Page 1833 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 May 2005
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the furnishing of the sanctuary. When I first saw the Bermagui church in about 1990 or 91, I was immediately struck by the make up of the sanctuary. The altar, the pulpit, the baptismal font and much else seemed to be made for the most part of a collection of laminex and three ply. That may be to the taste of some. But not to Fr Lynch’s. He had his old architect friend Ernst Munns, who had worked with him on the Curtin church and who was by this time a dying man draw plans for the refurbishment of the sanctuary. Ernst did these in pencil sketches, but he died before he could complete the plans. Fr Lynch, however, pressed on and completed the refurbishment in exquisite air dried native timbers. The sanctuary is now one of great beauty.
In the last 5 years, he has not been idle. He has bought himself a house in Bermagui opposite the church in what I think is not the best street in the town but the second best. He has also commissioned the re-leading of the stained glass windows of the church at Cobargo. He will tell you himself whether they are yet completed.
In addition to all the activities and enterprises to which I have adverted, Fr Lynch was also a gardener, a pastoralist and cattle dealer. In every parish to which he was attached, he always found time to keep a vegetable garden. The other two occupations he engaged in only when he visited his old home in Doora. On arrival there he would buy a few young cattle, pasture them on the property and sell them as he was about to leave. I never heard that he suffered a loss on any of these enterprises but surely he must have. No one can be universally successful!
In his relations with the motor car he has not been universally successful. He has been involved in two serious accidents, either one of which could have sent him home - to his eternal home. I believe that in the first he had a passenger, a fellow priest, who maybe thought he was in heaven. The car was on its roof. Both driver and passenger were hanging by their seat belts when the passenger said “Where are we Barney? ”
All these activities to which I have adverted were undertaken not as objects in themselves but as adjuncts to his primary vocation which has been to bring the Mass, the sacraments and pastoral guidance and support to all people in the communities of which he became a part.
Fr Lynch has told me that he had never really contemplated retiring and thought he would go out in a box. But last year, the Archbishop raised with him the question of retirement. As he pondered the matter overnight, he realised that he was tired and that it was time to relinquish the responsibilities of a parish. He says that he really didn’t know how to go about asking leave to retire and that, in the end, he was most grateful to the Archbishop for having relieved him of the need to make that decision. His retirement will be fully effective when parishes on the south coast are amalgamated on 1 July. By that time I expect he will be in Ireland for a well earned holiday after celebrating, with others who were ordained with him the actual 60th anniversary of ordination.
I believe that we have all profited from knowing Fr Lynch and being exposed to his influence. I do not mean that we have profited financially. My experience is quite to the contrary. When I recall his life in the years that I have known him, I cannot but think of the parable of the talents. He was given many talents by his maker. He did not hide them under a bushell or bury them in the ground. He put them all to work to the glory of God and to the true well-being of all those who came in contact with him. I am, and I expect all of you here tonight are, the better for having known him and worked with him and enjoyed his company.
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