Jubilee Celebrations at Oamaru

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 6, 8 February 1923, Page 27

Jubilee Celebrations at Oamaru

Priests and people gathered in large numbers at Oamaru on Monday, February 5, in order to congratulate the Right Rev. Monsignor Mackay on the fiftieth anniversary of his arrival in New Zealand as a priest. No less than four bishops were present, Archbishop Redwood, and Bishops Whyte,. Brodie, and Liston, all making the journey in their desire to do honor to the venerable jubilarian who is still hale and hearty after his half century of strenuous and fruitful work for the Church in this country. Priests also travelled from a considerable distance, amongst those present being: Very Rev. James O’Neill, Waikiwi; Very Rev. P. O’Donnell, Gore; Very Rev. John O’Connell, S.M., Christchurch; Rev. Father Henry, S.M., Waimate; Rev. M. Howard, Milton; Rev. D. O’Connell, Wrey’s Bush; Rev. T. Kavanagh, Palmerston; Rev. J. Foley, Adm., St. Joseph’s; Rev. J. Delany, Adm., South Dunedin; Rev. R. Graham, Oamaru; Rev. A. Fenelon, Oamaru. On behalf of the laity a gold chalice was presented to the Monsignor, and an address was read from the clergy, testifying their esteem and admiration for the jubilarian and his work.

CONGRATULATORY SPEECH BY BISHOP WHYTE. Selecting the text “All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lhrd Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him” (Ep. to the Colossians, 3rd chap., 17th verse), his Lordship Dr. Whyte addressed the assemblage as follows:

This is a day of rejoicing and thanksgivinga day when the people of this parish and the priests and bishops of New Zealand praise and thank God for His long succession of benefits to our venerable jubilarian. A priest of such long and distinguished services as Monsignor Mackay is a boon not only to his own parish and diocese but to every parish and diocese in this land. Hence, the presence of the bishops of Christchurch and Auckland, who are to be joined to-night by our venerated metropolitan, Archbishop Redwood. Hence, too, the presence of many priests who also have come from afar. Bishops and priests are here to show their high esteem for your beloved pastor, Monsignor Mackay. ...; " .

We thank God to-day for having given to this country such a zealous pioneer, a priest who has helped so materially

.to build up the Church in New Zealand and especially in this southern portion of it.

He arrived in this diocese fifty years ago. The fortunes of the diocese were in the hands of that able and gifted ruler, Bishop Moran. He had only three or four priests to cope with the great and growing needs of his See when this young, delicate priest arrived in search of health. That he found what he sought for is proved by the fact that after fifty years of strenuous, uphill work, he is celebrant of the High Mass to-day. We have abundant reason, therefore, to thank God this day for His benefits to this diocese and to this country.

We thank God fer every one of those fifty fruitful years, for every Mass he celebrated, for every penitent he absolved, for every sermon he preached, for every church h built, for every child he baptized— a word, for every act of charity and piety he performed during that richlyblessed and richly-blessing life.

If we are to bless the name of God for everything, if we are to thank Him in adversity no less than in prosperity, we have compelling reasons for thanking Him when the unique event we are celebrating reminds us of His immense favor to this diocese at a critical moment when He sent here Father Mackay. His friends and parishioners in Scotland had prayed for his restoration to health; and, as so easily, so often happens, they forgot the Providence of God and felt that God had not listened to their prayers when the young priest was obliged to go abroad in pursuit of health. Blit the health that his native hills of Scotland had refused him, he obtained from the rugged hills that frown upon the gloomy waters of Lake Wakatipu. That was an important fact in the life of the young priest and no less important in the life and progress of the young diocese.

For all that we thank God this day. Deo Gratias thanks be to God a prayer that the saints have incessantly said and have strongly recommended. A more beautiful prayer, they tell us, the mind cannot conceive, nor pen write, nor tongue pronounce.

It is unnecessary for me to describe to you, my dear people, in much detail the work that Monsignor Mackay has been enabled by God’s grace to accomplish during his long and strenuous life. His work among the miners was attended with great success. The diggers for gold were at heart true as the gold they dug for. They were men who had brought from Ireland strong, lively faith, and the virtues that are built on faith as a foundation. They would have been more than human, if they had always kept themselves without blemish in the midst of the worldliness inseparable from their adventurous calling. But the faith that they had imbibed with their mother’s milk gave them grace to respond to the zealous attention of the young priest, and to clear away from their heart the baser element that concealed its real value just as they won the gold from the clay and sand that enveloped it. Their Irish generosity and Irish faith and Irish piety laid the foundation of the Catholic Church in the Wakatipu. In those days a priest had none of the comforts in

travelling that are enjoyed to-day. Father Mackay had to cover on horseback a vast territory that to-day is considered big in spite of motor cars. Some of his sick-calls were truly Homeric as regards the distances he had to traverse. Truly he sowed in labor, but received his reward in the harvest of souls he secured for the Church and the Kingdom of Heaven.

