Last week, the Teach Bhride Dublin crew were able to get their dorm mass on with O’Connell House’s first South Bend visitor, Fr. Paul Kollman of the Center for Social Concerns. Fr. Kollman came to town for a brief visit en route to a conference in Rome, and we quickly put him to work presiding over the opening mass for the fall semester of the Dublin Programme.
The students and staff alike had been looking forward to this mass for quite some time before the day finally came on Wednesday. Masses at Harold’s Cross for us and around the city for the students have been great new experiences of our global Catholic faith, but as recent departures from the Notre Dame bubble, we all had a hankering for a good old fashioned dorm mass. OCH’s main classroom was transformed into a makeshift chapel, and students, staff, and other friends from the extended Notre Dame family gathered for a truly beautiful service to spiritually kick off our semester.
Along with our Campus Ministry intern (we have an intern? what?!) Alex, Angie and I led a small choir of students and friends in campus favorites, from “Bread for the World” to “The Summons.” We even had keyboard and a violin! As is dorm mass tradition, the sign of peace lasted for, you know, about half the length of the mass, and the group almost literally brought the house down on “We Are Called” for the closing hymn. I’m a firm believer you can’t have a great mass without a chorus of Keough boys tossing extra “ten-der-ly”s on the end of every “We are called to love tenderly” – so this week, my friends, we most definitely had a great mass.
In addition to serving as the opening mass for the Programme and its students, this mass pulled double duty as the missioning mass for Teach Bhride Dublin. In his homily, Fr. Paul shared a fabulous message for both the students in their semester abroad and for Angie and me in our year with House of Brigid. The gospel for the day saw Christ send out the Twelve with the orders, “Take nothing for the journey – no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic.” Like the Twelve in their sending out, Fr. Paul said that, in our time here, we should strive to emulate the opposite of the Boy Scouts’ ideals: “Be unprepared.” Our semester or, as the case may be, year in Ireland will be full of opportunities to grow and learn from the people around us – we just need to be unprepared and vulnerable enough to be ready to receive them.
Before the closing hymn, Fr. Paul and the O’Connell House staff led the students in a blessing over Angie and me as our year with House of Brigid begins. From wishes for good health after I spent the whole mass coughing my lungs out to prayers for patience and vulnerability, each student and staff member who spoke up blessed us with thoughtful prayers that seemed tailored just for us. The idea of this mass as our missioning service had come about only hours before mass began, and the group absolutely floored me with the beautiful blessing they bestowed on us after only three weeks of even knowing who we are.
To what should be no one’s surprise, we wrapped up the mass with the whole crew singing Notre Dame Our Mother, and we all headed back to our Irish lives feeling closer than ever to our mother on the Golden Dome.
