Searching for God among the sick and the downtrodden

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

Do you ever have moments that force you back in time? I had one of those last week. 

I was standing in the same car park of a church I remember being in one Christmas morning, probably 64 years ago. There were five of us in the car, mum and dad in the front and the three children in the back. We were going to early Mass so that we’d get it over and then when we got home we’d have all day to play with our presents, eat the dinner and then relax afterwards before my sister and myself prepared a surprise evening snack. 

Yes, we were going to Mass, it had something to do with Holy God but I explicitly remember we were going there and at that time so that it would not interfere with Christmas Day at home. We went up to Holy Communion, received it on the tongue. Some years earlier I had been told never to let my teeth touch the Host.

Sixty four years later I’m standing in front of the same church, asking myself where am I with my faith today.

The previous day I read a religious publication. It left me cold. It was so cosy, supplying all the answers. As if to say this is the only way to God.

The following day I saw that Pope Leo had published the first major document of his pontificate, where he calls on all Christians to make their voices heard in decrying the sinful structures that contribute to poverty and make life for the poor even more miserable than it already is.

I found myself saying that’s more like it. Indeed, this was the sort of thinking that I heard from my mother when I was a child and young man.

When I was ordained a priest in Tallaght in 1974 there was great excitement across the church; Vatican 

Two had happened and its consequences were spreading right down to the pews. We as young Dominicans were building friendships with our fellow clerical students in the Anglican Communion. 

In class we were being told to look at sin as the breaking of a relationship with God. We were reading and studying theologies of other faiths. Social justice was given high priority in our studies. It was a time of exciting questioning.

Tallaght was changing from a village to a large Dublin suburb and the Dominicans played a significant role in the building of community halls, schools and churches.

They were refreshing days. There may have been upheaval but there was honesty and people were not afraid to speak their minds. 

Here we are today and there is no doubt the younger men to whom we are passing on the baton prefer to return to a certainty; God is in heaven; if we do this and that we will discover God. But what exactly is the this and the that? 

Surely it’s the hallmark of the Gospel story to listen to people, to meet them where they are and even to learn from them, especially listening to the marginalised, the sick and downtrodden, because it is there we find God, and through them, God calls us to a deeper relationship with the Divine and humankind.