Their Place of Resurrection
Moyne Friary
Pete McCarthy says it best in his book McCarthy’s Bar:
“The Celtic monks would wander round…until they found the place that was calling them. Then they’d settle and make their community there. They had an expression for it: seeking their place of resurrection. They believed they were beneath that spot in the firmament that would one day lead them to heaven.”
It was a drizzly morning in the countryside just outside Ballina, County Mayo. I was driving down a winding, narrow road lined on each side with small farms. Then I saw it off in the distance, its bell tower reaching toward the firmament as a beacon giving direction, both spiritual and temporal, to the faithful.
Moyne Friary was founded by the Franciscans in the late 1450s and hosted a community of about 50 souls. Their main purpose, like all Franciscans, was to live the prayer of St. Francis: “Lord, make [us] an instrument of Your Peace...” Daily they prayed, preached, performed charitable work, and devoted time to learning.
Then in 1590 the English governor of Connacht raided and burned the friary. A few friars remained in the area afterwards, but their numbers dwindled over the centuries. The last friar at Moyne died around 1800.
I found a little spot off the road near a gated entrance to a pasture to park my car. I hopped the fence, walked about a hundred yards through a cow paddy-laden field with a half dozen cows and their calves staring uninterestingly at me while they chewed their cud, hopped the fence on the opposite side, then entered the friary’s grounds. I had the place to myself.
The church was a ruin in some respects. The roof was gone, but the basic structure seemed sound. In the nave, the main part of the church, I closed my eyes and imagined the grey tunic-clad friars, their church dimly lit by the flickering light of beeswax candles, kneeling in quiet prayer during Compline, the final church service of the day. In some sense the church still seemed alive, the holy callings of the long-dead friars still echoing down through the centuries to the ears of this modern-day pilgrim.
A courtyard with a surrounding cloister was itself surrounded in part not only by the church, but by the refectory (dining hall), the chapter house where the friars would meet to conduct their community business, the sacristy where the sacred vessels and vestments were kept, as well as other rooms used in their daily service of being instruments of peace. I can only imagine what good these friars did for the community so many years ago. While active here, this monastic community certainly must have helped the sick, fed the poor during lean times, taught the inquisitive, and gave direction to the spiritually hungry. Of all the places in the world to be, they didn’t have to be here. But they did choose to be here at this little out-of-the-way place on the mouth of the River Moy – at the place beneath the firmament that called to them.
Both outside the monastery as well as throughout the nave, numerous stones marked the graves of the area’s faithful who died within the past two hundred years – of people who also found this location and monastery to be a place of resurrection. To these people, there was no other place to spend their lives, and then to lie in wait for God’s Archangel Gabriel to sound the trumpet calling them home. The ability to find a place of resurrection wasn’t relegated only to men of the cloth.
Sometime during the 500s an army chief wished to marry Deirbhile (the old Irish name for Debra), a woman who had devoted her life to God. Not wanting to marry, she secretly escaped to a far corner of Ireland, the Mullet Peninsular. Eventually he traced her to this place.
When confronted, Deirbhile questioned the army chief what it was that attracted him to her.
It was her eyes that he was attracted to, her beautiful eyes.
With that, she plucked out her own eyes and threw them at him. He, of course, speedily fled from such a whack-job, glad that he got a glimpse of her real personality before he slipped the proverbial wedding ring onto her finger.
But because of her simple and honest devotion to God, a miracle happened. Water spurted up from the ground where her eyes had fallen. Deirbhile knelt to wash out her eye sockets and her vision was immediately restored. She spent her remaining days in this area living for the glory of God.
Today, fifteen hundred years later, water still flows from that place. A nearby sign describes this miracle site as Tobar Deirbhile – “Debra’s Well.”
Now, who really believes this story? Even the Catholic Church does not revere this site in the same way that it reveres other so-called holy sites and places of miracles. And yet, on August 15th of every year, there’s an annual pilgrimage in honor of St. Deirbhile to this site. To this day, the faithful believe in the healing properties of this water.
I walked around this holy well in silence, occasionally glancing around to see if anyone was watching me. All alone I knelt at the well and washed my eyes with the holy water. Silently I said my prayers and offered up my own supplications.
A short time later I quietly left Tobar Deirbhile. I was feeling blessed.
Admittedly, Deirbhile’s story is hard to swallow, but there’s no denying that this well is recognized as a place of resurrection – if not only to Deirbhile herself, then to the countless pilgrims over the centuries who have prayed at this site.
The faith of the Irish is strong and runs deep – stronger than the stone in a centuries’ old monastery walls, and deeper than the source of the pure untainted water which percolates up from the ground to fill their holy wells. It doesn’t make a difference the location or what surrounds it, the source of their faith is always the same. Home or abroad, it makes no difference. Of course I could give numerous anecdotes about this, but I will share a more modern day one – one that I am most intimate with.
I had two great aunts on my mother’s side, daughters and sisters of Irish immigrants. They lived together in an Irish neighborhood in Spencer, Massachusetts. Their house was surrounded by the families of McGraws, Houlihans, Mayos, Burkes, and other members of their Nolan clan. I spent a lot of time in that neighborhood with my great aunts as they babysat me on the weekends when I was a little kid little up until later in life when I took care of their house and yard.
There was never a question of their faith. Neither missed attending church whether for the weekly Mass or for the numerous holy days of obligation. When they were too old to get out, they made sure the priest came to their house to serve communion (and pity the poor priest who was late!). Both peppered their conversations with phrases like, “Glory be to God,” “God willing,” “God rest his soul,” and similar sayings more times in a day than I could count. But that is where their outward similarities ended.
Where one invoked sacred names during every emotion-based outburst, the other one prayed a novena. While one was watching a late night west-coast Red Sox game and God-cursing Carl Yastrzemski, the other one was on her knees in the quiet of a second-floor bedroom praying the Rosary.
And through it all, they never questioned their lot in life. Both worked in factories their whole working life, neither one married, and neither one ever once expressed a desire to be somewhere else doing something different. They often took care of me, fed me, supplied me with cash during my high school and college years so I could “buy a hot dog,” scolded me, lectured me on how to act in public, and offered prolific advice on how often I needed a haircut. I was one of the lucky ones in the neighborhood. I had my own two personal saints who prayed daily for the safety of my soul. Whether it was when I was an infant or when I was in my 30s, they believed I needed their continual intervention. Some saints are here to build cathedrals; others are here to take care of nephews. My two great aunts unquestionably knew their spot beneath the firmament that would eventually lead them to heaven.
Moyne Friary. Tobar Deirbhile. Three Franklin Street, Spencer, Massachusetts. And countless friaries, abbeys, churches, holy wells, and neighborhood homes. Each place has its own story of a beginning and some with a story of an ending. But it is not about the physical structures. It is about the people who glued these building blocks together with mortar, who saw the visions, who experienced the miracles, and who heard the humble call. It’s the ability of the faithful to recognize their place of resurrection when they see it and then to live it, knowing that the only better place to be will be found after they hear that heavenly trumpet blast calling them home.
An excerpt from a collection of essays and thoughts from my time in Ireland, May 16-30, 2009.
Beth and Mayme Nolan. 1985 photo.