Full disclosure: I love Ireland. I’ve been four times and I’m already planning a fifth trip. The countryside’s beauty is one thing — but it’s the people who make the difference. The hospitality, the music and the frequent laughter make it one of my favorite places in the world. On my most recent trip, I realized something that may come as no surprise to many of you: We could all stand to be a little more Irish, and more than just on St. Patrick’s Day. Here’s why.
My friends and I were looking for live music. We’d heard there was a pub in Lahinch, a small village along the Wild Atlantic Way, that might have a session going, so we set off one evening hoping for a bit of craic. We found Slattery’s easily enough — attached, oddly, to the Church of the Immaculate Conception next door. Through the windows we could see people gathered, glasses raised, the warm glow of a room that looked like exactly the kind of place we were after. But the gate was shut. The doors were closed. No way in.
We turned to leave and try our luck elsewhere, but a man came out to meet us. His name was Tommy, and he owned the pub. He asked if he could help us, and we told him we were just looking for a place to hear some music that night. Tommy’s face softened. “I’m sorry to tell you,” he said, “we’re having a wake for one of our villagers. We just held the service in the church and now we’re gathering here to remember him. His name was Ray.”
Then, unprompted, Tommy told us about Ray. For the next 10 minutes, this stranger gave us the whole of a man’s life — where he was born, the house he’d lived in (Tommy pointed it out down the street), the work he’d done, the kind of neighbor he’d been. We hadn’t asked. We’d never met Ray. But Tommy told his story anyway, because it seemed to matter that we know it.
Then he said something I didn’t expect: “You all seem like good folk. Why don’t you come in and have a drink in honor of Ray?” And so four American strangers found ourselves at a wake, raising a glass to a man we’d never known, welcomed into a grief and a gratitude that wasn’t ours until Tommy made it ours.
A funeral procession in Lahinch, Ireland.
As we left, Tommy asked what we had planned for the next day. We told him we were headed to the Aran Islands. “If you’ve time,” he said, “come back tomorrow afternoon. We’re processing Ray down Lahinch’s main street — giving him a proper send-off, the whole village walking with him one last time.” We went. We joined the procession for a man we’d met only through another man’s love for him.
I’ve thought about that often since coming home — and about the fact that Slattery’s and the Church of the Immaculate Conception share a wall. Because that’s really the whole point. What happened in the church that day was the sacrament — Ray commended to God, his soul entrusted to mercy. But what happened next door was something the Church needs just as much: the story carried out into the street, told to strangers, made shareable. Tommy didn’t preach at us. He just told us who Ray was, and then made room for us in it.
That’s evangelization. Not an argument to be won or a doctrine to be explained, but a story — the story of what Christ has done in a life, in a parish, in a diocese — told so naturally and so generously that the hearer finds themselves invited in, not lectured at. Too often we treat what happens inside our churches as separate from what happens in our communities, as if grace stops at the door. In Lahinch, it walked right through it, down the street and into a pub.
So if you ever find yourself in Lahinch, swing by Slattery’s, and stop into the Church of the Immaculate Conception next door and say a prayer for Ray. And wherever you are, remember Tommy. Tell your story. Then invite someone else to become part of it.
