Fr Patrick Heekin

Born 12th January 1924

Ordained Priest 12th June 1960

Died 24th March 2006

well done, good and faithful servant

Requiem Mass for Patrick Joseph Heekin, priest.  28th March 2006.  

82 years is not a great age – but it is a very good age. Who would have thought after Father Pat’s first stroke over twenty years ago that his active ministry would have continued for so long? And active ministry it was – he said Mass in the morning of the day he was admitted to hospital. How can one hope to sum up the richness of a life in a few words? The answer is, of course, that it just cannot be done. Tomorrow, others, much better qualified than I, will pay tribute to Father Pat. All I want to do this evening is to try to say why it was that he was held in such high esteem in this parish, where he lived out these last eight years. 

Father Pat was deeply respected because he was a priest. I do not mean by that simply that he was ordained by Cardinal Godfrey nearly forty six years ago – but that priesthood and Patrick Joseph Heekin were melded into one – they were inseparable, two sides of a single coin.  For him, priesthood was not a function, or a job - it was a life, his life. Some words written by a German Jesuit called Karl Rahner seem particularly appropriate.  “You are only what you should be as a priest if you bring your whole life into your vocation. You are only a priest such as a priest must be, if you drain all the strength of your life in carrying out the duties of your office in faith, hope and love. Your life-work is to establish an ever closer intimacy between yourself and your office. Your vocation is your life and your life your vocation”.

Rahner goes on to say: “You have no private life that might be built independently of and outside your priesthood. For you being a Christian is being a priest and vice versa”.  Father Pat loved his Irish roots – he was what his culture had made him. It goes without saying that he loved his family very much, and that his friendship, once given, was deep and committed. But nothing was more precious to him than his obedience to what he believed was being asked of him in the service of God’s People.  There can be few priests who have moved about so little: four places in the best part of fifty years – two of them covering thirty four years between them – what a record of stability and faithfulness!

And faithfulness is the word.  Faithfulness to the teaching of the Catholic Church. There was nothing of novelty about Father Pat’s preaching. Like him it was sound, solid and uncomplicated. He had a clear vision of truth and that he communicated to others, particularly in that large grace-filled area of his priestly life which was spent in the preparation of young adults for marriage. Faithfulness, too, to the rhythms of his own priestly life. Mass offered each day, office recited without fail, the same patterns of prayer giving structure to his day. And of course central to that personal rhythm, was the rosary – in his spare time Father Pat must have made and given away many hundreds of rosaries: the rosary was never far from his hands, and it was, thank God, still there, intimately part of him, in his dying hours.  Father Pat had a tender, devotion to our Lady, and to her loving intercession we commend him this night.

The passage from Karl Rahner goes on: “The candle on the candlestick in the house of the Church that you are to be must burn by the oil of your on heart, must burn all your life away. Only then will it burn, as it must. One can only discharge this office by paying one's life for it”. Father Pat has made his final oblation. What he offered to God on the day of his priestly ordination, what he renewed each day, the sacrifice of his life, has now been accepted. The oil has been used up – a life has burned itself out for the Gospel. It is fitting that the last part of the journey should have been completed during these Lenten days. Father Pat went into hospital on Shrove Tuesday: the past three weeks were not easy – in many ways it was a time spent with Jesus in the wilderness, an experience of Gethsemane. But last Friday there was a peace and serenity about him. At the very end, it was a gentle passing into God’s embrace – no struggle, only a final “yes”, the consummation of a priestly life.

But there is one all-important area, which I have not mentioned thus far. The Cure d’Ars famously says : “the priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”.  The people of Kingsland found God’s love reflected uniquely to them through Father Pat, in his warmth and sense of humour. Since Friday, so many people have spoken about his jokes – though some have admitted that they could not always tell when he was joking! Not an overtly demonstrative person, nonetheless, everyone coming into contact with Father Pat felt, instinctively, the openness, generosity and affection of the man. “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord”. May he rest in peace.

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