DOM Bernard O'Dea OSB, who died on May 23rd aged 90, was the first Benedictine monk to be professed in Ireland since the Reformation. He was pre-eminently a man of God, a quality which found expression in his warm humanity and joyful, welcoming spirit. Furthermore, he had a great capacity for friendship and in latter years loved to quote Belloc:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
He was born Gerald O'Dea, the son of school teachers, in Inagh, Co Clare, on October 3rd, 1909. He attended St Flannan's College, Ennis. While training to be a pharmacist in Dublin, he was encouraged to become a monk by Fr John Burke, a university chaplain and later bishop of Simla in India.
In 1932 he entered the newly-founded Glenstal Abbey in Murroe, Co Limerick. He studied philosophy (and French) at Maredsous Abbey in Belgium and theology at Louvain University. He was ordained priest in Thurles, Co Tipperary, in 1938. Fr John Hayes, a native of Murroe parish and the founder of Muintir na Tire, preached at his ordination.
He served as prior of Glenstal during the period 1945-1952. During his priorship the foundation stone of Glenstal church was laid, and a decision taken to establish Balnagowan university residence in Dublin. Dom Bernard spent about 15 years at St Benedict's in Nigeria. He visited the US on several occasions: to conduct retreats, to raise funds, and for health reasons. In his earlier days in Glenstal he was a keen horseman and often hunted with the "Black and Tans". He taught Christian doctrine at Newport Technical School during the period 19731983. He loved the Irish language and had a deep affection for his native county. Until his final illness he visited prisoners in Limerick jail.
Having lost an uncle - a young officer in the National Army - during the Civil War, Dom Bernard had no time for verbal patriotism. He shared the practical idealism of Canon Hayes, who sought to reverse the decay of rural Ireland. He delivered a seminal lecture on Canon Hayes and Pearse in Bansha, Co Tipperary, in 1966, the golden jubilee of the Easter Rising. Conscious that independent Ireland had failed to treat all its children equally, he didn't think there was much to celebrate. The church had foundered, too: "We are emotionally devout, but in fundamental Christianity generally under-educated."
He warned: "Should we be deluged by an incessant babble of thinly disguised self-display - should there be a `cashing in' on the occasion to distract from our economic plight, then our jubilee will end in blight, and a noble cause will have been desecrated."
Many of the children Pearse had seen playing on the streets of little towns in Connacht were now in English cities, he said. (Emigration doubled between 1931 and 1951.) Those were the people for whom Pearse and his comrades had died - "and for whom Fr Hayes lived and worked himself to death . . . They were looked upon as the herdsmen's children were long ago - `they'll manage somehow'." He predicted the second-generation Irish in Britain would be a force with which to reckon.
Fr Hayes's life, he continued, "was witness that anybody who has been touched by God's grace can never again live comfortably or in mediocrity . . . One night by the fire in Bansha we were discussing the courageous Pearse, when Fr John said: `Ah, God help the man with the vision of how Christ loves the people - there is no come back - he has to go on, on, right into the fire.' That's where they met, Fr John and Pearse."
Dom Bernard was an anam chara in the monastic tradition of St Benedict, an apostolate facilitated by his prodigious memory and breadth of friendship. People flocked to Glenstal for his advice and his letters also enriched the lives of many. He was a lovable if slightly disorganised confrere. He supported Mother Mary Martin at a critical juncture in her founding of the Medical Missionaries of Mary. He believed in the dignity of work, which he wrote (in one of his articles for the Muintir na Tire handbook) "is intended by God to develop our potentialities". He concluded a letter from Nigeria in 1983: "Victory always belongs to the person who forgives, because forgiveness is the seed of resurrection."
Dom Bernard's last days were blessed with many leave-takings. "Everything is working out just grand," was his repeated comment. He was lost increasingly in wonder at the redemptive effect of God's love, which is summed up in the Eucharist, his Abbot recorded. "It was all part of his constant awareness of the endlessly generous goodness of God to him, personally, in being forgiven and in the prospect of his being recreated in the resurrection (a matter which greatly focused his attention)."
He is survived by two sisters: Mrs Dilly Garrihy and Sr Marion O'Dea.
Gerald Dom Bernard O'Dea: born October 1909; died, May 2000