown, alien and strangely lost. However, he said the Church could start again with vision and confidence. [Canon McKinley’s sermon is reproduced in full below.]
The reception afterwards took place in the nearby RDA Hall. There the Rural Dean, Canon Nigel Sherwood, paid tribute to all who had worked so hard during the vacancy following the retirement of Canon John McCullagh in January. He also praised all who had put so much working into preparing for the arrival of the new Rector.
Honorary secretary of Rathdrum and Derralossary, Lin Ryan, welcomed Brian on behalf of the parish. She said it was a very happy day of the parishioners. She said they had a great belief that God had sent them the right man.
Brian thanked parishioners for their warm welcome they had given he and his family. He thanked those who had travelled from all over Ireland including Cobh and Glanmire and Seagoe. He said he and the parish group had so much to look forward to and added that he was a “man on a mission” who believed that the Church could make a difference.
In welcoming the new rector, Fr Crotty said that there was a great and comfortable relationship between both the Roman Catholic and Church of Ireland traditions in the area. Principal of St Saviour’s National School, Heather Lawson, thanked everyone for their assistance during the vacancy in particular to Canon John Clarke, Ken Hastie and Ernest Mackey for their contribution to taking services. Canon Nigel Sherwood was also thanked.
Closing words for the evening were provided by Archbishop Jackson who observed that the parish had experienced a rush of energy during the vacancy. He said that Brian would bring his own insights and spirituality to the parish group and that he and his family would become embedded in the area. He added that he was proud to be Bishop of a diocese where there were parishes with such a sense of vitality.
Institution of the Rev. Brian O’Reilly, St. Saviour’s Church, Rathdrum,
Monday, 25 August, 2014.
Sermon by Canon Horace McKinley
· It’s a great personal joy to have been invited here to preach at this evening’s Institution Service of the Rev. Brian O’Reilly. I have much personal admiration for Brian, Karen and Cillian. When I first met the family, they had just come to reside in my own parish in Dublin. And at a stage and age when most people would want to ‘bed down’ permanently for the rest of their working lives in their chosen career, Brian instead experienced the nagging toothache sensation – you know, the one where the toothache keeps coming back and refuses to go away – which transpired to be nothing less than the call of God to the ordained ministry. It wasn’t easy, in his early forties, for Brian to leave his well–trained career as a Land Surveyor and, instead, to launch out in to the deep of all the academic and other training requirements for ordination, via the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Rathgar. It wasn’t easy for Karen, either, who is a trained nurse, to have married a husband with one career, only to find that that husband would be changing to a very different and more public career. Brian’s curacy was served in Seagoe Parish, Portadown, Diocese of Armagh. Young Cillian has been trebled–educated, no less, in Primary School – the South first, then the North and back South again. I know those Portadown curacy days were very rewarding and remain full of mutually happy and fulfilling memory. Then, it was down to Co. Cork as Rector of Cobh and Glanmire Parish in 2007, as the next port of call – an apt phrase, surely, when you reflect on historic, maritime Cobh. Again, that particular ministerial experience has afforded so much that has been rewarding and enriching. I know Brian and Karen thank God for the times of learning and growing spent in that specific parochial entity in the Diocese of Cloyne. And here we are tonight, in the lovely ‘Garden County’ of Ireland, in St. Saviour’s Church, Rathdrum, launching, under God, the next phase both of Brian’s ordained ministry and of the on–going life and witness of this particular parish in the Diocese of Glendalough.
· I’m a long–serving Church of Ireland Rector. So what do I see as the main priorities of any parish’s life? I could mention several, but I’ll just mention two! First, the over–riding and primary activity of any parish is its Public Worship, most especially on the Lord’s Day, the weekly commemoration Day of the Resurrection…….Public Worship. Liturgy remains the best educational tool and medium the Church possesses, for it spells out our whole raison d’être, why we are what we are. Worship is how the faith of young and old grows and is nurtured; it’s how that faith is deepened and it’s that faith’s ‘top up’ fuel for that life of service and sacrifice to which God calls us all, in the community and wider world around. The recent All–Church of Ireland Census, carried out in every parish on the island last November, contains a mixed–cocktail of results. Regular church attendance is recorded at 15% (it’s naturally quite a bit higher at Christmas!), but the regular attendance of those in the 19 – 30 age category is tiny indeed. How the church now responds to this Census is a huge, missional challenge. The Census result suggests that there is a significant church–wide deficiency in terms of there being an essential grasp of the grace–filled nature of the Sacraments, or the whole role in the Christian economy of Sabbath ‘Mindfulness’ or what the lived out responsibilities and implications are of having been born or baptized, and confirmed in to the body of Christ.
