Rachel Beard looks at Burriscarra-Bullintubber Parish as they celebrate Ballintubber Abbey’s 800th anniversary
Rachel Beard
“So rather than have anything big, huge, we say we’ll celebrate what we have,” Fr Frank Fahey says of the commemoration of Ballintubber Abbey’s 800th anniversary this summer. “So it’s celebrating the Christian life that is lived every day, not one particular area.”
Fr Frank says there have been “various things throughout the year” in celebration of the abbey’s 800th anniversary, but Sunday marked the beginning of a two week long celebration of the abbey.
“We’ve had the broadcast, the televised Mass in June through RTÉ about two weeks ago, and these two weeks now from the 24th of July until the 7th of August,” Fr Frank says. “There will be two weeks where everyday we’d be celebrating some aspect of the whole life of the parish and the abbey.”
Commemorating 800 years of Ballintubber Abbey has been an ongoing part of life in the parish this year.
Beginnings
“We have been having small celebrations since the beginning of the year,” Fr Frank says. “Because at the very beginning of the year, we had a celebration with a homily to the parish and we had a Mass then to get together and we emphasised family prayer in the home for that as the basis of our celebration. Each home got a reminder of that, a missionary candle and that.”
It was important to Fr Frank and the rest of the staff at Ballintubber Abbey that the celebration would include the entire parish and the many other resources in the surrounding area.
“And to celebrate that, we spring out,” Fr Frank says. “Which means we have the abbey, we have Church Island which is the retreat centre, we have the Tochár which is the pilgrim centre, we have Celtic Furrow which is the last 3,000 years, and we have the community itself celebrating everyday Christian life in the community from sports to football to exploration.”
The two-week celebration began on Saturday evening with the launch of Ballintubber Families Down the Years.
“Corley’s (Abbey Lodge) was buzzing on Saturday night standing room only for the book launch,” Ballintubber Abbey Office Manger Audrey Burke says. “Plenty of books sold and stories told.”
The book chronicles the stories of families in the parish, beginning in 1901 right up to the present day.
“The book of all those, where they were from, things like that, so we’re delving into the past and the present as well,” Fr Frank says.
People from all over are being invited to come and join in the two week event, including friends of the parish who are currently living abroad.
“It will be a celebration of the parish,” Fr Frank says. “A celebration of those who want to join us, and a celebration of those who are away from the parish but who will be around here for the day, for the week or two weeks.”
People from closer to home are also welcome to join the party.
“We’re inviting people in parishes around, too,” Fr Frank says. “We’re starting up a Schools Day on Sunday. We’ll have a big gathering after Mass.”
Schools Day began with a Mass celebrated by Fr Frank, Fr Paddy Gilligan and Fr Val Hynes. Fr Paddy and Fr Val were raised in Ballintubber.
“The Gathering Mass was a very special celebration with Fr Paddy Gilligan explaining that he had been ordained in the abbey and the very first Mass he said was also in the abbey,” Audrey says. “He also thanked Fr Fahey for all the effort he puts into the upkeep of the abbey and the large number of visitors coming to the area.”
The Schools Day or Sports Day celebration was held after the Mass and was centred around the school. It involved children, teachers, parents and grandparents from the local parish and surrounding parishes, too.
“The Sports Day was a great success also lots of families turned up and some of the adult tug of wars got competitive,” Audrey says. “All the children taking part got a commemorative medal for taking part.”
Today, a mini-bus tour of the parish will be held to share the history of the Ballintubber area. While the tour will no doubt cover it’s more recent history – like the fact that Pierce Brosnan and American journalist Keely Shaye Smith were married in the abbey – but it will also cover more ancient stories, like that of Sean a’Sagart.
“Sean a’Sagart was a priest hunter,” Fr Frank says. “And the last priest he tried to kill, there was a great chase from the abbey here to the place where he was killed.”
On Tuesday, a cycling event was held that followed the route of that “great chase”.
“So they’re tracing that route and stopping at the different places along the way where he was associated with or where the abbey was associated with,” Fr Frank says. “That’s about 30k cycle route and it’s right through the mountains and everything. So it follows the trail of that route recorded in the books.”
It’s understandable that the 800-year-old abbey would have a rich history all its own. Founded by King Cathal Crobdearg Ua Conchobair in1216, it was damaged during the Protestant Reformation like so many other Catholic buildings in Ireland. The roofless abbey was used throughout penal times by Catholics but was restored and reroofed in 1966, just in time for its 750th anniversary.
“A lot of the abbey has been restored,” Fr Frank says. “It’s been in the process of restoration since 1846 and gradually in four stages.”
The plan is to finish up restoring the abbey in 2016, before its 801st anniversary gets here.
“So we have now plans for a fourth stage and that will be to cater to the big group who are here at the moment,” Fr Frank says. “We’ve a lot of retreats here at the moment, and we have a lot of people walking the Tóchar because it’s being dubbed as the centre of the pilgrim paths of Ireland enterprise.”
The Tóchar Phádraig is an ancient pilgrim path by Ballintubber Abbey that leads up to Croagh Patrick. This two week celebration was arranged so that Reek Sunday would be “right in the middle”.
“Of course we’re very much caught up with Reek Sunday because there will be two Tóchar walks from here to Croagh Patrick,” Fr Frank says. “Two two-mile walks on the old pilgrim road dating from Patrick’s time. So there will be a group sitting out on Saturday and they will go halfway on Saturday and then we’ll pick them up on Sunday and then Sunday, they will go the whole 32 miles, on the Sunday of the Reek. We’ll meet with all the pilgrims on Sunday.”
Pilgrim paths
Along with restoring the abbey in time for its 800th anniversary, there are also plans to connect Tóchar to other pilgrim paths across Europe.
“But we’re hoping to have a long distance learning centre in the new development,” Fr Frank says. “A centre in the East wing, in which we will link up with the other pilgrim paths of Europe and pilgrim paths of Ireland, but it would be an educational centre, a long distance education centre, because now with Internet and everything like that, you don’t have to be in libraries in all this stuff.”
There are “three aspects” of this plan to digitise these pilgrim paths. The first is the actual experience of walking the pilgrim path, but the second is what Fr Frank calls a “virtual reality” that pilgrims will be able to experience online.
“In other words, a person can sit down and go through the pilgrim path, not just as it is,” he says. “But it will conjure up on the video scenes from the past so you’re walking through not just the past physically, but through the centuries and through the story because each path has its own story. Each path has its own personality and persona, and each path has something to tell us.
“So it would be an educational thing, and then following up on that, we will have two interactive games and things like that to help the learning process.”
As the parish celebrates the abbey’s 800th anniversary for another week, Fr Frank is looking to the future.
“I suppose the extensive goal would be to deepen our awareness of our link with Europe,” he says. “In Ireland especially, to reach a more than economic and political and that’s a very strenuous link because it depends on the dignitaries and that, but we have a deeper link with Europe and the culture of Europe through especially the medieval pilgrim paths and to deepen that, to concentrate the cultural dimension in the broad sense of our link with Europe, I think that’s very important if we want to live as a community in Europe rather than just an economic and political entity and that’s vital. So we hope to have a little part to play in developing that concept.”