Grateful memories from the past and a concern for the future

 

Picture: Pugin's chapel, Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, Dublin - Patrick Comerford

This morning, 62 years ago, there was great excitement in a house on the foothills of south Dublin. Together with my parents we were setting out on foot for Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham for my First Holy Communion. I was dressed in pure white from head to toe. I remember particularly the sleeveless white jumper over the white shirt and tie, the white short trousers, long stockings, and the squeaky new white soft shoes.

I can’t recall a great many details, but I do remember it as a very joyous and special day. We must have taken the number 16 bus into town afterwards, because I have a vague memory of going for a meal in Dublin city centre and then on to the “pictures”.

The Mass was celebrated fairly early in the morning, because in those days there was a strict fast from food before receiving Holy Communion: three hours at that time, though it had been twelve hours up to 1957. Later that same year, 1964, the fast was further reduced to one hour.

Naturally, the Mass was celebrated according to the Tridentine Rite. The entire liturgy was in Latin, with priest and congregation together facing East (ad orientem). Receiving Holy Communion was a very serious moment, approached with deep devotion and, for many, perhaps a little anxiety. That was certainly the general atmosphere, though I don’t recall feeling anxious myself on that warm, sunny morning in 1964.

Beyond the walls of the abbey, the news of the day was dominated by the visit of President de Valera to the United States, the escalating war in Vietnam, and the Lemass Fianna Fáil government’s push towards greater industrialisation and free trade. There was also the first stirrings of talk about something happening in Rome called the Second Vatican Council. All of this passed me by at the time.

What I was not oblivious to, however, was a lingering and pervasive sense of unease left in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis some eighteen months earlier, when the world had come closer than ever before to global nuclear war. The sound of aircraft overhead would occasionally make me a little uneasy at that age. Information about the crisis was everywhere, even if people didn’t speak about it much; people simply carried on with ordinary life. Government leaflets were being distributed, outlining what to do in the event of a nuclear attack — which, in essence, amounted to hiding under the table.

And what of 2026 and beyond? We know now that even if we were ever denied the opportunity to attend Mass in person, we can still turn to Christ in heart and mind. We learned that painfully and clearly in 2020.

“Is there anything to be said for saying another Mass?” — the famous line from Father Ted — was, of course, intended as a joke. Yet I would suggest that there indeed is. Who knows? People of faith may believe that the collective power of prayer in 1962 played some part in helping to avert mutually assured destruction and a return –  quite literally – to the Stone Age for anyone unfortunate to survive such a holocaust and winter.

The United Nations Secretary‑General, António Guterres, has warned that humanity is “just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation”. The stakes could scarcely be higher. Over the past sixty years, humanity has come perilously close on several occasions, when swift judgement within nuclear command structures prevented escalation –  from the Cuban Missile Crisis itself to the 1983 Soviet false alarm involving Stanislav Petrov, the 1979 NORAD computer error, and the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident. Depending on circumstances, decision‑makers may have as little as one to fifteen minutes to respond to what appears to be a confirmed incoming attack.

Given the level of uncertainty and risk that existed on this day sixty‑two years ago — and which exists once again today — there is a strong case for keeping the Eucharist at the centre of our lives for as long as we are able.

 

My prayer book (above and below) for First Holy Communion on 12 May, 1964

And I continue to join my prayer at mass with those of the priest for those who have gone before me

POSTSCRIPT

It is extraordinary that, to the best of my knowledge and inquiries, there is no publicly available photograph of the inside of the beautiful Pugin chapel that was in use by the Loreto nuns from 1839 to around 1999 when the nuns left the Abbey. My memory of that morning on 12 May 1964 was of a beautiful light-filled chapel with a narrow nave and a super high roof.  As far as my memory serves me one of my late uncles and priests used to say Mass there when visiting us in Rathfarnham.