Bishop Keenan preached this homily at the Diocesan Vocations Mass on the Vigil of the Solemnity of St Mirin, 14th September 2023.

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Dear brothers and sisters, this week our Church in Scotland marks our annual Vocations Awareness Week, and it is good for us to unite in spirit with all of the dioceses in the country who celebrate their Diocesan Vocations Masses around this time.  

In our own diocese, we have the added blessing that this week coincides with the Feast of Saint Mirin, the Paton of our Diocese.  And so, we need only to turn to our beloved Founder to discover what it means for each of us to be called and chosen by the LORD with a vocation in the Church and the world. 

When we think of Vocations Awareness Week, our minds turn to vocations to the priesthood and religious life and prayer for our young people to hear the LORD’s call whispering in their ears.  Nor do we forget the precious vocation to married life, motherhood and fatherhood.  We also remember the contribution our young and not so young make in living out their vocation in single life in the world.

What example can St. Mirin offer us in thinking about each of our lives as a calling from GOD?  

First of all, Saint Mirin can help us understand how our young people can be made ready to hear and accept and follow the LORD’s call.  Mirin’s own young life shows us how important is a good Catholic education, with its focus on goodness and wisdom, its formation in faith and its encouragement to service.  This Christian formation is entrusted to parents as the first teachers of their children in the ways of faith and begins from their children’s early years, and parents have the gift and responsibly of introducing their little ones into the ways of the Church and friendship with GOD, Our Lady and the Saints. We must do all we can to help them in this serious obligation. In this respect we thank GOD for our Catholic schools and parishes who accompany and support our families on their journey of faith.  This same responsibility Mirin’s parents took seriously.  We see it in his mother who brought him as a young boy to the monastery of Bangor in Ireland, where she had heard of the great teacher St. Comgall.  It was Comgall who gave Mirin his sound Catholic education until he had reached adulthood serene and confident in his faith, with a spirit full of generous service.  And so, in his home and school Mirin imbibed the Gospel values Saint Paul commended to the Ephesians.  Like them, Mirin was taught how to live a life worthy of the Christian vocation he had received, how to be humble and gentle in spirit, to be patient.  It was there, at home and in school, that he became acquainted with the peace and unity of the Spirit granted to him though faith and baptism. It was there, at home and school, that he leaned about the great apostles and prophets, missionaries, pastors and teachers.  It was from the example of his home and school life that he grew in maturity, learning the true meaning of life in serving GOD and others.  In time, the formation of his home and school would blossom into the discovery of his own vocation to the monastic life where he would go on to succeed Comgal as Head Teacher in the same monastic school, fostering the education, formation and vocations of subsequent generations.   In our own times we pray for a similar effort of our whole diocesan Church directed to building up good Christian homes and families in our parishes and supporting our beloved Catholic school communities. 

Mirin’s life also shows us that vocations are not just for the young but for all of us at every stage of our lives. Each one of us has been called and chosen with a unique task in building up the Church, each of us equipped to carry it out, all of us asked to be full of courage and confidence in GOD’s grace to help us build something new in our generation, as Saint Mirin did in his, even in unpromising times and situations. Eventually, all of us will be summoned before the throne of GOD to give an account. 

And so, it was for Mirin.   Appointed to the mission in the west of Scotland, after a long and difficult journey he arrived here, where the town of Paisley now stands.  It was in a Scotland, recently abandoned by the Romans, that found itself in an uncertain era of bewildering transition and Paisley, itself, had fallen into the possession of a local warlord.   Yet with his gentle ways, and with the Good News of the Gospel, Mirin won round the chieftain who took a liking to him and granted him a small field near the river where he founded the first church in Paisley.  To a dark and forbidding Scotland came the feet of one who brought good news and proclaimed peace, good tidings and salvation to the ruins of Jerusalem.  In times of great upheaval, Mirin brought to Scotland the LORD’s comforting, redeeming the nation so that the land might once again see the salvation of our GOD.  

The times and challenges that faced Mirin as took up his vocation were no less fearful than our own.  What kept him going was his disciple’s love for Jesus His LORD.  Mirin loved Jesus more than every other and every day he nurtured in his heart Peter’s words:  LORD, you know everything; you know I love you! This ardent love of Jesus eventually formed and shaped in him the heart of a pastor, shepherd and leader with a love that sought only to protect the wellbeing of the little ones in his care and foster their faith.  On Mirin’s watch nothing would ever harm them.    And so, he found himself sacrificing bit by bit the freedom of his youth that dressed in the fashion of the day with liberty to go as he pleased, and found himself stretching out his hands, led by the LORD to places he would rather not go, except that it was following in the footsteps of Jesus and the glory of living for GOD and His people.  

Saint Maximilian Kolbe once said that the sin of our modern times was the sin of indifference.  While we see a whole host of dangers besetting our times, our young and vulnerable, we do not care enough or are unwilling to pay the price of protecting them from the wolves and leading them to the good pastures of the Gospel.  This evening, all of us who are called to responsibility for the young, whether parents, clergy or parents, might pray for the generosity of spirit of Mirin, and his courageous love that stood up and was counted in the work of the salvation of the souls in his care, never counting the cost.  

Mirin’s vocation remained undimmed in the twilight of his life and even went on to burn ever more brightly.  As he approached his end, people began to refer to him as the glorious confessor.  In the first centuries, confessors suffered persecution for the faith, even if not to the point of death.  Later they were canonized saint who were not in the category of apostles or evangelists, martyrs or virgins.  By Mirin’s time they were Christians who lived holy lives and died in peace, in peace with GOD and themselves, with humanity and all Creation.    We pray also to value the precious vocation of our elderly and infirm whose holy lives and peaceful spirits show us the final goal of all of our lives in the beauty of lives in which everything is now reconciled and made one in Christ.    

We turn to Our Lady of Paisley commending to Her the calling of our young, the vocations of all of us every day in the care of souls, and the witness of those whose lives are near completion, wating only to hand over to the LORD the fruits of their good works.