What he was then in his youth, he still is in his advanced years— with the great reserve force of the silent, patient without complaining, hospitable without being showy, genial within due measure, kind and thoughtful to his people, sympathetic with his fellow-priests and with his religious communities, and loyal and faithful to his Bishop.

Though we are warned against praising a man to his face, I think it due to Monsignor Mackay that we should on this eventful occasion assure him of our gratitude to him for his fifty golden years of service and to help him to thank God for having assisted him to make those years so fruitful of good. He is offering up to-day a Mass of Thanksgiving, and in the collect he beseeches Almighty God not to desert .those on whom He has already bestowed His favors, but to continue assisting them till they are ripe to receive their eternal reward. With that sentiment of humility and gratitude in his mind, Monsignor Mackay will not be spoiled if he has .had to listen. to words of

praise in pronouncing which I am but discharging an obvious and pressing duty. •*. His life has fulfilled in action the words of the Psalmist, “I have loved .the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwclleth.” Though he has erected many churches in the diocese, the one that will stand out as his “masterpiece” is the noble church in which we are assembled. The Basilica King’s Hall, as the word impliesstands as a monument to his courage, zeal, ability, patience, piety, and generosity. The stately building—so symmetrical both within and withoutrecalling and vying with many notable churches of the old world, will remain, from the material point of view, as his greatest work. From the spiritual point of view, his quiet, unassuming piety and his scrupulous fidelity to duty will, in the memory of his parishioners, be regarded as an equally striking monument.

As an instance of the patience and painstaking he lavished on this building, I might call your attention to the Stations of the Cross. -The elaborate search that he made for suitable representations of our Lord’s Via Dolorosa, furnishes one with a fairly adequate idea of what the undertaking, as a whole, must have cost him in the way of thought and anxiety. He visited a large number of*--towns in Italy, France, and other countries in his search for stations that would be capable of breathing piety and sympathy into the hearts of the faithful, and nobody will say that his taste was at fault or his search in vain. From this laborious pilgrimage, we can judge what the whole work must have implied, a fraction of it involving so vast an amount of toil and foresight.

Monsignor Mackay, in the name of the people of this parish, I thank you to-day for your unselfish devotion to duty during the thirty-three years you have been in Oamaru. I thank you for your regular and helpful instruction of the people, your unstinted services to them in the confessional and the sick-room. I thank you for your profound interest in their children, securing for them suitable schools and accomplished, devoted teachers.

In the name of the Sisters, I thank you for the fatherly care you have profusely shown for their spiritual and temporal welfare, your encouragement to them in their various undertakings, your simple piety which showed them the way to Heaven not merely by your words but by your acts.

Speaking for the priests of this diocese, I thank you for your undemonstrative hospitality, your genial companionship which taught them that a priest’s best companions are his brother-priests, your taste for clerical studies which tends to preserve the freshness and vigor and vitality of the priestly spirit. You have always been the “minister of Christ and the dispenser of the mysteries of God,” a true priest and an example to your brethren in the ministry. j ■

I thank you in the name of the deceased bishops of this diocese, of the intrepid pioneer Bishop, Dr. Moran, whom you befriended when friends were few and labored with when the harvest was great and laborers not many; and in the name also of his saintly successor, Dr. Verdon, I thank you for having given him the treasure of your long experience and your store of wisdom.

Lastly, I thank you for your kindness to myself. It was reserved for mo to see you only in your old age and to witness a pastoral activity that-we generally associate with the prime of life. In spite of the great load of years you carry, you have consented to rule this diocese in my absence. For this and for your sound advice on many occasions, and for the opportunity you have given me of seeing old-age in its most attractive setting, I thank you and I say, “May God reward you.”

I am pleased’ that the occasion has been afforded me of stating what this parish, this diocese, nay, this country owe to your labors and your example, and we all to-day join you in thanking God for his favors to you and we pray that He may. still watch over you until, in His own good time, He takes you to Himself, modest and likes to make itself as little as possible.

<Xk) HELD OVER Pressure on our space obliges us to hold over till next issue several of our. diocesan correspondents’ letters and other matter.