Twenty Fourth Sunday -Year A: 12.09.26
St. Andrew’s Church, Bagenalstown @ 6pm
Introduction:
We gather to acknowledge the contribution and ministry of the Presentation Sisters here to Bagenalstown. We do so in the context of the story of education in these parts. We also do so in the context of the Parish Vigil Mass, conscious that while the Sisters established the schools and worked there, the ripple effect of their presence here can be found in every facet of parish life. The plaque I will unveil later reads “Presentation Sisters, Bagenalstown 1838-2019 ‘Not Words but Deed’ (Nano Nagle)”.
A presence of 181 years, and this evening we honour that contribution on this the Vigil of the Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, as the lens turns to forgiveness, it’s that forgiving bit that is hardest to do! We are invited to forgive from our heart, no if’s, buts or maybes, just a total, absolute, unconditional forgiveness.
The unforgiving servant in the gospel disturbs us because he sails close to the wind, he could be any of us. This evening’s parable drives the point home, if God is big enough to forgive us, we should be only too ready to forgive one another and maybe most difficult of all to forgive ourselves. As we celebrate the Presentation Sisters, their place here in Bagenalstown, in Muinebheag, where they kept the lantern of Nano kindled for many years, we give thanks as we call to mind our sins …
• Is tusa Tobar na Trócaire – you are the wellspring of mercy:
A Thiarna, déan trócaire
• Is tusa Slí na Fírinne – you are the way of Truth:
A Chríost, déan trócaire
• Bí linn i gconaí, ós ár gcomhair amach – be with us always, showing us the way. A Thiarna, déan Trócaire
Homily:
On this Twenty Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, we find ourselves well into the year of celebration for Venerable Nano Nagle, for the Presentation Sisters. Last Christmas Eve set the celebrations in motion, and they have continued ever since.
I look forward to a celebration in the former convent, now Carlow County Museum on Tullow Street, Carlow, at the convent cemetery and in the Cathedral, next month, where we will acknowledge the Carlow story and how it helped to shape later convent foundations.
The Nano Nagle story, the Presentation story, has deep roots in our Diocese. Tullow Street, Carlow was founded in 1811 and from Carlow, Portlaoise was founded in 1824; Kildare in 1830; Stradbally in 1852; Portarlington in 1854; Mountmellick in 1854; Clondalkin in 1857 and Baltinglass in 1873.
And from Portlaoise, Bagenalstown was founded in 1838 and Clane in 1839. From Kildare, Wagga Wagga in New South Wales was founded in 1874. And from Clondalkin, Lucan was founded in 1867, Warrenmount in 1892, Lismore, New South Wales in 1896 and Rockford Manor in 1958. I thank those behind designing the concept of ‘The Presentation Tree’ for the accuracy of these dates.
For a moment let’s go back to the Cork of Nano Nagle’s day. It’s labyrinths of lanes and alleys, so familiar to the lady of the lantern. Catholics had a very dismal future. Fourteen percent of the profitable land was in Catholic ownership; in other words, eighty-six percent wasn’t! A lease to a Catholic was limited to thirty-one years.
Penal days were tough, and the world Nano was born into in Ballygriffin was still very much one dominated by the context of those Penal days. While her legacy is education and particularly the education of those for whom, without the Ursulines, without the Presentation Sisters, there would have been no prospects at all; her awareness of poverty in the lives of people made her very socially astute. Her great friend Bishop Coppinger would speak of her “lacerated limbs and festering wounds” when she died, she gave herself fully and completely.
Brenan’s ‘Schools of Kildare and Leighlin 1775-1835’ mentions two schools in Kilcarig, Bagenalstown, a boys and a girls. The average daily attendance of boys was 50, all Roman Catholics. The average daily attendance at the girl’s school was put a little higher at 60, although Brenan noted it could decrease to 30 in the winter. The priests were the inspectorate of the day. In one note regarding the strict reading of scripture with no commentary or context was described in the priests’ report as an “obnoxious arrangement” and was highly critical of the Kildare Place Society, an early philanthropic group, set up to educate the poor.
The author of that inspection was the gifted and talented Parish Priest Fr. Michael Prendergast. He facilitated the establishment of the convent and school here in Bagenalstown in 1838 by bequeathing in his will his house and property for education purposes. The sisters arrived here on August 4th that year, with a school opening the following month. Interestingly 175 years later I would arrive to the diocese on the very same day, August 4th.
1901 would set the establishment of a Secondary Education here. Queen of the Universe and Presentation De le Salle both grew respectively out of the one opened in September 1838, and the one opened in 1901. Prendergast was Vicar General to the great JKL. TJ Walsh tells us that in 1823, fifteen years before the foundation in Bagenalstown JKL asserted that “seven counties of Leinster were better served educationally than any other part of the empire” , his words not mine!
The standard of education established by the Presentation Sisters in Bagenalstown was exceptional. The opening of the school in 1838 coincided with the onslaught of the 1840’s famine. you cannot educate an empty stomach, so once again the appropriateness of the quote from Nano Nagle on the plaque: “not words but deeds”.
The building at the convent soon outgrew itself and the foundation for a new school was laid in 1851. In 1899 the numbers attending were early 500. The building with its many extensions was in use until 1956, when a new primary school was opened. An inspectorate report in 1864 assessed Bagenalstown as being well staffed, unlike other Presentation foundations, with the average daily pupil attendance put at 50.5% which was high for its time .
1901 saw the opening of a Secondary School in the purchased Dr. Stawell’s house on Regent Street. The first Principal was Mother Alphonsus, a gifted science teacher. The school was to be recognised by the Department twenty years later.
Enough of history, what is the lesson left after the Sisters, after Nano Nagle, after the luminaries such as Fr. Michael Prendergast PP VG and those who came after them? Fr. Prendergast’s twin grandnieces entered the convent here in the 1860’s; their brother his grandnephew Denis Byrne became a priest in Liverpool. It’s his chalice we use this evening.
Matthew’s gospel reminds us forgiveness has no limitations: “not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times” . If, in our schools, we can inculcate an atmosphere of mercy, of forgiveness; if in our schools, we can model mercy, we are teaching much more than a curriculum.
Gen Z have shown again and again they are open to religion. Pope Leo, speaking in May this year reminded us “the new generation is not closed off to the Gospel, on the contrary, many when they discover it, want to know it better, because they perceive that within it lies the secret to being truly happy” . Nothing can give us greater happiness than forgiving the hurt someone has caused us.
Our new Senior Cycle RE Programme is titled ‘Made for More’, all of us are made for more, and this is something that Nano Nagle and those pioneering sisters in Bagenalstown and their early lay compatriots would be rightly proud. Forgiveness, Mercy, Reconciliation makes us bigger people, makes for more!
The farewell to the Sisters has been made this evening, but the thanksgiving endures. The story of the Presentation Sisters will always be inextricably interwoven with the story of Bagenalstown and its people.