On Good Shepherd Sunday, 11 May 2025, Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin celebrated Mass to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the canonisation of Laurence O’Toole in Eu, Normandy.
In his homily, Archbishop Farrell preached, ” The Lamb … will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.
Our faith is gospel, it is good news. ‘The Lamb will be their shepherd,’ says today’s second reading. An image of hope, of warmth, of reassurance. Christ is good news, and he is hope: ‘the Lamb will lead [his flock] to springs of living water.’ He is God’s true face: ‘and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes.’
“We gather to celebrate someone who was a shepherd, a pastor of the Lord’s flock in the true sense of the word. Saint Laurence O’Toole is not the easiest of people to preach about; he left us no large body of writings, which we can read, and re-read for our own time. But he left us something even more human and more divine: he left us the witness of his life.
“Laurence O’Toole was a Gaelic bishop who found himself in exile in France. Laurence did not seek the office of bishop. He reluctantly gave his consent and was consecrated in Christ Church Cathedral in 1162. The movement for Laurence’s canonisation commenced shortly after his death. It began at this tomb which became a centre of pilgrimage for the whole of the north of France. While there is undoubtedly, a popular dimension – many miracles were attributed to his intercession, the heart of the movement was in the resonance of Laurence’s life with the inner life of those who survived him. It was after many unsuccessful attempts that Pope Honorius III formally canonised him on 5 December 1225, forty-five years after his death.
Archbihop Farrell continued, “Today Dublin is a large city, and the Archdiocese is even larger. The population of the Catholic Archdiocese is 1.6 million, a significant metropolitan area, by any standards. Perhaps it would also strike Laurence that the Christian faith he knew is on the wane. In Laurence’s Dublin, the faith was arriving. In today’s Dublin, it could be easily said that the faith ‘is departing.’ Some would say that it has departed! However, while the religious expression that was so characteristic of Irish Catholicism from the mid-19th Century almost to the end of the 20th Century has certainly evaporated in the last 25 years, it would be too narrow to say that faith has departed our city and our land. Permit me to explain.”
To read the fill text of Archbishop Farrell’s homily visit CatholicBishops.ie.
ENDS
