OMNIUM SANCTORUM HIBERNIAE

Author: Michele Ainley

  • 'That Large Army, Known and Unknown': The Feast of All the Saints of Ireland

    November 6 is the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland and, since it is the date on which I started Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae in 2012, is also this blog’s patronal feast. To mark the occasion this year I reprint a sermon delivered by an Australian Dominican, Father R. J. Roche, on November 6 in 1931. This was ten years after the feast was instituted, along with an authorized Litany of the Irish Saints, the text of which you can read at the blog here. In his sermon Father Roche presents the realities of the Irish saints, yes, we have many whose names are known throughout the world but we have many more who are now obscure. It has always been part of my work to try and recover the names and memories of these lesser-known saints, all those who found a place on our historic calendars and were regarded as saints by popular acclamation. Wishing everyone the blessings of the Feast and thank you to all who support my work here at Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae and on All the Saints of Ireland on Radio Maria. Beannachtaí na Féile oraibh go Léir! Orate pro nobis omnes Sancti Hiberniae!

    SAINTS OF IRELAND.

    Father R. J. Roche’s Sermon on Feast Day.

    Commemoration of all the saints of Ireland — of that large army, known and unknown, of the spiritual sons of St. Patrick, who have attained eternal glory after lives of virtue and zeal for the spread of the Gospel! Such a comprehensive remembrance has been established by the Church’s institution of the feast of All the Saints of Ireland, to be observed in certain centres of the world on November 6. Preaching at the Dominican Convent, West Maitland, on the day of the feast, Rev. Father R. J. Roche, O.P., recalled many of the prominent names of Erin’s saints, and made a strong plea for an intensification of the spirit which kept Ireland true to the faith through the ages of oppression.

    Taking as his text, ‘For we are children of saints’ (Tobias), Father Roche said:

    To-day we keep the feast of all the saints of Ireland. It is a feast recently established for Ireland, and by privilege extended to some Australian dioceses, including that of Maitland. Of many of the Irish saints the names are familiar: Columbkille, Dove of the churches and contemplative of Iona: his namesake almost, Columbanus, who found rest in the spiritual fastness of Italy; Kilian, the martyr; Brendan, the mariner; Virgil, Colman, Fiacre, Declan, Lawrence O’Toole, Oliver Plunket, and others whose stories are interwoven with history. Some lived and died in their own land, some became exiles for Christ. Up the Rhine or down the Danube, by the banks of the Seine and the Loire, their names are preserved in the cities they founded, and their memory is enshrined in the hearts of the people to whom they brought the Cross. Amongst those we commemorate are many women saints: the most renowned of them is Brigid, the Mary of the Gael. Beneath an oak tree at Kildare her cell was built, and around her gathered the most illustrious of her countrywomen. She is the mother of all the holy nuns who have come out of Ireland, no matter in what country they lived or to what Order they belonged.

    Its Comprehensiveness. 

    I said that the names of many of them are familiar to us. It is also true that of many more the names have not been preserved. As the Church instituted a general feast of All Saints to commemorate the unknown saints of all the world, so does to-day’s feast include all the obscure heroes and heroines of holiness whose spiritual father is St. Patrick. The unknown saints of Ireland! Perhaps not all of them are completely unknown. There are saints in every generation. We surely may treasure the memory of a saintly parent or grandparent who, we have every reason to believe, is now with God; those dead of ours whose memories should be deathless. They lived simple, self-denying lives: their companions were hardships, duty, family affection and love of God. Not for them the modern softness and the evasion of all restraint. Their homes were modelled on that of Nazareth; their highest law was the acceptance of the Divine Will. When sorrow and loneliness, desolation and spoliation came into their lives, their lips offered a sincere welcome to the Will of God. They went their simple way unto the end, they left a fragrance upon earth, and we may well believe that in death they found the Rest Eternal promised to those who bear the yoke of Christ. And their feast day is to-day — the feast of All the Saints of Ireland. Some of those whose memory we are keeping may have been born in this sunny land, or they may have come hither in Australia’s morning, come with their stout hearts to make a new nation, and with their strong faith to plant the Cross as a symbol of that nation’s ultimate allegiance and sublimest hope.

