Archbishop Noël always spoke with great affection for the place and the
people from whom he came, in Monaghan. Above all, his admiration and
affection for his parents and the warmth of his family home came through
in many stories that he enjoyed telling. Two stories – about his
parents – stand out for me and I think they tell us something important
about the sources of the life he chose and was called to lead.
The first was a story about his father, John, who was perhaps his first
teacher in the art of diplomacy. Younger people will find this hard to
imagine, but the family had just got a television for the first time. There were only two, or at most three channels to choose from, but a row
broke out among the children about what to watch. According to Noël,
the television was immediately unplugged and taken back to the shop and
that was that. For the next few years there would only be a television
hired for the Christmas season and then returned. In the meantime, it
would be a home of reading and learning; the important lesson that
fights over superficial material things were not to be tolerated.
The second story was about his mother Molly – Archbishop Noël spoke of a
mother who always sought to provide the best she could and whose
creativity in the kitchen reflected the seasons. In the summer she
would send the three children out in the heat of the day to pick
elderflower from the hedgerows and she would make ‘elderflower wine’
patiently waiting each summer for the fermenting to take place. A few
years later when Noël had made his Confirmation and taken the pledge,
his mother denied him this homemade treat with its hint of alcohol,
another lesson – commitments should always be kept. Now, this was a
story that made its way out across this Diocese and elderflower cordial
became a thing that often appeared on the table at Confirmation dinners.
He clearly loved his parents and his brother and sister, John and Mary,
their spouses, Margaret and Jim and their children and their children’s
children and the many cousins with whom he remained close throughout his
life. The capacity for strong bonds of friendship that he shared with
so many people, also beyond the confines of kinship, was born in the
family home. (Noël always had a very full diary. When you would be
trying to make an appointment with him, he might grumble when he could
see business meetings filling the days ahead, but his eyes would light
up when he saw time set aside for meeting his family. Those were a joy
that he always cherished.)
From those two stories I want to point out that Noel learned early – and
he greatly valued the lesson – that a good life will be one based on
principles and values that have to be learned and put into practice.
There was no doubt that the values espoused and expected in that
Catholic home in County Monaghan in the 1950s were based on the Gospel
and the teaching of Jesus and his Church.
Later in Noël’s life when he heard Pope John Paul II, and more recently
Pope Francis, say that it is the duty of every generation of believers
to ensure that ‘faith must become culture’ Noël will have understood
instinctively what he meant because he knew that he had seen it happen
in his own family home. Pope John Paul II said: “Faith that does not
become culture is not wholly embraced, fully thought out, or faithfully
lived.”
I had the great privilege of working with Archbishop Noël here in Down
and Connor in the Living Church project and later still as part of the
Irish Bishops’ Conference and our shared work in Justice and Peace. His
dream for the diocese was of all the baptized, clergy, laity and
religious working together for the mission of the Church and for the
common good. He admired equally the priest who ministered with joy, the
business person who worked and provided jobs that sustained many people
in work, the religious who were to be found on the front lines of
poverty and injustice, the teachers who strove to make a better society
through Catholic education and to bring Christ to young people.
Many people gathered in Brussels on Friday to give thanks for his work
in COMECE, Justice & Peace Europe and his most recent role as
Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union. All of us who worked with him
in all of these different arenas will have witnessed his teasing out, in
very sophisticated ways, the essential link between faith and culture.
We all know about his deep commitment to the European project. That was
born out of a desire to forge a shared, life-giving culture in a
situation of terrible division manifested at its worst in the horrible
excesses of the Second World War. Noël saw that the great leaders of the
recently warring nations had striven to create something in common that
was authentically secular and inclusive. They were convinced, as was
Noël, that the most reliable source for the values that could carry such
a bold project was the Gospel of Jesus.
Archbishop Noël dearly wanted to share his passion for Catholic Social
Teaching with all of us and especially young Catholics. In 2018,
inspired by the World Peace Messages of Pope Francis, Archbishop Noël
wrote a Pastoral Letter aimed at students and young adults. When I read
over it now I have a sense of his frustration that the glorious
patrimony of Catholic Social Teaching is not constantly before our eyes
and on our lips; our faith tells us that ‘every human life, every human
person is a mystery’ and must be treated as such.
Listen to some words from that Pastoral:
“The faith experience of the early Christian believers, since the first
Easter, provided an impetus for them to reflect on how they should
relate to their neighbours and to their persecutors. They emphasised
the contribution of Christian values for the wellbeing of the body
politic in dialogue with the Jewish, Roman and Hellenistic communities
in which they were living.”
“Later on, during the Middle Ages, the Christians established conditions
on how to act within situations of conflict which became known as the
‘Just War Theory’ emphasising the principles of proportionality, justice
and protection of life in the face of adversity.” How important those
medieval principles of ‘proportionality, justice and protection of life’
are in relation to the wars raging before our eyes today, most
especially Gaza and Ukraine.
He quoted for the young people a section from the Letter to Diognetus, written around the year 130 AD.
“Christians are indistinguishable from other men and women either by
nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities
of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way
of life. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human
doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general,
they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in,
whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live
in their own countries as though they were only passing through. Like
others, they marry and have children, but they do not destroy their
offspring. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of
heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends
the law…Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to
death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many;
they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything
…They are defamed but vindicated.”
Noël knew that the culture of the Treanor household in the 1950s was in
continuity with the early Christians, with the Letter to Diognetus, and
it was also very different from them. The Ireland of the 1950s was, of
course, monochrome and had its great faults as well as its strengths.
We are blessed and challenged in equal measure to be living into a
future truly diverse, for which we are not well prepared. That, I
believe, was why Archbishop Noël wanted our young people to be schooled
in the social teaching of the Church. The role of committed Catholics
in the formation of a new world order will not be to ‘impose’ our
vision, as Pope Benedict XVl put it so well. It will be our duty,
rather, to invite and ‘propose’ a wholesome culture worthy of human
beings created in the Image of God, a culture inspired by the truth,
justice and mercy taught to us by the Lord Jesus.
Here at his funeral Mass, we remember that Archbishop Noël was a family
man and much-loved friend of many people; he was a very accomplished
individual; a priest, a bishop, an archbishop, a papal nuncio. All of
those things are hugely important but on his funeral day we are invited
to remember that none of those is the most important.
The most important thing is that Noël Treanor was baptised and born into
new life in Christ. The words written by Saint Paul to the Romans that
we heard earlier were meant for him:
“If we are children, we are heirs as well; heirs of God and coheirs with
Christ, sharing His suffering so as to share His glory. I think that
what we suffer in this life can never be compared to the glory, as yet
unrevealed, which is waiting for us.”
“… the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us.” We do not
say such things because they come naturally to our 21st century
sensibilities, because we intuit them naturally ourselves. No, we do
not; we say them because they have been promised us by the Risen Lord
Jesus and we, by the grace of God, choose to believe them. On Noel’s
behalf, let us hear Jesus speak:
“I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too.
You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said, “Lord,
we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus
said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
We commend Archbishop Noël to Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
May he have a resting place in the company of the Saints.
Leaba i measc na naomh go raibh aige. Amen