THE REV. MICHAEL MEEHAN, P.P. CARRIGAHOLT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 261, 3 May 1878, Page 15

THE REV. MICHAEL MEEHAN, P.P. CARRIGAHOLT.

Borx at Ardsollus, in the year 1810, the llcv. Michael Mechan moved and worked through stirring days, and for this reason his conversation •was at all times intere&tine. and his reminiscenses of great men and strange events were marked with the vividness and accuracy of Ihono who knew and saw what they speak of. He went at an early age to Maynooth College, in order to qualify himself for the sacred order which he in future years so much adorned, and there became the classfollow of men who afterwards left their names written in letters of light upon the pages ot their country's history. Endowed with natural talents of «i high order, the youthful student while devoting all his time to the classical courses ordained for his perusal, kept stowed away within the warmest recess of his hopeful heart the remembrance of a tongue purer and dearer than the gutturals of old Home, or the lispiugs of modern Italy. He venerated the learning of the ancients as he would venerate the illustrious dead ; ha clung to the rough accents of his forefathers as he would cling to the beloved dying ; the image of his country interwove in his mind with the figure of all that was grand in byegone times, or admirable in the new : and while Patriotism prompted his heart into longings to serve the land of his devotion, Religion raised his aspirations higher, and centred tbcai on Heaven. He°left behind him the day he turned his steps from the College walls, a bright and enduring record, and the training which had so well affected the student, developed into the virtues of an Irish priest. The terms of his services iv the curacy, show toils and struggles in Doora, Tulla, Ennis, and Kilrush. One of O'Conucll's body-guard in '28, he was' thoroughly imbued during his life-time with those principles the striving for which gained the fame of the great Liberator. It came to his lot to see and minister to hundreds of his fellow-countrymen fallin" 1 victims to the horrors of famine, and his soul was stirred with all the train of miseries that follow in the wake of the dread monster. The first day of his appointment in Kilrush he, iv company with the parish priest, Father Kelly, luul to attend -10 cases of cholera, three priests being sick in the distiict at the time. How many a call from muchneeded sleep wa« responded to promptly, how many a journey in weariness and grief was readily undertaken, how many a horrifying sight of woe was- beheld by this brave man in the sorrow of thos-e troublous times, the Angel has recorded in the Book of God it lies not in the power of earthly pen to write. "When removed to Carri"-a-holt. he arrived in time to anoint Father Duggan of that parish, and catch his last sigh as he expired in the agony of cholera. Immediately after his appointment as parish priest of Carrigaholt, which took place in 1840, he found another plague arising in the land — a plague worse far than that which had destroyed the country : for while the one destroyed the body the other sought to blast the soul. Seizing upon a time, diabolically opportune, when it was considered that the weakness of the ilcrth had wasted the powers of the soul, that the hunger of the mouth had spread barrenness in the heart, and the suffering of the body had cmbittcicd the spirit, a pack of insane zealots, who° prized, more the quibbles of a sect than the precepts of Christianity, designed to work out the conversion of Ireland from what they considered the darkness of Romanism. They sent their missionaries abroad with the Bible in one hand and the loaf: in the other. The prostrate people lay gasping in the throes of starvation ; they were dazed by an accumulation of miseries, bewildered by the severity of the chastening ; all of love was gone, hope had long departed, and one; treasure only remained. Abased though he was, afflicted though he was uncarcd for though he was, the Irish peasant drew his rags about his hunger-worn bones, and gloriiied the religion he had been born in ; he was forsaken by his fiicnds, scoffed at by his enemies, but he crouched, like .lob, upon the dunghill of misery and from out the leprosy o<-" earthly suflmugs called out that he " knew his Redeemer Ined." God alone knows into how many fragments was his pour heart broken ; but one belief bound them all together. God alone knows how many were the wounds of his spirit ; but his faith made him whole. God alone kuows what dimness did Want glaze over his, eyes ; but there was one light forever shining, one ray which led his longings afar — the signal light on the barque" of Peter. To argue him out of this faith, to steal irom him this belief, to deprive him of this cheering ray, — this was the mission — how Christ-like — that Christian men sent Christian men to do ! Oh, how humbled we must have been indeed iv those days, when the proffer in exchange for all the continue ous glory of our undying faith, was a baker's loaf or a bowl of sauu. Humbled we were — lost we might have been. But for whom . ; For our priests — the glory of our island, the pride of our religion, 'in the first phalanx of this army, whose banner is peace, stood Father Meehan honoured for it in his lifetime— blessed and venerated for it now thai he lies dead. He saw what his people had to bear : they were tempted sorely : with them it was the present gain for a future loss, the sacrifice of the ideal for the possession of the real. It would be out. of place to delay in this short notice to point out the mistaken zoalousness, if not something worse, of those who could lend themselves to such a system : to-day it is our grief which is uppermost »ot our indignation. Suffice it to say that Father Michael Mechan perceived that delay was dangerous, that the besiegers were too, aggressive to listen to parley, nothing would do but light, and fight he did with all the weapons which his holy calling permitted him legitimately to use. He defended his people from the burning y,enl of'thc tempters, he protected, he warned, he aided, he worked, bespoke, he gave himself untiringly to the strife, and— he succeeded.— Clave Independent