Hundreds of mourners, including President Catherine Connolly, are in attendance at the funeral of 23-year-old Alan McCluskey, who died along with four others in a crash in Louth last weekend.
Alan, his girlfriend Chloe McGee, and friends Dylan Commins, Shay Duffy and Chloe Hipson, were killed when the car they were travelling in crashed on the Ardee-Dundalk road.
His funeral mass in Drumconrath in Meath is hearing about his love for travelling, farming, his work and music.
Alan’s family members brought up gifts to symbolise how he was ‘full of life’.
Homily delivered by Father Finian Connaughton
"Sudden and unexpected death does terrible things to us. Even as we carry out the funeral rituals there is still an air of disbelief, incomprehension that this is happening to someone who sat in these benches two Sundays ago, someone we saw driving his van up the street only a few days ago.
"I think it is fairly accurate to say that we feel something of the shocked confusion that was experienced by those two disciples, who were close friends of Jesus, and whom we meet in today’s gospel. Their disappointment, sense of loss is beyond words - as is ours - they, like us, had their hopes and their dreams, a bright future ahead, but now, as they indicate in their conversation, it seems that it is all over and they are on their way home, nowhere to turn to.
"As I have mentioned at the beginning of Mass, because of the events of Easter Sunday morning there was a turning point ahead for these two disciples, there is a turning point for all of us symbolised by our Easter candle with its promise of new life, a whole new world ahead of us.
"It is fair to say that I knew Alan pretty well, having journeyed with him for his Sacraments of Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation.
"In any parish setting, be it big or small, there will be some families, some individuals that, as a priest, I may be more involved with. This can be so for any number of reasons, perhaps because of regular Mass attendance, involvement in various parish gatherings, and related pastoral activities. The McCluskey family have been very much part of my life for the past twenty-five years. The timeline and the details of our engagments are too numerous to mention but I could begin, I suppose, with Alan's baptism 22 years ago - there was singing that day!! Most recently, in the days after Christmas, there was the memorable candle lit wedding ceremony for Conleth and Sharon, rather special with just the two families involved. There were many, many other happenings in between, music shows in the Parish Centre, decoration around the church for different seasons, parish festivals, a bale of straw for the harvest gathering or the outdoor crib, a mini digger bit of topsoil for the cemetery and, of course, turf on the bog. As a child, in his teenage years, Alan was seldom absent from any of these activities.
"The aspect of Alan's life which I would like to focus on, and from which we can all draw inspiration, was the practice of his faith. In a fairly exceptional way he was extremely faithful to his Baptismal and Confirmation promises attending Mass every Sunday, and being present at many additional church events the most recent being the Redemptorist novena in Dundalk which he fit in every evening after work. While he was known to work every hour that God gave him during the week, he would almost never work on the Sunday. Sunday is there for a reason he would say! The biblical notion of Sabbath, the Day of the Lord, that was ingrained in him from his childhood, was reinforced, I suspect, by his grandad - a seriously religious man.
"Other stories I heard over the past few days show a very caring side to his nature. Ever on the lookout for lads that might be mixing with the wrong company. Again this reflects a lovely Christian virtue, to love your neighbour, keep a look out for them and their wellbeing - that was Alan.
"Our fourth commandment says honour your father and your mother. Alan lived at home and I know he adored his father and his mother, Bernie and Martin. This was quite evident at home in the house, in the yard, or on the site, and it was most clearly displayed here on a Sunday morning when he came here and sat between right up in the front seats in clear view of the whole congregation. At ten years of age that might be normal practice. At anything past the age of twelve or thirteen – well its just not done! What might your friends think?
"Not to canonize him before his time, but Alan was no different to other teenagers in having his own mind on some issues, one of them was school. I seem to remember Alan's mother Bernie talking to me in a very confessional setting one evening ... Alan wants to give up school, and go to work! I am not too clear on the advice that I gave but the record-book tells of Alan being driven, mind you, by his mother, to his final Junior Cycle examination – into the exam hall, paper finished and handed in, in the shortest possible time, so that he could get back on the silage pit ASAP! Not for Alan was the school desk and book learning! His sights were elsewhere, more on the OPEN University of the fields and the fences, the animals, the workplace. From here on in his tutors would be his Mam and his Dad, Bernie and Martin, professors in their own right. In this setting Alan was a good student, a quick learner, top of the class one might say and ready for graduation at just 22 years of age.
"There is the temptation to say that all of that is now ended, there we must stop and reroute. We have that expression from the Scriptures that God’s ways are not our ways, and while we are familiar with it we choose to ignore its implications. We hear expressions like:
- Why did God take him?
- Why does God always seems to take the best?
"Such questions, I suspect, are applying our limited understanding to a realm beyond our understanding. God does not interfere in our lives like that. For me, I prefer the little prayer which says “As God did not lose them in the giving, we do not lose them in their return.”
