Bishop Francis Lenny

30th Anniversary Mullavilly

16 July 2008

Homily given by Monignor Liam McEntaggart

I welcome you and thank you for coming this evening to join the Lenny family, the parishioners of Kilmore, and friends to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the death of the late Bishop Francis Lenny and I wish to thank Fr John Connolly for kindly arranging this Mass. His classmates who were ordained with him appreciate your presence. Bishop Lenny died on 16 July, 1978, the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. . It is most fitting that this anniversary Mass is celebrated here in Kilmore where the Bishop was Parish Priest, but also because it is the native parish of Mgr John McGrane, a class mate of the bishop in Armagh College and Maynooth, and a life long friend , who died on 7th February this year, just under 30 years later.
Bishop Lenny was born in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. He received his early education at Holy Trinity Primary School, Cookstown, St Patrick’s College, Armagh, and St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, where he was ordained on 21st June 1953. After further studies in Maynooth, he was appointed Diocesan Secretary to Cardinal Conway in Armagh. He remained there until 1974 when he was appointed Auxiliary-Bishop of Armagh and Parish Priest here in Kilmore, where he died four years later at the early age of 49.
Those are the bare facts and it does not attempt do justice to the priest and the kind of man he was. He was above all a modest man who carried his ecclesiastical honours lightly.
I ask you to join with family friends and priests present in offering our Eucharist in praying for him, in thanksgiving to God for the gifts he gave to Bishop Lenny, in gratitude for the good he did, and the good example he gave throughout his life, throughout the Diocese of Armagh.
Looking down the years one can afford to take a more realistic and sober look on th death of a family member , a friend and colleague.
In his letter to the Thessalonians , St Paul reproached those whose sorrow over the loss of a loved one is excessive: “We want you to be quite certain”, he said, “about those who have died, to make sure you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope”. “To live in the body means to be exiled from the Lord” he said elsewhere, and he also reminds us that we do not have here a lasting home, we live in a kind of tent, at death the tent is folded up and we depart for the permanent home promised by the Lord. To die is to go home to the Father’s house.
The death of Francis Lenny death was not the final curtain on a life. We are gathered here around the table of the Eucharist, and he too is gathered around the Lord. He is now closer to the Lord, enjoying that closer union with the Lord which we also hope to share in more fully one day. . We are already beginning to share in that future eternal union with the Lord through our Baptism and by celebrating the Eucharist here. In that sense we are still very close to our deceased friend, and united with him in a new, deeper, more spiritual sense.
In this Mass, and in every Mass, we, the living, are united with the dead around the Lord. We, living in the present, are united with those who have attained what we hope for one day.
But we are united, not in sorrow, we are also united by something else, our Faith. Confronted with the reality of death, we also have the reality of our Faith. "That faith is not “a maybe" or "I hope so" or fantasy or wishful thinking, but a reality. Our Faith opens our minds to the whole picture about life, death, and what happens after death. Only in the light of our Faith can we begin to understand what has happened to our deceased friends and how we move on from here.
When in our Faith we speak about heaven, and resurrection, and the next life, we do not speak about these things primarily because they give us consolation and strength. They certainly do that, but the primary reason we speak of these things is because they are true. God has spoken His Word to us; we hear it in the Scriptures and in the teachings of our Church, and we respond to it by saying, "Yes, I believe; it is true!" God has broken the silence about death, and told us that He has conquered it! God did not leave us in the power of death. He sent Christ, who died and rose again and conquered death!
Because of this, a Christian is not silent in the face of death! Death seems to have the last word. But we who believe are not silent. We speak! Christ is risen! Death has been conquered
Therefore our faith tells us that our loved ones have not gone from us for ever. They have not disappeared into nothingness. They have not ceased to exist. They have merely departed for that farther shore on the other side of life which is the final destination of all of us.
Writing about death, a spiritual writer recently wrote. I quote.
I am standing on the seashore. Suddenly a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze, and starts out for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch her until at length she is only a ribbon of white cloud just above where sea and sky mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, ‘There! She’s gone!’ Gone where? Gone from my sight - that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side, and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when someone at my side says, ‘There! She’s gone!’ there are other voices ready to take the glad shout, ‘There! She comes!’ And that is dying.
I am sure that Bishop Francis was on that other shore to take up the glad shout “Here, he comes,” here she comes” when Sr Declan and Mgr John McGrane were arriving there.
Jesus said that he “came to serve”. The priest shares in the priesthood of Christ. His mission is the mission of Christ. It is a mission of service. Above all it should be a selfless service. A life given for the people he serves. Jesus acted with compassion and healing in the face of sickness and even death. Today as we remember once more the life of a faithful priest and bishop, we pray once more for him and we remember that it is a special occasion for thanksgiving. for a life of service, we say, quite simply, “Thank You, Lord, for Bishop Francis Lenny and his life of service to us”