We remember at this time Father Bernard O’Dea OSB – the first Irishman to enter the monastic community at Glenstal Abbey – whose 25th anniversary takes place later this month.
Born in Inagh, County Clare, on 3rd October 1909, Gerald O’Dea went to school at St Flannan’s College in Ennis. He briefly attended the Patrician Brothers’ School in Mountrath, County Laois.
Matriculated in 1928, he trained as a pharmacist and worked as an apprentice in Dublin. Having been advised and introduced by an Augustinian spiritual director, he entered Glenstal Abbey on 19th June 1932, receiving the name Bernard. He made profession on 1st October 1933, the first monastic profession in Glenstal. The following day, he went to our motherhouse of Maredsous Abbey in Belgium for further formation and studies.
Following the study of philosophy there from 1933 to 1935, he studied theology at the Congregation’s scholasticate in the monastery of Mont César in Louvain from 1935 to 1938. He made solemn profession at Glenstal on 1st October 1936. Returning definitively to Glenstal, he was ordained priest in Thurles on 12th June 1938. While finishing his theological studies here, he was appointed Subprior and Guestmaster.
When travel to and from Europe became possible once more after the Second World War, Glenstal Abbey’s founding abbot, Dom Celestine Golenvaux, visited the monastery for the month of October 1945. On 8th December of that year Father Bernard was appointed prior of what was still a dependent foundation. On 6th February 1948, the monastery achieved independence as a Conventual Priory and Father Bernard was appointed Conventual Prior. He held this office until forced by ill health to resign on 1st August 1951.
During Father Bernard’s term as Prior, many initiatives were taken. On 9th October 1948, a university hostel was opened at Balnagowan, a house in Palmerston Park in Dublin. A year later, a good tillage-farm with a substantial house at Ballyvoreen – some five miles from Glenstal – was acquired from the brother of Archbishop Harty. Always interested in horses, Father Bernard encouraged riding in the school and there are photographs of him giving an exhibition of show-jumping on one of the playing-fields. He once said, “give me a horse and I’ll live for ever.” However, when he fell from a horse near the back lodge in his late eighties, community sympathy was limited!
A major decision taken was to build a monastic church, as the temporary chapel of 1932 was proving increasingly inadequate. Dom Sebastian Braun of Maredsous was appointed architect. Father Gregory Barry, an accountant and former Spiritan priest, was appointed director of fundraising. The estimated cost at the time was £75.000.oo – about €3.6 million in today’s money. In the impoverished Ireland of the period, the only possibility of financing such a major undertaking was to supplement local endeavours, such as a Silver Circle, with foreign assistance. The main focus was on the United States. From February to September 1951, Father Bernard and Father Gregory made a successful tour of that country, exploiting Father Bernard’s network of County Clare exiles, many of them priests. From this period, Father Bernard’s admiration and reverence for the United States, already strong, remained undimmed. He returned to Glenstal for the laying of the foundation-stone on 14th October 1951. This occasion marked the emergence of the monastery into wider public awareness. The foundation-stone was laid by Archbishop Kinnane of Cashel and the ceremony was attended by the President of Ireland, Mr. Seán T. O’Kelly.
Following his resignation as Prior, Father Bernard took a long holiday on medical advice. In the archives there is a photograph of him skiing in Switzerland. The photograph does not tell the whole story as one such descent ended in a broken leg!
On his return to Ireland, Father Bernard assumed the running of Balnagowan and continued an expanded ministry as a retreat-giver in Ireland and abroad which he maintained until late in life. For a short period, he resumed the role of Guestmaster.
As time went on, he suffered progressively from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which made it difficult for him to support the Irish winter. In the early 1980s he spent two years with the developing foundation in Nigeria in Ewu-Isan. On his return, he began to spend extended winter-periods in Florida, being hosted by his network of Irish priest-friends. Increasing frailty eventually made such sojourns impossible but Father Bernard was helped somewhat by the purchase of a full-spectrum sun-lamp.
Despite indifferent health, he maintained his huge network of friends and a vast correspondence. He was a great believer in what he believed to be the values of the 1916 Rising, and of the superiority of Irish country culture of neighbourliness and self-help as exemplified in the Muintir na Tíre movement, founded in 1937 by his life-long friend, Canon John Hayes of Bansha, County Tipperary. To the end, he remained an inveterate ‘tracer’, that is, a tracer of family lineage. Once successfully identified, the traced would be told. “I have you now,” he would say.
His last years were punctuated by frequent stays in hospital. It was not until the final days of his life that he began to accept that he was not going to recover from the cancer that had been diagnosed. He spent his last ten days in Milford Hospice, continuing to receive friends and well-wishers. Father Andrew Nugent stayed with him round the clock and was present when he finally died in the early morning of 23rd May 2000.
May he rest in peace.