    We are the spiritual children of the saints. They give us hope, they give us admonition. Behind us is more than a thousand years of tradition, tradition of the faith of our fathers! In mental vision we see the beautiful, unique picture of unbroken fidelity, generation after generation steadfast in the faith in spite of dungeon, fire and sword. A kingdom has been overthrown, a nation oppressed, but the Cross remains. Urban VIII. wrote to the Irish people: ‘Be mindful of your past: in your nation there have been many masters of virtue and athletes of the faith.’ As we praise their memory, we seek to emulate their virtues: their humility, their patience, their outstanding constancy. We ask that God may give us the grace to be faithful to our traditions, and to pass on undimmed the lamp of faith. It is true that the glories of ancient Erin are no more, and that the lamp of Kildare was put out by the spoiler; but the spiritual children of the Irish saints have still their place in the plans of God. May that place be always in the vanguard of those who seek to establish the Kingdom of God. We beg all the saints of Ireland, our own dear saintly dead, where’er they lie, we beg the martyrs of the penal days, we beg the sainted sons of Angus and the daughters of Brigid to be with us that we fail not in the conflict.

    “SAINTS OF IRELAND.” The Catholic Press (Sydney, NSW : 1895 – 1942) 3 December 1931: 37. Web. 6 Nov 2024 .

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2024. All rights reserved.

  • The "Island of Saints and Scholars" and the Universal Calendar of the Church

    November is the month which opens with the feast of All Saints but which also includes the feast of All the Saints of Ireland on the sixth. In the article below, published in Australia in 1950, the anonymous author poses a very good question – why is Ireland, the ‘island of saints and scholars’, so poorly represented in the universal calendar of the Church? Modern scholars reckon that we have roughly two thousand Irish saints from the early medieval period, i.e. from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. At this time sainthood was very much a local affair, with local bishops acclaiming as saints those holy men and women whose sanctity had been acknowledged by their contemporaries. It was only in the twelfth century that the practice of declaring saints became the prerogative of the Pope alone. The official process of canonisation has developed over the centuries since, although we had a distinct reminder of former times in the shouts of Santo subito during the funeral of Pope St John Paul II. But the fact remains that we have only four officially-canonized saints from this island of saints and scholars. At the time this piece was written there were two saints – Malachy and Laurence and two beati – Oliver Plunkett and  Thaddeus MacCarthy. The cause of Blessed Oliver Plunkett was resumed in 1951, something I have written about here, but it was not until 1975 that he was finally canonized. In 2007 he was joined by Dutch-born Saint Charles of Mount Argus, who came to Ireland in 1857 and ministered as a member of the Passionist community in Dublin until his death in 1893. According to the biography of the new saint at the Vatican website here, his religious superior wrote that “The people have already declared him a saint.”
    Certainly his cause proceeded at a pace not seen since the days of Saint Malachy:

    The cause of his Beatification and Canonization was introduced on 13 November 1935, and on 16 October 1988, His Holiness John Paul II proceeded with the beatification of the one whom everyone called the saint of Mount Argus.

    The writer of this 1950 article makes some interesting observations but ultimately does not offer any explanation for the paradoxical situation that he identified – the conspicuous absence of the Irish on the Universal Calendar of the Church. The writer ends by celebrating Saint Columbanus who was also making headlines in 1950 thanks to the French Foreign Minister, Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Union:

     The “island of saints and scholars” was in a curious position

    In the Universal Calendar of the Church one great Catholic race is conspicuous by its absence — the Irish. The Calendar knows no nationality or colour barriers. Greeks, Jews, Italians and Spaniards abound thereon; the English sit down with the Egyptians, the French file in with the Germans and there is a place for St. Rose of Lima, who was a Peruvian.

