Bairbre Cahill
Over the Christmas holidays our daughter Méabh had a few friends from college visiting. One came up from Clare, another from west Donegal. To my delight they spoke Irish – all the time.
Now Méabh had done all her schooling through Irish but was never great at chatting with me in Irish. Somehow Irish was still associated with school and even though she was fluent she would sometimes reply in English to a question I asked in Irish. Now here she was talking ‘19 to the dozen’ about anything and everything, enjoying the craic, laughing uproariously with her pals – all in Irish.
Méabh started university in September and was lucky to get a place to live in Teach na Gaeilge. In total there are 24 students, from different years and different courses, living in a block of apartments on campus. All are Irish speakers and all carry responsibility for promoting Irish on campus.
And somehow, a real shift has happened. Méabh has taken ownership of her language and has tremendous pride in her fluency. Irish is the medium through which these friendships have been formed and so that is what they speak – wherever they are and whatever they are doing.
Méabh’s attitude to Irish has moved from being something she had to speak in school to being one of the vibrant languages in which she lives her life. Irish is not something imposed upon her but something freely chosen.
Adult faith
Pope Francis has spoken about the need for people to develop a mature adult faith. To me, a mature adult faith is something that we freely choose to commit to, not because we have been told we must but because it gives meaning, direction and strength to our lives. I see a lot of parallels with the shift in Méabh’s attitude to Irish.
What are some of the elements of a mature adult faith? A bit like Méabh and the Irish it isn’t just confined to some part of life but impacts on all aspects of life. So, for us as Christians it cannot simply be about religious practice or about 40 minutes on a Sunday. An adult faith influences all of life.
The capacity to explore our faith, ask questions and seek to understand are vital aspects of maturing in faith. But for a mature, adult faith the questions work both ways. It is not only that we question our faith but that we allow our faith to question us.
When we allow faith to engage with life then inevitably we will face challenges about who we are, what we are committed to, how we use our time, talents and resources. If we take Jesus and his message seriously it will challenge us as to how we engage with people on the margins, people within our own families and communities who we struggle to love, people who we see as different.
In my last column I wrote about the audacity to believe that God is present and active in our lives. A mature adult faith will recognise that God’s presence and action is not a comfort blanket. It often pushes us out of our comfort zone, challenges us to be more authentic, more loving, more courageous, more Christian.
The shift in Méabh’s attitude to Irish came from living in an Irish-speaking community. For faith to grow we need to build communities that speak with faith and about faith.
Out and about in Dublin, Méabh and her pals have had interesting conversations with taxi drivers who want to know why they are speaking Irish. Only once has a taxi driver tried to give them a hard time. He was politely but firmly put back in his box.
Here was a group of young people who were not going to be belittled for speaking their own language. A mature faith does not have to impose itself on others but neither will it allow itself to be belittled, silenced or shut away.