· My own late father was a very long–serving Church of Ireland Rector– they didn’t have to retire in those days! And one of his favourite sermon quips was this: “If you don’t worship, you’ll start to forget the story”. It’s a very perceptive observation, both now and as then. Public Worship, you see, is all about having your Christian memory jogged or re–activated, for at its sacramental heart–beat are Jesus’ words of command: “Do this….Drink this, in memory of me”. Christians are people who’ve been gifted with this very special and sacred sense of “memory”. There are very special grounds as to how and why we’ve been called, always to be a ‘remembering’ people. The whole point of public worship is that it ensures that that ‘memory’ is kept alive, with the added resolve that the “old, old story” will indeed be passed on – and not be allowed to become a fading, or even worse, a lost memory. I can’t speak for rural Wicklow, but where I work, Sunday is now such an ‘open season’ day for anything and everything that it has now been rendered simply indistinguishable from any other day of the week. So, worship is the one quite distinctive and primary activity the Church performs. It’s timely, then, to absorb as food for thought some words from the Letter to Hebrews (10, v. 25), that “we should not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some”, because, as that verse continues, meeting together effects the encouragement of all……Worship, first priority, then.
· And the second? Well this second priority is a bit of a mouthful, but here it is: “Make opportunity for exploration of the Faith” – and I stress doing this in an environment that is safe, open and honest…………. “Make opportunity for exploration of the Faith”. It was the English satirist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who famously stated that “when people stop believing in something, they’ll start to believe in anything”! Some commentators suggest we are now living in a post–Christian Irish society. My own humble experience would go further than that, by suggesting that in some sectors we are now close to becoming a pre–Christian society. Even the most simple basics of the Faith seem to have become unknown, alien and strangely lost, in what could be termed an extremely rapid knowledge–deficit collapse. I suppose what I’m saying is that I believe we now really have to go right back to the beginning – and start again! Because while we may think as Church that we occupy the third or fourth, or even the top floor, the signs are all there that we need to go right back to the ground floor – and work our way back up again, starting from there. And, do take heart. Do realize that we can always do that ‘starting up’ again, with both vision and confidence.
· Because from the Christian perspective of where we now are, don’t forget that we now live both in the Age of the Resurrection (we are the Easter people, remember) and also in the Age of Pentecost, the Age of the Holy Spirit. Grasp the spiritual reality that our resource lies in a Divine power far greater than any human scheme or design; a power, remember, that has routed death and that continually renews the whole of creation.
· Significantly, there is a big contemporary surge and fascination in the whole topic of “Spirituality”. This points to an appetite that is seeking and searching in some way for “meaning to life” – though in looking at books in the Spirituality section of a Bookshop recently, it was difficult to locate any publication that was overtly Christian in essence or theme. But why is it we forget what an incredibly rich historic tradition and inheritance we possess in – Christian Spirituality? So, “Make opportunity for continuing exploration of the Faith”, then! Archbishop Rowan Williams encouraged parishes to be places where people are helped to develop and promote “Godly conversation”. My own most revered Christian hero is the German Lutheran pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer longed for people in churches to cultivate “a worldly holiness”. For him, the decisive question that needed continual wrestling with and answering, of course, was the question Christ Himself posed to us all: “Who do you say that I am?”. For Bonhoeffer, faith is a bond with God, but always a work in progress, achieved by means of searching and exploration – a continual searching through and with the words and the life of Christ Himself.
· Finally, “Exploration of the Faith” should also include School/Parish links, with the ‘Story Telling’ of the “Follow Me” R.E. Programme for children a vital component that should never be taken for granted by all the stakeholders involved, in that specific Partnership called School/Parish Links.
· When I was about 21, I came across a Jesus mantra that was used each day by a Coptic priest. Ever since, it has remained my own daily mantra too. So its words are my gift to you, this evening, Brian, but not only to you, but also a gift to the people whom you will serve:–
“My doctor is Jesus Christ,
My food is Jesus Christ,
and my fuel is Jesus Christ”.
Photo captions:
Top – The new Rector of Rathdrum and Derralossary with Glenealy, the Revd Brian O’Reilly (centre), with church wardens Nicola Faul, Yvonne Smith, Lin Ryan, Sandra Bradley, Evelyn Merrigan and Olive Mahon.
Middle – Pictured prior to the service of institution in St Saviour’s Church, Rathdrum are Archdeacon of Glendalough, the Ven Ricky Rountree; Canon Horace McKinley (preacher); the new Rector, the Revd Brian O’Reilly; the Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson; the Revd Robert Marshall (Registrar) and Canon Nigel Sherwood (Rural Dean).
Bottom – The Revd Brian O’Reilly with his wife Karen and son Cillian following his institution as the new Rector of Rathdrum and Derralossary with Glenealy.