Archbishop’s Homily at Mass for the Feast of St Laurence O’Toole

Mass for Feast of St Laurence O’Toole
St Andrew’s Church, Westland Row
14 November 2026

Homily of Archbishop Dermot Farrell

We gather to celebrate someone who was a shepherd, a pastor of the Lord’s flock in the true sense of the word. He left us the witness of his life. His prayer life demanded a life that was marked by simplicity and self-discipline. I have no doubt that if St Laurence O’Toole were alive today, he would encourage us to find ways to reach the hearts of the today’s peoples of Dublin, and beyond with the gift of the gospel.

St Laurence O’Toole laboured to restore peace between enemies; he was not only a man of prayer, but his faith was seen in action in the way in which he cared for the poor and homeless people.  Many of the issues he confronted are still with us today.  These challenges are what Pope Leo XIV continues to put before every member of the Church today.  He has repeatedly warned against a faith that is busy with activities but blind to real suffering.   The Church must “leave behind all passivity and indifference” and cannot remain “unengaged spectators” while people are crushed by injustice, discrimination, and violence. (General Audience, September 2, 2026)

Pope Leo urges priests and communities to ask a simple but piercing question about everything they do: “Why?”— and to evaluate whether their initiatives truly lead people to Christ and serve the parishes’ actual wounds. (18^th September 2026)

Of course, activity is not the same as encounter.  It is not enough to ask whether an initiative is “well organized” or “well attended”; the real question is whether it “truly leads to Christ” and “brings the Gospel into contact with the real lives of the people.”  A parish that multiplies meetings but does not become a pastorally converted Church to walk with Christ among those whom it cares for risks becoming what the Gospel warns against: busy, even impressive, yet spiritually hollow.

A faith that tends to its outward rituals but is blind to invisible suffering is nothing but a rehearsed theatre.  We must “unmask the contradictions” of a world where wealth and technology advance while hunger, poverty, and loneliness persist.

Who are the unseen sufferers in our communities?  The Holy Father’s own descriptions help us name them: those who feel “bewildered” and can no longer find where to meet the Lord; those who participate in many activities yet remain spiritually adrift; those who serve in silence and are never publicly acknowledged; those who are “crushed by injustice, discrimination, and violence” and for whom the Church must “lend our voice” and “be their friends.”

Pope Leo insists the option for the poor is “primarily a theological category,” not just a social or political stance. We are called, “to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their political stance. We are called, “to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them.”  Like St Laurence that moves us from vague sympathy to concrete friendship and responsibility.

What does this look like in practice, in light of St Laurence’s life and the Holy Father’s guidance?

• Ask “Why?” about every ministry. Does this activity help people encounter Christ and address real needs, or is it habit and inertia?
• Be a Church that listens—above all to the authentic voice of the Holy Spirit. Pause to recognize what has borne fruit, what has not, and why; involve the whole community, even those “from the outside.”
• Prioritize encounter over efficiency, productivity and performance. Focus on “whom and how to encounter” before “what to do”; let people be known by name, not treated as numbers.
• The conversion to which the Church is called needs to be grounded both in the call to deepen personal holiness and an institutional reform within the Church that facilitates the full participation of all the baptised in the life and mission of the Church—ecclesial discernment, decision-making, implementation and a culture of transparency, accountability and evaluation, practices that are intimately connected. Such responsibility flows from baptism itself. (see Final Document, The Synod of Bishops, 2024, 11)
• “Work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results.”  This will help “us patiently to endure difficult and adverse situations or inevitable changes in our plans. It invites us to accept the tension between fullness and limitation, and to give a priority to time.” (See Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel,  223)
• Stand with the invisible. “The Church, if she wants to be Christ’s Church, must be a Church of the Beatitudes, one that makes room for the little ones and walks poor with the poor, a place where the poor have a privileged place” Pope Leo, Message for World Day of the Poor 2026, no 21). Follow our Patron Saint’s example and take on the burdens of their brothers and sisters and bind up their wounds
• Unmask contradictions. Refuse to accept a faith that coexists comfortably with indifference to poverty, violence, isolation, homelessness and injustice. As Pope Francis reminded us “none of us can be saved alone. (Message for World Day of Peace, 2023)

This is not about adding more programmes. It is about letting the Gospel reshape our attention and our priorities.  Every priest knows the challenges of aligning pastoral care and fidelity to Church teaching coherently and in fruitful tension.   The tensions placed before us about how doctrine and pastoral care should be related in practice can cause fear and feelings of pastoral impotence.  But, when we focus only on rule-keeping, offering a false hope of faith without ambiguity, people know where they stand in relation to a law, but lose sight of where they stand in relation to God. (see Timothy Cardinal Radcliffe, “Hoping Against Hope,” Synod Retreat Meditation, 1 October 2023).  Like our Patron Saint, however, we have the certainty that God has entered our world, fills us with courage, empowers us and sends us out on daily mission among his people.

The challenge of St Laurence O’Toole and Pope Leo is not to abandon ritual but to ensure that ritual leads to love.  We want communities where no one is “anonymous, invisible and misunderstood,” where people feel “welcomed, accompanied, valued and jointly responsible,” and where the Church truly shares the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of our time, especially the poor and afflicted.

Inspired by the example of St Laurence and confident that the divine life which sustained him is also at work in our lives, we renew our commitment to the service of the people of this diocese, that they may recognise the hand of God at work in their lives, and the fullness of life God desires for all that he has created.  Another great saint, wrote the following line that, though not specific to the Irish situation and in need of a slight transposition, is apposite to St Laurence whose entire life was distinguished for gentleness and charity and the quest for peace. “If you would be the person you are meant to be, you could set fire to the whole of the Archdiocese of Dublin.” St Catherine of Siena, Letter to Stefano Marconi, T 368, Le Lettere, vol 5, Tommasèo edition , Florence: Giunti, 1940, p 266).