The parish is dead, all over, finished, or is it?

The parish priest kept hearing for years the words: “Father, I think the church is dead. He turned to his young friends for help: “Leave it to us,” they said.  So they organized a farewell ceremony.   It was going to be a wake, a vigil, an occasion to say goodbye to their church.

Parishoners from all walks of life came for this, the wake of the old parish that was now dead. At the  foot of the altar the young people placed a coffin.  The people were then invited to come forward to pay their last respects. There was only one rule: no talking or whispering.  The first to pay his respects was  Mick.    He came forward, Simeon-like,   looked into the coffin,  made a quick sign of the cross and a half –genuflection and returned to his life-time place in the back bench in the side aisle.  Then a man,  once a head altar boy, home from his ventures abroad decided to pay his first and last visit in many years. He looked into the coffin and immediately became angry as if he were cheated out of a big business deal, and proceeded to storm out of the church.  Some people sobbed quietly while others  just burst out laughing and giggled all the way back to their seats. Finally the  parish priest came forward. He looked into the coffin and became very startled at first. Then he straightened himself up and people caught a glimpse in their collective memories of a once great athlete who graced the playing pitches of his youth. He too blessed himself.

It was more like a fond farewell to himself as a priest among his people.

Finally the young people spoke. “Dear friends, as you see we placed a mirror in the bottom of the coffin, so that when you looked in you saw that it was not our parish priest nor our  church that was dying but maybe its we ourselves who are dying.

You know in the past they said it was absent goods and present gods. Today it is present goods and absent gods.  How hard it is for us who have everything to be part of God’s kingdom, to be people who bring our parish or any parish alive. Full membership demands more than just attendance today. It means involvement and that has a price and unfortunately the one commodity we find it hard to sacrifice is productive time, time that makes me grow more important, effective or influential, time which is there for my comfort and leisure only.    The young man who went away sad today is you and I, who have so much wealth, so many things to do, so much to achieve, so many to impress that we find it hard to waste time with God. Our sadness is often hidden as a result and we have been described as a nation full of wealth but living in quiet despair.  So we have a choice, to have a wake to mark the death of our parish or to take a look at ourselves in the mirror of God’s love and say: “I am alive and I can bring my parish alive.”

Fr. Michael McCullagh, C.M.

15th October, 2006