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Maya's First Communion! 9 May 2009
If
my granddaughter thought she would be treated with extraordinary respect on her
First Communion Day she was mistaken! This is the design printed on the white
icing of the cake top that I brought up to Dublin*:
The photo was taken some time ago, and illustrates her lovely crazy approach and
how badly she can treat her little brother Oisín.
I thought I would take her down a peg or two by reminding her of
normality. I need not have worried, she simply laughed her leg off!
And it did not detract from her beauty on the day:
..
in fact, encouraged by her uncle Conor, she started to eat her own icing-sugar
head
... as did her wee brother
Oisín.
Conor the devil of the piece of course, cutting and carving the cake to free the
heads!
(That's their cousin Jamie in the photo, on their mother's side. He's a lucky young fella with a gift for music. What a wonderful thing, to know right from the start where your life's work will be! He's off to some prestigious conservatoire in the near future.)
Maya's First Communion was a great
day, with a wonderful bun fight following the Eucharistic First Communion
service (that's the Mass to you and me!) held in the parish hall next to
the church ...
...
not just for the kids of course. We parents and grandparents and other
family members had a great tuck in - lots of noise and happy munching of
sandwiches and sausages etc.... washed down by buckets of tea ...
(The photos I took indoors were woeful, so I will only inflict
this one on you.)
I met the parish
priest, Alex Conlan, a lovely man who has a great way with children. You
should have seen, witnessed the Children's Mass on Christmas morning, which I
was lucky enough to attend: enjoy his marvellous rapport with the children -
chatting away with them about the gifts that Santa had brought that morning,
before asking them, "Well! Who's birthday do we celebrate today?"
Provoking an immediate, loud, cheering response, "Jesus!"
All adults present were charmed out of our socks.
Wonderful Mass! Wonderful priest! One of those men you instinctively know
is a man before he is a priest, and that you can call him Alex in the same way
that you address any normal friend. Great man. He will be very embarrassed if he
sees this.
I gave him a copy of my 'Barney' book of course, and he gave
me a copy of his privately produced book "God Called his Name", a
moving description of the dying process of a young parishioner - dead aged 12.
It's a great thing to meet a priest who is so full of love
for people. No 'side' to him. Just a loving man doing his duty before the
God who is love.
In fact, the next day, Sunday, I had the privilege of taking
my little granddaughter to her first ordinary Mass, in Greystones. The
parish priest, whose name I do not have, spoke about the scandal that had hit
the Ferns Diocese - where hundreds of children were raped and abused by Catholic
priests over a 40-year period. He confessed to a packed church congregation
that we - the bishops and priests - had been blindingly arrogant, and were
paying the price.
This man was certainly not arrogant - a truly caring man,
like Fr Alex, the day before.
All is not lost in Ireland.
As this priest said, "We have to learn to be
human."
Amen to that!
I wonder when the officials of
the church will accept that priests should be able to marry if they feel like
it, and that women are just as capable (or incapable!) of presenting Christ to
the world.
After all, it was a little Jewish girl who first gave her son
to us. (Read my book!
)
______________________________________________________
*
I got the cake in Asda.
You bring in an A4 size photo and within 20 minutes the image is copied onto a
thin layer of icing and 'glued' to the top of the cake.
Great idea. Cost's between £9 and £14 depending upon the cake size.