    The ‘island of saints and scholars,’ however, is in a paradoxical situation.

    Despite 1500 years of remarkably virile Christianity, for 200 of which Ireland was the centre of monastic and missionary activity within the Church, no saint of Irish origin has received international recognition.

    Researchers are more or less agreed that St. Patrick was a Welshman of Roman stock, and, at best, Irish by adoption.

    But there are indications that this strange situation will be remedied.

    There are some who hope that the remedy will come soon; perhaps before the end of the Holy Year the name of the first native Irish saint may be inscribed in the Church calendar.

    Inclusion in the Universal Calendar of the Church means that the saint’s feast is inserted into both the missal and the breviary, and is celebrated on a fixed date throughout the world.

    Though Ireland has what must be the longest litany of uncanonised saints of any country, only four Irishmen have been formally elevated to the altar by the Holy See.

    These are St. Malachy, Bishop of Down and Connor, who died A.D. 1148, and was canonised before the close of the century; St. Lawrence OToole, Archbishop of Dublin at the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland; Blessed Thaddeus MacCarthy, Bishop of Cork, who died on pilgrimage to Rome in 1492; and Blessed Oliver Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, who was hanged and quartered, at Tyburn in the time of Charles II.

    Because of his famous prophecies regarding the Popes, St. Malachy is the most famous of the four.

    While in Rome, he is said to have received a strange vision of the future, wherein was unfolded before him the long list of Pontiffs who are to rule the Church to the end of time. The signs he has given to indicate individual Popes have been remarkably verified, especially in recent times.

    St. Malachy  also foretold Ireland’s subjection ‘for a week of centuries’ to England, her final success in attaining freedom, and that Ireland would be instrumental in winning back her former enemy to the Faith. All four were Bishops, and all died outside of Ireland. St. Lawrence was canonised at the request of the Bishops of France. Blessed Thaddeus was beatified at the request of the Bishops of Northern Italy, and blessed Oliver was beatified at the request of the Irish Bishops less than a generation ago. The list ends abruptly here.

    In a recent address at an international celebration in honour of St. Columban, held in Luxeuil, France, under the patronage of the French President, Foreign Minister Schuman described the saint as ‘the greatest European of his generation.’ The congress was attended by Church and State dignitaries from six European countries and the United States.

    Because of his mighty part in the curbing and leading the barbaric invaders of the Roman Empire to the Christian fold, St. Columban has been ‘God’s Fighting Irishman.’ He clashed with kings and princes in his many fights for the poor and defenceless.

    Driven from France after many fruitful years of mission work, he continued to establish monasteries in Germany, Switzerland and North Italy, where he died after the Faith had been planted among the Lombards and the heresy of Arianism had been overthrown.

    The revival of all Christian knowledge and culture in many parts of France, Germany and Italy is due to the labours and zeal of St. Columban is the verdict given by Pope Plus XI on the work of this Irish saint.

    To the French, he is one of the great realities of French history, ranking with St. Louis, St. Joan of Arc and St. Vincent de Paul.

    To the Irish, he is the model missionary. For western Europeans, he is becoming the patron of international co-operation and resistance to the forces of Red barbarism.

    In China, Japan, Korea, Burma and the Philippines, where missionary priests and Sisters of the Society of St. Columban are labouring, he is the object of popular personal devotion.

    An Irish missionary Bishop in China looks on him as the patron of hopeless cases, and has his prayers answered in near miraculous ways.

    Four seminaries In the United States, six religious houses and an unknown number of churches are named in his honour.

    Catholics everywhere, who received the Sacrament of Penance, owe a debt to St. Columban for popularising the practice of private Confession. Before his time, public confession of sin was the general custom.

    The “island of saints and scholars” was in a curious position (1950, October 5). Catholic Weekly (Sydney, NSW : 1942 – 1954), p. 1 (Magazine Section). Retrieved January 26, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146735321

    Content Copyright © Omnium Sanctorum Hiberniae 2012-2024. All rights reserved.

