Brian Lenihan's funeral was true to the man – it was about faith, family, friends and truthfulness, writes KATHY SHERIDAN
THE YEARNING of a family to reclaim a beloved man from public ownership for his final journey was palpable.
The small church of St Mochta in Porterstown, near his home, made no concession to the numbers wishing to bid farewell. There was no glossy order of service; no public offertory gifts to symbolise an extraordinary life; no introductions for those who did the readings, read the prayers or delivered the eulogy; no choirs; no quirkily personal, non-liturgical piece of music at the end. The music, much of it sung in Irish, was provided by a harpist and a soloist. The white dahlias and chrysanthemums on the altar were from a recent wedding.
The essence of Brian Lenihan’s funeral Mass was undoubtedly true to the man himself – it was about faith, family, friends and meaningful language. So 22 priests occupied the tiny altar space; a procession of big, tremulous, male friends made their way to the lectern; the congregation of dignitaries was so tightly packed that the governor of the Central Bank was left standing at the side while Peter Sutherland was escorted to a seat beside Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Sammy Wilson. And outside, on a beautiful June morning, a throng of what celebrant Fr Eugene Kennedy called the gnathmhuintir solemnly applauded the family as they entered the church.
There were few empty words. For anyone who remembered Brian Lenihan’s poignant remark to Dan O’Brien – “I believed I had fought the good fight . . .” – about his lonely journey to Brussels to sign off on the EU-IMF bailout, there was doubtless a startling resonance in the second reading.
His close friend Rory Montgomery read the letter from St Paul to Timothy, urging him to “refute falsehood, correct error, give encouragement. But do all with patience and with care to instruct. The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching but their ears will be itching for anything new. And they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes. And then they will shut their ears to the truth and will turn to myths. But you must keep steady all the time . . . fulfil the service asked of you.
“As for me, my life is already being poured away as a libation and the time has come for me to depart. I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith . . .”
The readers of the prayers of the faithful included Brian’s uncle Conor Devine, his sister Anita, brothers Conor and Niall, and his good friend Frank Chambers, a pain consultant in the Mater hospital who was with him to the end and who prayed that “we may never take the gift of life for granted and strive to live each moment to the full”.
In a 26-minute eulogy, former attorney general Paul Gallagher talked of “a master all the arts”, a man of scholarly brilliance, a great patriot – and a man who failed to understand why anyone would take offence at the criticism and abuse showered on him.
“ ‘Ah Paul’, he’d say, ‘that’s politics, that’s life’.”
“When he wondered, thoroughly perplexed, why the media always stopped him while he has driving into Government Buildings, his staff told him, ‘well, it’s because you always stop the car and always lower the window’. He never stopped doing it, though.
“The Government has done Brian a singular honour of lowering the Tricolour to half-mast on State buildings, of opening a book of condolences in Government Buildings, of providing Brian with a guard of honour on his last journey. These are as magnanimous as they were deserved . . .”
The three qualities that defined him and his public service were duty, honour and country.
As minister for finance, he faced challenges that were “awesome, challenges that required immediate and decisive action, that did not permit of hesitation, that provided no footprints to guide him that required decisions to be made on information or facts which he knew only too well that once those decisions were made, their effects could be thwarted by forces outside his control and outside the control of all of us.
“He never once flinched from any decision, he was imbued with hope, with confidence and with courage.”
He knew well what he was facing with the diagnosis of his fatal and debilitating illness, said Gallagher. “He understood precisely what he had to do and the limited time he had to do it . . . His response to his illness was as awesome as it was inspiring.”
In a story encapsulating Brian Lenihan’s easy, funny familiarity with the classics as if they were recent reports of dodgy political shenanigans, Gallagher told how he phoned him from a family holiday in Corinth, shortly after the diagnosis, to see how he was.
“His first reaction was to thank me for ringing . . . His second was to say, ‘Ah Paul, I’m fine’. And the third was to give me an impromptu and detailed history of ancient Corinth. And he said – ‘Paul, do you know that Corinth was founded by Corinthus who was reputed to be a descendant of the sun god Helius?’ And then he added, ‘well, that’s a myth from the Greek historian Herodotus but you couldn’t trust Herodotus’.”
The congregation erupted in laughter and applause.
He talked of the “utter devotion” of Brian to his family and of their courage. “They enabled him to make courageous and selfless decisions . . . They shared Brian with us. They gave us Brian during the period of his illness. They allowed him continue doing what he did so well. They allowed him be the patriot that he was. Thank you Patricia, Tom and Clare and the Lenihan family for sharing that special man with us,” he said to further applause.
He finished with a few words from Horace’s odes, lines that no doubt Brian would have recognised: “He fashioned a monument more lasting than bronze, a monument higher than the royal site of the pyramids; a monument that cannot be destroyed by gnawing rains, by the unbridled north wind, by the immeasurable succession of years, by the flight of the ages. He will never wholly die; a good portion of his being will escape death, He will never grow fresher in the praise of posterity. Farewell Brian,” he said to heartfelt applause.
As the military pall-bearers bore his coffin from the church to the strains of “May songs of the angels bring you home”, followed by his family, they were greeted with a prolonged ovation from the mourners outside and along the route on his last journey for a private burial at St David’s Church graveyard in Kilsallaghan.