The great cloud of Irish witnesses

Today we honour all the Irish saints including the many who are known to God alone in The Feast of All Saints of Ireland (Féile Naomh uile na hÉireann).  On my daily walks in the surrounding countryside I sometimes think of the people who lived and worked on this land down the centuries. From the early monks to the Cistercians who established Duiske Abbey in Graignamanagh in 1204 to those who toiled on the land and in the homestead and provided for others.  Many faced hardships, oppression and persecution that we can hardly imagine. For them, the Mass was central and some risked and gave their lives for it.

Ireland has a proud tradition of saints and monastic founders. Almost every parish has a local saint and an associated holy well or church ruin.  It is hard to believe that there is more than one local Irish saint for every day of the year.  Ranging from the early missionary period associated with Saint Patrick and those who came after him – notably Brigid and Colmcille amongst a host of others – to the martyrs and holy persons of later centuries we have a high density of sainthood per square kilometre!

Lamps lit and hearts awake

Sunday 8 November 2026

Lectio Divina:

Wisdom 6:12-16 Psalm 63 (62) 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13

Meditatio:

‘Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.’ (Matthew 25:13)

Commentary:

Life itself is not complicated. More often than not, we are the ones who complicate it.

Among the many insights offered by the world's spiritual traditions are two simple but profound practices: mindfulness and faithful living. While these terms are often associated with Buddhism, they also lie close to the heart of the Jewish and Christian tradition. Scripture repeatedly calls us to attentiveness before God and loving action towards others.

The Book of Wisdom speaks of wisdom as something living and active, waiting to be discovered by those who seek it with an open heart. "She hastens to make herself known to those who desire her" (Wisdom 6:13). God is not distant or hidden. The challenge is not God's absence but our inattentiveness. We become distracted by the noise around us and lose touch with the presence already at work within us.

Seeing Cana through Eucharistic eyes

In common with many first-millennium Christian writers, St Peter Chrysologus (c. 380-450), Archbishop of Ravenna and Doctor of the Church, did not leave a systematic treatise on the Eucharist in the way later theologians would. Nevertheless, his sermons contain significant Eucharistic teaching. He belongs to the great patristic era often described as the ‘Golden Age of the Fathers’ (fourth and fifth centuries). Like his contemporary St Leo the Great, Chrysologus understood the Eucharist as a true sacramental participation in Christ's Body and Blood.

One of his most striking Eucharistic passages comes from a sermon reflecting on the Epiphany, the Baptism of the Lord, and the wedding feast at Cana:

More than a symbol

St. Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310-367), best known as a defender of the divinity of Christ against Arianism, also left an important witness to the Eucharist. He belongs to the generation of Nicene Fathers who defended the orthodox faith in the decades following the first Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.).  St Hilary’s most famous Eucharistic text appears in De Trinitate (On the Trinity), Book VIII. One of his strongest statements reads:

For if in truth the Word has been made flesh and we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord, are we not bound to believe that He abides in us naturally, Who, born as a man, has assumed the nature of our flesh now inseparable from Himself, and has conjoined the nature of His own flesh to the nature of the eternal Godhead in the sacrament by which His flesh is communicated to us?  (De Trinitate, VIII, 13).  

Praying for the faithful departed at Mass

 

Today, across the Roman Catholic Church, the memorial of ‘All Souls’ – or Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed - is commemorated.  

Early roots
Although some have suggested that Christians built on earlier, pagan, rites of prayer for the dead, the practice of prayers and special masses for the dead developed independently of those practices and should not be confused with them.

Although the theology and liturgical shape of the day have developed over the centuries, there is evidence of prayer for the dead and of offering the Eucharistic sacrifice for them, from the fourth century, if not earlier. Their inclusion within the Eucharistic liturgy itself probably dates to the fourth century. In a work attributed to St Cyril of Jerusalem (Mystagogical Catechesis 5.9), we read:

The saints and the Eucharist

Something that strikes me again and again is the witness of the Saints from the earliest times. Their lives were what might be termed ‘eucharistic’; they lived the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.  They managed, by grace, to turn their lives around and remain anchored in Christ.  In recent centuries, there are hundreds of officially canonised saints and unknown numbers of others who found their daily or weekly sustenance in the Eucharist.  Their approach and thinking was informed by scripture and tradition.  They accepted in trust what was given and received about the Eucharist.  For some, the Eucharist was a particularly emphasised practice or focus of devotion as we see with the many ‘Apostles of the Eucharist’ such as St Peter Julian Eymard, founder the Blessed Sacrament congregation.

Reverencing the body

The Executive Office of the President of the United States
 (Wikimedia Commons) 

I was at a funeral in my local parish church earlier in the week.  Funerals are very special moments in the life of any Irish community. This seems to transcend the rural/urban as well as social class divides.  People from all walks of life turn up – family, extended family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues and more besides.  ‘Paying our respects’ are deeply imbedded in Irish culture so much so that if is sometimes said ‘here in Ireland we do death well’. It is true.  The sense of solidarity, companionship and support at times of bereavement are strong.