Love of the Father

Summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily from Easter Sunday on April 16, 2006

"To him all the prophets bear witness." Acts 10

ON THIS EASTER SUNDAY WE gather with us in prayer, all our friends and family members who have gone before us in faith. When the father lifted Jesus from the cross, he offered all of us the promise of new life.

My family remembers my father in a special way this Easter on the 20th anniversary of his death. Ever since his passing at Easter the death of Jesus has always been mixed up in the mind of the Creedons with the death of our father.

He was an active man until the end, bustling with energy. On Good Friday night he climbed over a 5-foot high wall that separates our property from the local graveyard. He examined the family plot carefully and went up to visit the parish priest asking, "Is there room for myself in that family plot?" Fr. Jack dismissed his inquiry, "There's plenty of room for you and a few more as well. Let's go down to the pub and forget about these morbid thoughts." They did, but my Da had given up alcohol for Lent. So they drank O'Doul's beer, which the locals think killed him.

On Holy Saturday morning there was no morning Mass to attend, as was my parents' wont. My mother suggested he sleep in while she brought him the paper and his breakfast in bed. Coming back an hour later she found him dead. I remember her voice on the phone, "He is gone and will not come back!"

During the days following his burial she told many stories to their fourteen children. She told of the time his parents sent him to spend some weeks in Dooneen , an isolated farm in the hills. How he feared being homesick. They told him to write. He objected that the postman did not visit that part. So they suggested he send them the letters, standing on a rock on a windy day. In his innocence he wrote many a letter that never made it down the mountain in the wind.

Easter 86

A cold wet clinging wind was blowing
All the way from Siberia
On the brown bare hills of Dooneen
And the lambing sheep shivered
The Easter days of your passing.

When you were lonesome here
The story goes, they told you
To write them a letter, stand on
A rock and let the wind carry it
All the ways to Inchigeela.

But Christ, we'll carry it for him
All fourteen of us that read it
Without changing a jot or tittle
Wherever blows the wind.

When Jesus died he handed on his spirit to his disciples who would be his witnesses. May all of us this Easter day pledge ourselves to carry on the message of faith we have received from those who have gone before us and testified to his Spirit.