The College Chapel Revisited
- Fr. Jim Butler, C.C. Murrintown -
The glass double doors of the College Chapel always create a racket as one pulls open the left hand panel. This racket resounds from the flagged floor to the very tip of the arched ceiling.
It then cascades down over the organ and trips over the edge of the gallery to fall on the ear of the visitor in such a manner as to almost make him feel that he is a disturbance.
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When the echoing dies away again the silence resumes its own intensity.
This silence is dense not only with itself but it seems to embrace the yearnings, hopes, pain and vulnerability of youthfulness, and all at the same time presents one with what one once was and with what one has become.
The college motto Disce Prodesse (Learn to be useful) immediately springs to mind.

Memory is frequently obedient to sounds and smells. On a bright February


Fr. Jim Butler
afternoon this year once again pulled that door and re-created that echoing racket.
That afternoon the rattling door turned the rusted key of time and for the briefest moment I could
see things as they used to be.
Tiered to each side of the broad aisle, and framed between the heavily carved pew ends, rows of boards stared across at each other.

I cannot say now that the focus was always the ebb and the flow of the liturgy routinely celebrated under Pugin's tripytch, splendid in its shades of Gothic Revival. Neither can one say definitively that within the individuality of each heart the Holy Spirit, or that which was then called Sanctifying Grace, was not performing its task of creating and shaping as much as flowing tides re-create our shores.
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What can be said is that we at that time were all filled with the hope of better things to come and with the vulnerability of our own humanity. I cannot now remember if in our years of secondary education we thought much beyond the day in hand. My era preceded the insights of career guidance and counselling. To endure, get through, score and get the better of the system was the immediate aim and, alas, the painfully recollected limitations.

In the remarkable words of T.S. Elliot" destiny waits in the hands of God shaping the still unshapen". For us the key of time has turned and from the river of life has flowed out into comedy, fulfilment and tragedy. Much of our destiny has now unfolded and much still waits in the silence of God. The silence of this place now is mystery and salutes the mystery which lies deep within each person. The spring sunlight spilled through the lancet latticed windows that recent afternoon and caressed the brown and gilded timbers. The rose window was as resplendent as ever. My echoing footfall did not disturb my thought and I saw again a hundred faces, heard their voices, and wished them well wherever they might be. In a mystical way the Sacredness of their persons can here be celebrated through memory.

While the sanctuary light does not now bespeak the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, the symbols of the sanctuary are as eloquent as ever. From royal blue the Trinity symbol reaches out to tell its truth. The instruments of the Passion are poignant. The last journey of the Lord, tastefully illustrated in the splendidly imposing Bavarian carved Stations of the Cross, proclaims the great truth that all our tragedies and pain have been sanctified in the one who walked the path before us. The Lamb boldly displays the banner of resurrection. The river of life flows on in comedy fulfilment and tragedy, but we who once gathered here are now identified and anchored in the reality which these symbols seek to communicate. This identity and the scroll over the sacristy door has the sense of things:
Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum (To the God who makes joyful my youth).
Perhaps not so certain, though, is an ample and fitting appreciation of this magnificent Pugin edifice by present and past generations of students.



   - Visitor Activity since 25th September, 2006