  • The Rosary of Ireland

    I have come across many items in the Victorian religious press written on the theme of Ireland and the Rosary, but the piece below, published in Australia’s Catholic Freeman’s Journal, struck me as unusual in a number of ways. ‘The Rosary of Ireland’ applies the traditional division of Joyous, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries to the history of this country and employs many of the popular tropes of the National Revival. Ireland of the joyous mysteries is romantically portrayed as an island set in a silver sea, filled with fair maidens and valiant warriors, which embraces Saint Patrick and its Christian destiny. The mystic isle is then transformed into the insula sanctorum, home of Patrick, Columba and Brendan and the ‘countless thousands more’ who contribute to the golden age of the saints. It is interesting to see a mention of the angel Victor, described in a footnote as ‘the Guardian Angel of Ireland’. The sorrowful mysteries employ familiar tropes of the Penal era – the Mass Rock, the struggle to maintain faith and nationhood and exile – but it was not until I reached the glorious mysteries that I realized I was not reading something written in the nineteenth century at all. For the glorious mysteries relate to the achievement of Irish independence, and it was only at that point that I noted that The Rosary of Ireland had been published in 1938, one year after the promulgation of the Irish Constitution, article one of which declared that:

    The Irish nation hereby affirms its inalienable, indefeasible,and sovereign right to choose its own form of Government, to determineits relations with other nations, and to develop its life, political,economic and cultural, in accordance with its own genius and traditions.

    It is clear that our writer, M. Eugenie Hill, acknowledged the part played by the literary revival in Ireland taking her place among the nations. She makes more than one reference to ‘Inisfail’, a poetic name for Ireland, but perhaps more specifically a reference to the work of Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902):

    Published in 1862, Inisfail is the longest single poem by an Irish writer in English, a distinction which ought to grant it at least a portion of the critical attention which it currently lacks. Subtitled A Lyrical Chronicle of Ireland, it is composed of a sequence of one hundred and thirty-two lyric poems, each of which is a meditation upon an aspect of suffering and salvation. The sequence as a whole is structured around an historical narrative frame proposing continuities in Irish history from the time of the Cromwellian invasions to the end of the Penal Laws, with references to the events of the 1840s.

    Chris Morash, “The Little Black Rose Revisited: Church, Empire and National Destiny in the Writings of Aubrey de Vere.” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 20, no. 2 (1994): 45–52.

    De Vere’s poems were frequently quoted by Victorian writers on the saints and the early medieval Irish church and it was in Inisfail that he wrote of ‘the little black rose that would be red at last’, which the writer of The Rosary of Ireland links with the brilliant Easter sun. Is this a reference to the Easter Rising of 1916 and perhaps by extension to the poet revolutionary, Joseph Mary Plunkett (1887-1916) and his poem I See His Blood upon the Rose? The Rosary of Ireland ends with another Irish revolutionary, Robert Emmett (1778-1803) and a reference to his speech from the dock where he declared ‘when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.’

    So I think that these literary allusions distinguish The Rosary of Ireland  from the many other offerings found in the popular religious press on the theme of Ireland’s relationship to the rosary. It was interesting too to see the survival of the ethos of the Victorian ‘Celtic Revival’ in a work published in the 1930s and I only wish I knew more of its author:

    THE ROSARY OF  IRELAND.

    Joyous.

    Before the Christian era ages agone,
    Ere Bethlehem’s bright star in glory shone,
    A beauteous land there was, a land most fair,
    Set in a silver sea, a jewel rare.

    A land of joy and peace, laughter and song,
    Famed for her ladies fair, and warriors strong.
    Erin the brave, for glorious deeds renowned,
    Is still, alas! by Pagan fetters bound.

    But lo! a guardian watches o’er the land,
    ‘Tis Victor, from the shining angel band;
    The time is come at last to break the chain.
    And for his chosen children, Heaven to gain.

