Photo: Nicole Michalou When we were growing up, my mother always insisted that we didn’t discuss religion or politics at family gatherings. On asking her why, she would say that those subjects always ended up in a row. Of course, she had grown up in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, and politics had divided families and neighbourhoods. Within my own family, my father was an avid supporter of de Valera and my mother wasn’t, putting it mildly.
I never really understood the issue of religion as an issue of contention until I got older. We weren’t a particularly religious family; we didn’t pray the rosary every evening. But Mass on a Sunday was taken for granted.
I remember one of my sisters had a boyfriend, and he stayed with us for a few weeks until he found his own digs. On the first Sunday morning, my mother asked what Mass this young man was going to. My sister finally admitted that he was a Protestant so he didn’t go to Mass. My mother made it clear, if he was staying in her house he would have to go to Mass. As she said, “my house… my rules”. And so every Sunday the said gentleman went to Mass. Before the relationship with my sister ended, he was the one to make sure that my mother got to go to the papal Mass when Pope John Paul visited Limerick. Many years later, I met this same fellow at a wedding. We struck up a conversation and, thinking it was best not to mention my sister, we spoke about my mother. In the course of the conversation, he said that because of my mother whenever he was in crisis he always sought out a Catholic church and if he ever did pray, it was there he prayed.
That was then, but now it’s now. As life has become more secularised it isn’t as easy to keep my mother’s rules. Now the practice of the faith has become more complicated between the generations, going to Sunday Mass, is now no longer the rule but the exception. I know that many parents and grandparents, not mention uncles and granduncles, find the situation really challenging. The very mention of faith and religion leads at once to an argument or a stony silence.
Friction
I remember having to face such a situation, and I asked an older Dominican for his advice. He said one of the most important things he had come to realise over many years in the face of many crises, was to de-dramatise the situation. When issues arise, people immediately take up positions and drama ensues. The first step to finding a resolution was to stay calm, de- dramatise and await a solution to evolve.
Now, when it comes to issues which might cause friction my immediate response is to de-dramatise and try to get everyone else to do likewise. Recently, a family came to me because some of the family were refusing to go to Christmas Mass. I advised that maybe they could go to the moving crib in Parnell Square as a family when they came to Dublin for their Christmas shopping. This was agreed. The issue was no longer about Mass but going as a family to see the scene at Bethlehem. On Christmas morning, they all went to Mass.
Flowers and God
Last week I buried Bro. Tom Casey OP. Some of you will remember him as the gardener in our retreat house in Ennismore. Before becoming a Dominican, Tom had for many years been a Cistercian. Many of us were introduced by him to the mystery of God through the mediation of flowers and plants. He preached not in a pulpit but in a garden. He weaved poetry and plants, mysticism and real life, people and God. Long before it became fashionable, Tom was preaching the beauty and care of creation, but not creation as locked in on itself, but nature as a window into the divine and a way of not simply coming closer to God, but in some way even touching God. I pray that he is now at peace in the true Garden of Paradise.