Two of the brothers were being ordained to the priesthood on Sunday 18th September, 2011. Our Novice Master, Fr Philip McShane OP therefore decided to carry us up to Dublin for the ceremony, but because it was a 3hour drive, we went up a day earlier and stayed in the motherhouse of the province in Tallagh, which is also part of Dublin.
On the Sunday morning we eventually made it down to St Saviour's in Dublin for the ordination. It was pretty cool to be among the Student brothers. It was also pretty reassuring to see them all looking very happy to be where they were. This made me a bit excited to finish my novitiate year and begin formal studies but not too much so that I would forget to enjoy my novitiate year.
The actual ordination mass was pretty good, a beautiful liturgy (I mean, it had to have been after they shelled out 1000Euro for the choir and other stuff). They also managed to cut out some of the rather unnecessary stuff from the liturgy so that the mass was not too long.
The only problem was after for the reception. Apparently Irish people storm as well and in no small numbers. Fr Joseph Dineen OP was telling me, after the reception, that they catered for 200ppl but the caterer said that they served over 400 plates of food.
We stayed in Tallagh for another night to go to both of the first masses. Now the two ordained guys were really different and this showed in the first masses. Maurice Colgan is a really nice guy, really down to earth, a people person and his mass was on the Monday morning with not an entirely packed church but his family and friends most present. It was in his hometown parish and the reception after was in the primary school next-door.
A lil note about that: We went into the school during school hours and there were kids playing in the courtyard. Now I went in ahead of everyone not knowing that the children were going to be outside. When they saw me walking into the yard, they all stopped. One kid yelled "Look a priest!!!" and they all ran up to me wanting to shake my hand and stuff. To be honest, I was a bit reserved cuz Ireland has all these laws about interacting with children and so on...but I've since gotten a book about the Child Protection Policy and plan to read it sometime.
Anyhow, after, we went to Denis Murphy's first mass which some people described as more of a coronation than an actual mass. It was almost entirely latin, Denis preached himself and did not share any part of the liturgy of the eucharist with the other priests present. Further to this, he was clothed in liturgical vestments from pre-Vatican II times (personally I found he looked a bit silly). After the mass, we couldn't take anymore and the group of novices and Philip decided to skip the reception and head back to Cork.
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