    The Angel Victor* speeds like lightning rays,
    Bends o’er the sleeping Patrick, softly says,
    ‘Come, holy youth, the Irish voices call,
    Come with the Light of Faith, and lift the pall.’

    And now for Erin dawns the wondrous day.
    Nearer, and nearer still, with flashing ray,
    A dazzling light appears, as from afar,
    Glimmering and twinkling like the Morning Star.

    ‘Who dares enkindle fire’ the Druids cry,
    ‘Before our sacred fire is lit must die.
    Go! quench the light that now on Tara gleams,
    Or never shall we dim its shining beams.’

    Clothed in his Sacred Vestments, Patrick spoke,
    And Erin from the sleep of death awoke,
    The Druid idols from her now she spurns,
    Then gladly to the Faith of Patrick turns.

    Swiftly the torch of Patrick lights all round
    — Monasteries, Churches, Convents, Schools abound.
    Island of Saints and Scholars thro’ the ages,
    Leaving no blot nor stain on Erin’s page.

    Columba, Brendan, countless thousands more
    Sail o’er the ocean far from Erin’s shore,
    With Cross in hand, and Patrick’s flag unfurled,
    Her Missioners go forth, to teach the world.

    *Victor is the Guardian Angel of Ireland.

    Sorrowful.

    But Erin’s star of joy is setting fast,
    And bitter sorrow must be hers at last,
    Since she has had the joy of happy years,
    She now must share her Lord’s deep woe and tears.

    Ireland of Sorrow, like your Lord to be
    Despised, derided, spat upon, as He,
    Pierced to the Soul and garments dyed bright red,
    Holding the Cross through centuries of dread.

    Deep as the sea, as Mary’s sorrows were,
    Dolorous Ireland, in her grief you share,
    Faithful till death, and setting death at nought,
    Guarding the Priceless Pearl by Patrick brought.

    The fight goes on against the demon band,
    The powers of darkness rend the faithful land.
    And Erin, of the Chalice, drinks so deep,
    Her treasured Faith and Nationhood to keep.

    And as a light in darkness shines more bright
    The Faith of Ireland shone through darkest night.
    Tho’ trodden underfoot by ruthless foes,
    More gloriously with deeper lustre glows.

    A vivid redness floods the evening sky,
    As flames from burning churches mount on high,
    And bells give forth a harsh and clarion call,
    When lofty towers and noble spires fall.

    The shamrock shows a deeply crimson stain,
    Where round the Mass Rock Priests and people slain,
    And bowed in grief, as Erin’s thousands fell,
    Unconquered still, she braves the gates of hell.

    Scattered afar the Children of the Gael,
    Exiled and banished from their Innisfail,
    They plant the Cross of Christ in foreign climes,
    And thro’ these exiled ones, the Mass bell chimes.

    Glorious.

    But Erin’s long and dreadful woe is past.
    The sun burst’s rising in the East at last,
    And spite of centuries of pain and loss,
    She stands Victorious beneath the Cross.

    Hail! valiant Eire, bravest of the brave.
    Her exiled Children call across the wave,
    The ‘small black rose’ *puts on its crimson bloom,
    The brilliant Easter sun dispels the gloom.

    Then silvery clear ring out the joyous bells,
    Victory and peace their happy message tells,
    Erin among the nations takes her place,
    A noble nation and a noble race.

    Hail glorious Eire, let us joy with you;
    To God and Patrick may you e’er be true
    Thro’ all the ages that are still to be
    May you maintain your spotless purity.

    The sin of heresy will ne’er defile
    The peerless Faith you hold, dear Emerald isle,
    You who for centuries have been appointed
    The Cradle and the School of God’s Anointed.

    The glorious band of patriots we hail
    Who gave their lives for you, sweet Innisfail,
    Your freedom won, and now in letters gold,
    May gentle Emmet’s epitaph be told.

    *’The Little Black Rose,’ by Aubrey de Vere.

    M. EUGENIE HILL.

    Catholic Freeman’s Journal Thursday 19 May 1938, page 37

     

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