Today we say farewell to Canon Brian McNamara. He enjoyed robust good health for most of his long life, but in recent years he was confined to the house because of illness. He was wonderfully looked after  here in his adopted parish of Derrylin by a team of carers who went far beyond the call of duty in their service to him. When full-time care became necessary some time ago, he was moved to the Tillery nursing home back in the parish of Killesher, where he had served for so long. He died peacefully there on Wednesday morning. His family have lost a loving brother, uncle, granduncle, cousin. We have all lost a great priest, a great human being and a great friend. But we are grateful to have known him and to have had him with us for so long.

Fr Brian heard the call to priesthood when he was as a young man who had the world at his feet. He was able, intelligent, educated, full of life and laughter and fun.  He was an athlete, a county footballer in an era of all time greats. He was interested in farming and good at it.  As the only son in his family he would have inherited the prosperous family farm. But he renounced all that. He chose a different path. He was like the young man in the Gospel we heard a few minutes ago. Jesus looked at the young Brian McNamara and loved him. He invited him to leave it all and follow him. Brian accepted the invitation. He followed that road faithfully as a priest for 62 years and we are here today to thank God for him and for his priesthood and his faithful service to God and God’s people.

Everybody has their own stories and memories of Fr Brian. But I think this excerpt from a letter written by one of his nephews a few years ago will strike a chord with many:

I have fond memories as a child of Father Mac arriving at our house in Dublin bearing loads of sweets (and I mean armfuls). Later he would arrive on his BSA motorbike on his way to England to visit his sisters. When I was a teenager, over four summers, three of my friends and I would descend on Arva… We slept on the floor of the parochial house, all the while amusing ourselves around the town, or off gallivanting with Father Mac to the flea market in Swanlinbar, an inter-county GAA match, or as he visited his parishioners, all of us crammed into his bright red Fiat 850.. We dealt with cows coming into the house (frequently) , a tense half hour jamming a young bull in the shed to administer medicine.. He really enjoyed our company and we his.

That was just a flavour of it, but you get the picture. He had a wonderful way with children and young people. He loved to visit the children in the school and they loved him. And he was always very good to them.

As curate in Manorhamilton for 10 years he was also chaplain to the hospital. He visited regularly after early morning Mass. The patients hadn’t to be told he was coming. They could hear the peals of laughter in the next ward as Fr Mac made his way around, having a chat here and a joke there and a word for everyone. They said his visit was better than any medicine.

The Word of God from the prophet Isaiah in the first reading anticipates the teaching of Jesus in the Beatitudes: “Share your food with the hungry and open your  homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own kin”. Canon McNamara’s generosity to anyone in need was legendary. He put no value on money or possessions except to give them away. He always drove an old banger of a car – usually with stalks of hay or straw sticking out of the boot! He spent nothing on himself or his own comfort. He could talk knowledgeably on most subjects, but I’m told was never so eloquent or passionate as when he recounted the story of St Francis of Assisi to a group of pilgrims from the diocese in Rome, on their way to visit the birthplace of the saint some years ago. St Francis was his inspiration and the way he lived his life showed that in practice.

Canon Brian’s longest stay in any parish was in Killesher, where he spent the best part of 30 years. He was there during the troubles, times of great fear and suspicion, often between neighbours. He worked quietly behind the scenes to defuse tensions. He didn’t talk about ecumenism. He just did it, and in the most difficult circumstances.  It is a tribute to his ecumenical instincts and his efforts at peace-making that so many people from the Church of Ireland and other Christian Churches are here today and have been here and in the house over the past few days. He was courageous in reaching out across religious and other divides and in challenging those of his own flock who might be tempted to resort to actions that would harm others and that they would later regret. He was a peace maker and a peace keeper and he could do it because he was a man of the people, a man with feet firmly planted on the ground, and a man who took his inspiration from Jesus and the Beatitudes.

I couldn’t speak about Fr Mac, as he was fondly known, and not mention sheep! He was a shepherd in many senses. He always kept sheep, and long before Pope Francis talked about it, he had the smell of the sheep off him. He fitted very naturally into a rural community. Like Fr Mat, of the poem by Patrick Kavanagh,

 He was part of the place,

Natural as a round stone in a grass field;

He could walk through a cattle fair

And the people would only notice his odd spirit there.

 

But he wasn’t just a sheep farmer. He was the kind of shepherd Jesus modelled when he said: I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my own know me. When Pope Francis talked to priests about having the smell of the sheep he meant we should be close to our people. He knew most of us wouldn’t know a ewe from a wether. But he did want us to know our people, to be mixing with them, in touch with their joys and sorrows, their anxieties and worries. That’s what having the smell of the sheep is about, and that’s what Fr Brian was about. He had it both ways.

Fr Mac was a joyful priest. He radiated the joy of the Gospel. Can I finish with a lovely poem written by the priest-poet, Padraig Daly, for a young man just ordained. It talks about the joys of priesthood and celibacy and I think it sums up a lot of what Brian McNamara was about. It’s called Singleness:

There will be joy too in your singleness

As when gloom lifts while you listen

From some heart fastened to sorrow.

 

As when children in schoolyards ambush you

And drag you off to riotous play,

As when affection swamps you in a festive congregation.

 

As when ailing women you visit in shabby flats

Fall silent

Before the mystery of broken bread.

 

As when the dying bless you

With their last,

Most precious smiles.

 

As when, sitting in the silence of automatic prayer,

You know suddenly

You are being visited by God.

 

The old will shelter in your untidy heart,

The young will know in you

The laughter of Yahweh;

 

And the wretched see

You have no bride

But them.

On behalf of all of us here, and on behalf of Cardinal Sean Brady who could not be here because of a bereavement in his own family, I offer deepest sympathy to Canon McNamara’s sisters, Kathleen and Josephine, his nieces Geraldine and Jane and their families, his nephews, Conor Olden and Ian MacClean, and his nephews in the U.S. who are not able to be with us. Our sympathy also to his faithful housekeeper Philomena McBarron and all his carers, and to all his relatives and many friends. May he rest in peace.