Canon Anthony Rea

“Tony Rea had that intuitive understanding. He knew parish families well and was interested in their welfare. He rejoiced with them in the good times. He helped them bear the burden of sorrow”

Second Reading
Fr Kevin Hegarty

Several years ago, when I was teaching in the Convent in Belmullet, I left school early one September day to attend a meeting in Ballina. At Glencastle I gave a lift to a man going to the big sheep fair in Bangor-Erris. Straight away I knew it was going to be difficult.
He looked at me belligerently and asked was I a priest. I pleaded guilty. He went on: “You are a strange kind of priest. I never see you at Mass.” There are times when it is pointless to explain. I should have moved the conversation to the safe topic of the weather. I said that my main work was teaching English and history in the secondary school and that I did not often say public masses. “I suppose,” he replied, “you had to find some way of passing the time.” There was an uneasy silence. Was I glad to see the long street of Bangor, festooned with nervous sheep, busy chip vans and garrulous farmers?
I reckon many people wonder what priests do all day. Some years ago there was a sociological survey on the topic. Among those interviewed was an old Clare priest who outlined part of his day: “I get up about nine and wander over to the church to say the 10am Mass. When I get back Julia, the housekeeper, has the breakfast ready – a bowl of porridge, a boiled egg and a cup of tea. Then the postman usually comes. I read the letters. Julia comes back from the shop with the Irish Independent. I have a look at that for a while. Then I slacken off for a few hours.”
Last Wednesday, in Binghamstown, we paid our final respects to a priest who did not slacken off for over 64 years of priesthood. Canon Anthony Rea was laid to rest in Emlybeg Cemetery. It is fitting that he lies in the earth of Erris, for he spent 47 years in the barony. He lived for 38 years in the house that is now my home.
Anthony Rea was born in Bonniconlon in 1917. He spent most of his childhood exiled in County Sligo in the border village of Corballa where his father ran a pub. Tony used to say that his father was proud he became a priest but disappointed that he could not turn the water into wine! After education in St Muredach’s College and Maynooth, Archbishop McQuaid ordained him to the priesthood in June, 1943.
It is hard for us to visualise it now but in 1943 there was no position for him in the diocese of Killala. Every Irish diocese had a surplus of priests. Tony was appointed to the English diocese of Southwark until there was a vacancy at home. He enjoyed his time in England. It was a blessed relief from the oppressive timetable of Maynooth. Among his duties was chaplaincy to the Irish Guards, a British army regiment. One year it fell to Tony to present, on St Patrick’s Day, a bowl of shamrock to the Queen Mother, patron of the regiment. He took it in his stride. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, he could walk with kings and not lose the common touch.
Returning to Ireland in 1950, he worked in several parishes but his heart was in Kilmore-Erris, to which he was first appointed, as a curate, in 1956. The landscape of the peninsula entered his blood. After eight years there as a curate, he returned in 1973 as parish priest and remained there for the rest of his life.
In 1973 the ecclesiastical infra-structure of the parish was in a  dilapidated state. He had to organise the funding for and the building of two new churches at Binghamstown and Carne. He had a deep sense of the importance of a church building in a community, as so well described by the poet, Philip Larkin:
“A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised and robed as destinies.”
Of course, infra-structure is a cold, albeit necessary thing. What distinguished Tony as a priest was his pastoral sense. Recently I read Yann Martel’s novel ‘The Life of Pi’. The narrator describes how he felt when he first met a Catholic priest.
“What arrested me was my intuitive understanding that he was there – open, patient – in case someone, anyone should want to talk to him; a problem of the soul, a heaviness of the heart, a darkness of the conscience, he would listen with love.”
Tony had that intuitive understanding. He knew the families of his parish well and, to the end, was interested in their welfare. He rejoiced with them in the good times. He helped them bear the burden of sorrow. As the poet Pádraig J Daly wrote of a priest he knew, he ‘belonged in many lives/A sort of extra forgettable as the ceannabháin/Drawing morning sunlight/On immense brown bogs.’
He knew how to enjoy life. Jesus once said: “I came that you may have life and have it to the full.” Tony took him at his word. He revelled in social occasions. He was fond of a modest flutter on the horses. He loved to play cards. Or, more accurately, he liked to win at cards.
He was a sports fanatic. Most summer Sundays saw him in his own studio, in the home of Pat and Kay Sullivan, watching the important football matches. At half-time he offered his own analysis, as astute as Colm O’Rourke and less abrasive than Joe Brolly.
He had a fund of funny stories that he told well. Many a dull clerical meeting or starchy (in both senses) Confirmation dinner he enlivened by an apposite story or a humorous aside. I recall his telling of what happened on the morning after the All-Ireland replay of 1996. Meath had got out of jail and Mayo were still in purgatory. Tony had just said Mass for the senior citizens in Áras Deirbhile. One woman, somewhat advanced in senility, her mind a confusion of images from the raised Sam Maguire and the raised Chalice, called out ‘Fair play to you, Canon Rea, over the bar’.
Mention of Áras Deirbhile reminds me of his special devotion to the sick and infirm. He visited the hospital and Áras every day. He spent his last years in Áras. There was a particular poignancy about this. He had always been close to the people there, now he was one of them.
He had his foibles and weaknesses that we all have, but his life was tilted in the right direction. My hope for him is that he is now experiencing the fruits of the resurrection about which he preached so often and in which he believed so deeply. May he be in that place where his horses always come home first, where his cards are always trumps, where the frailties of human life are ended, where there is eternal joy, beauty, peace and love. Fair play to you, Tony, over the bar!