Courtney McGrailSophie Overall meets Augustinian vocations director Fr Colm O’Mahony
Sophie Overall
For Fr Colm O’Mahony OSA, vocations director for Ireland’s Augustinian friars, the choice to follow the call to the Augustinians was not an always clear or easy decision.
Originally from Cork, the Drogheda-based priest had an ordinary Irish upbringing. While his family was not overly involved in the Church, he, his two brothers and his sister joined their parents in going to Mass every Sunday. Fr Colm notes that he, “had the idea of vocation since secondary school, but he felt that it was just a phase, and that it would pass”.
He went on to study social science in University College Cork, where in his spare time – when not busy with lectures or travelling – he volunteered with the disability assistance charity CASA (Caring and Sharing Association), and also volunteered on campus, helping support students with special needs.
During his summer vacations the Cork student also worked with camps for people with special needs, and while throughout these years “the idea of vocation still popped up every now and again”, he says: “I kept turning it away.”
He went on to work for a year in a children’s home in Waterford, but thoughts of a vocation to the priesthood would not abate, and were constantly in the back of his mind.
Eventually, Fr Colm says, “I took what I thought was the easier option, and I entered the diocese.”
The easier option, as he saw it, proved not to be the right one for him. “I entered Maynooth in 2000,” he says, continuing, “I spent three years there, and then I decided that my vocation would not be a diocesan priest.”
Vocation
Colm then worked with the Cork-based Brothers of Charity for two years, helping people with severe to profound intellectual and physical disabilities, mainly autism, and over the next few years lived what he calls a “normal” life, but the idea of vocation just wouldn’t go away. “I kept saying to myself, ‘No, you tried that and failed – I don’t want to do that again,’” he explains.
“But the feeling wouldn’t go away. The more I thought about it, the more interested in the religious life I was,” he says. “Finally, I emailed three or four congregations that I was interested in, and I said to myself, ‘Okay, that’s it, that is all I’m doing’.”
After sending those emails, Colm met with two congregations. The first was a teaching congregation, and the second was the Augustinian friars, with whom he felt an instant connection.
“Upon the first meeting, all my questions were answered,” he says. “The emphasis on community was what really appealed to me. Living in a community, working with communities – and working with everyone, regardless of who they were – was truly the part of the Augustinian mission that I identified most with. Over the next few months, I discerned with the Augustinians, and entered the pre-novitiate programme in Galway.”
After his time in Galway, Colm went abroad to Chicago for his novitiate and then returned to Cork where he trained as a chaplain. He followed this with two years in Rome, where he studied for his licence in moral theology, before moving to New Ross where he served as an assistant school chaplain. He spent a year as a deacon in Dublin’s John’s Lane Church – officially the Church of St Augustine and St John the Baptist – and another year there following his ordination to the priesthood, working locally as a prison chaplain.
In Drogheda for the last three years, Fr Colm is based at St Augustine’s Priory where he has played a key role in helping develop a Garden of Remembrance in the church grounds.
“This year our church is 150 years old, and we’ve been looking at ways to mark this milestone, as well as looking at ways to foster and promote the whole sense of community,” he explains, continuing, “there was this waste ground at the back of the church, and it wasn’t being used for anything. Our initial plan was to turn it into a garden for Our Lady,” he says. “However, after speaking with some people in the church, they felt that if we wanted to engage with the wider community, a garden of remembrance would be much stronger.”
Community space
Explaining that the Augustinian community in Drogheda has strong links with the suicide charity SOSAD (Save Our Sons And Daughters) and with the Road Safety Authority-promoted World Remembrance Day for Road Traffic Victims, Colm notes, “We would turn it into a garden for two organisations, as well as have it serve as a community space where people of all faiths – or no faith – can come to relax and laugh, or to host events or community gatherings. Our idea is that since there is no place in the town centre to really relax, chat, or pray, we would facilitate this through this garden.”
Fr Colm stresses the importance that community has within the church, and thus how the garden will serve to foster this sense of community throughout Drogheda. “Our focal point is that everything includes community,” he explains. “We want to work with people with special needs, and the garden would be a helping garden, as well as sensory,” he says, concluding, “That is our aim in the long run.”