Thinking carefully about the imprint we leave on people’s lives

Let the Busy World be Hushed

Fr Jason Murphy

The sun’s rays cascaded through the Rose window of the College Chapel on that Sunday evening of the All-Ireland Hurling Final. We had listened all up the roads of Cavan and County Meath to Kilkenny and Galway battle it out to lift the Liam McCarthy cup as we crossed o’er the plains of Dunboyne and caught sight of the spire that we were told to keep watch for as a beacon on our way before sat navs, Google maps or indeed the internet was known.

This must be it, we thought, had we reached our destination, as we came upon the high stone walls of Carton House, watching out for a grand gate from the windows of our 1978 red Opel Kadett car with leatherette seats and a dodgy exhaust that we prayed would not give up outside the doors of Maynooth College.

A sign for the village pointed us in the right direction as we passed the Presentation Convent on to the tree lined main street as cheers went up from the Leinster Arms for a late point in the game. The spire protruded from out and over the trees at the foot of the village and, to there, my father nervously drove.

“You know we can always turn round and go back,” my mother turned and said to me from the front passenger seat as I gazed at my four year old sister beside me and the love I had known.

“Don’t feel you have to go in, if you’re in anyway not sure,” she reassured, not realising how it was I felt. My heart raced and my stomach done somersaults within; to enter into a place that was worlds apart from our home with its stove in the kitchen and the pot marks, made by the escaping cinders fornent the opened door of ash tray on the lino floor. A chair each side to rest awhile and tell of your cares in the street of houses from where we had set out. What took me here I thought, a rush of enthusiasm, the urge of youth, leaving behind my friends and neighbours among whom I would not for years be fully accepted again for I had now set myself apart.

We entered in through the side door beyond to this place of immense beauty hewn by human hand, the like of which neither I nor my parents had ever seen or imagined heretofore.

“Is this what drew Brother Boniface to the monastery?” I thought as I took my seat and recalled Mary Lavin’s short story I had read and reread at the back of Fr McTiernan’s English class, over and over again, the story which first had sown the seed to live a life apart in the midst of the ordinary where it might seem to others that nothing really happens. “Is this what he first felt on that day he left aside his shop bicycle and walked with suitcase in hand through the gates of that imposing building whose halls he once had dreamt of entering?”

I, as were my parents, completely spell bound as we gazed to the caravan of saints processing to the altar of God painted on the ceiling above. It was only then that I noticed the faces of the young men and their parents sitting in the stalls behind, beside and beyond me, finer young men than I, wondering to myself “what took them here 55 of them in all, sure they each could do anything they want, the world was their oyster, sure couldn’t any one of them have the girl of their choosing. Why give it all up and come to this place?” I could have asked the same question of myself but didn’t even think to. It was all in pursuit of the most precious life that one could live in the midst of what would become the ordinary.

The priest began the mass nearly unbeknownst to me as the choir sung in Gregorian chant and the young conductor moved his hand to the peaks and troughs of the kyrie as we stood and sat after the gospel to gaze again at the beauty that engulfed us. Something in the way the celebrant spoke drew my attention away from the beauty of the ceiling, his lyrical Cork accent, his kindly voice, as he then took his spectacles from off his face and held them aloft between his forefinger and his thumb.

“I’ve just done something that none of you here can do.

“Can any of you tell me what it is that I have done, come on don’t be afraid you can speak it out; it might be the last time you get the chance to do so in this place.”

Nobody spoke bar a pious mother across the way who wanted to make sure her son was earmarked as a potential bishop from the very outset as she ventured forth an answer.

Surely anyone can take off their glasses, I thought, and hold them up in the air, if that’s what he’s on about. Childish, ridiculous, I thought. I had come here expecting to listen to something more profound.

“So, none of you can tell me the answer as to what it is I have done…” he continued. “Well, what I have done is simply this - I have laid the imprint of my finger on the glass of my spectacles… and, as you know, only I can do that because it’s my imprint not yours.”

“And, as you go through life, whatever it is you do, whether you become priests or not, you will continually lay the imprint of your fingers on the lives of those with whom you meet. You can do it in such a way so as to lighten their burdens as they go through life or you can do in a way that will lay heavy burdens on their backs. It will be all of your choosing but remember always to do that which is right though others might try to pull you down.”

And in that moment on the first Sunday in September those years ago, the Senior Dean Tom Clancy influenced the years of priesthood that were to come in one sentence, the imprint of a finger on the glass of his spectacles and, as I looked around the College Chapel as the sun’s rays illumined the images of Christ’s ministry in the stained glass of the window and gazed into the faces of all these young men willing to take a chance on Him, to give of their lives, with trepidation in their hearts not knowing what it was the future might hold for them. They, like me, would be influenced in their lives and their ministries by their imprint, what it was that set them apart not so much what brought them together.

That which had been here to fore, the streets and farms whereon they grew, the people with whom they shared those early years and all the philosophy and theology, the rigour and routine would not change this, for each of these young men would carry the greatest gift of all into their futures and for some into their priesthood, their uniqueness and their individuality. This would be the imprint that would set them apart, that which would bring colour and life to their ministering. For some it would be their prowess on the footballing field that would speak volumes to men on the sidelines, for others it was their ability to chat on all things agricultural having sat with their fathers on the long forums in the mart. For me it was watching neighbours scrim and scrape to make a meagre living during the lean years of the 1980s. The street and its people with whom I grew were the giants at my shoulders and, the older I became, the longer the shadow they cast; each of us had a story that we would carry into the lives we were to live in the midst of the ordinary.

Oftentimes in my life I have drawn from the attic of my mind of that first September evening knowing the truth of Tom Clancy’s analogy of the imprint of the finger on the glass of the spectacles as I minister to people in my own inadequate way with all my failings and frailties. But I have to remember that it is my imprint that I lay, it is unique to me and to each of us. We can use it to lighten burdens or lay equally heavy burdens on people’s backs, at all times trying to do that which is right. At times over the years, our uniqueness has been trodden underfoot, it has been crushed, ignored, overlooked, alienated, thrown up into our faces… Sure, you’re only…; we have been made conform, bullied, yes bullied albeit at times subtly, in to hiding our light.

But despite all, each of us are, in our own inimitable way, a light for the world. Our light has been shining unquenched for a long time, both far and wide. It has illumined the way for many the soul in their time of need and, at times, our light has waned, for it grows weak, tired over time. Its wick burns out, just a trickle of oil left at the bottom of the lamp, for it is used over and over again through all the darkness we have to enter into and illumine, time and time again, without any thought for ourselves. Therefore we are called too to rest awhile, step aside, to take stock, to talk, to walk, to allow others to shoulder the burdens we oft times carry, to love and to cherish the life we have being gifted, to stop along the way and to take stock, so that we can continue laying our finger gently on the glass of life’s spectacles.