Celebration of the Life of Des Whelan

Requiescant in Pace

Please click on links to open:

DESMOND WHELAN Liturgy Booklet Click to read.

BE THOU MY VISION

 

FR STEVE INTRODUCTION

EULOGY – Michael Musgrave

EULOGY – Ray Harris

READINGS – Lily Horneman

1 Corinthians 13:4-7, 11-13
A reading from the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians.

Love is patient, love is kind, Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong-doing but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we shall see face to face.
Now I know only in part, then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now, faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

POEM ‘The Isle of Innisfree’ by W B Yeats – Lily Horneman

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to wear the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all the glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

HOMILY – Fr Steve Sinn SJ

Fr Steve Homily transcript Click to read.

I’m glad there are many rooms because there are rooms for all of us in my Father’s house. There’s no one way. It’s interesting to hear that story. ‘When I told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you’. It’s a lovely stanza, ‘He’s gone before us and he’s prepared a place for us, each one of us. If I’ve gone to do that, I will return and take you to myself, so that whereby you also will be’. So that again is a lovely image that He can’t be without us.

And it’s a kind of image that we kind of had a taste of that with Des. He had gone to prepare a place for us, whether it was around a BBQ, around a bar, so that where he is, we are. We’ve had a little taste of the future.

And the one who said that He has been through death and promised to take us to himself to the place he has prepared for us. When that promise says, ‘but we don’t know where we’re going’, he says, ‘you know the way’. We say ‘we don’t know the way’, but then we do. There’s no book. The way is the relationship. ‘I am the way’. There’re no descriptions, no rules. It’s a relationship we have with one another. It’s the way. We know that in our hearts, and Des embodied that. He was priestly. He showed us the way. He showed us the power of communion; the power of relationships; the power of being together. So this is the truth. This is the way. This is what life is.

And so I just thank Des for showing us the way, and the truth and the life.

 

Ave Maria (Schubert)

 
 
The Parting Glass – last few lines

 
 
Go Silent Friend

 
 
Galway Bay

 
 
(to come)