Where Two Traditions Meet: John Sullivan, SJ. 1861-1933
This is a fine book about a very remarkable spiritual person, and written just for our times. It tells the story of Fr John Sullivan SJ, a man whose life (1861-1933) spans the formative years of the Ireland we live in. As the title elegantly indicates, the story integrates many of the absorbing interests of Ireland's two traditions - Anglicanism of the Protestant ascendancy and the Catholic life of the ordinary people at a time when "the powerful and the powerless and the rich and the poor really meet". Though the book is short, 118 pages, the well-sketched historical background gives great substance to this life of Fr John Sullivan, the law graduate who was once known as 'the best dressed young man in Dublin', and later as a man of prayer, with thread-bare clothes and the gift of healing. Ethel Mannin, distinguished author and writer, introduced him to the literary world with her successful novel, "Late Have I Loved You" (1948) inspired by this man's life. The Young Man: John Sullivan's father, Sir Edward Sullivan was Protestant and as Lord Chancellor of Ireland, the most powerful man in the government at the time. His mother was Catholic. Their three boys were Protestant and their only girl was Catholic. A happy and distinguished student at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, John Sullivan carried off distinctions in literature and law at Trinity College. After his father's sudden death in 1885, he qualified in London for the bar and practised in the English courts. Around this time, he began making walking trips through Europe, to Macedonia, Greece and the then Asia Minor. On assignment from the government, he was a member of a peace mission to Armenia, where he saw intense human suffering first-hand. These far-away trips were to reveal his longing for something deeper in life as well as the man's acknowledged wide range of scholarly interests. Close friends noticed the growing admiration he had for St Augustine and St Francis of Assisi at this time. He was to spend two months at Mount Athos in Greece, where the contemplative life as lived there, was to leave lasting impressions. Yet his family and friends were surprised when he was received into the Catholic Church in London, 1891, and more so when, two years later, in his early thirties, he entered the Society of Jesus at Tullamore, Co Offaly. The Jesuit: After Ordination, 1907, he was to spend his life a teacher of the young, first, at Clongowes Wood Jesuit College, Co Kildare, later as Rector at Rathfarnham, and then back at Clongowes again. Yet, these were the years when the John Sullivan of the history books blossomed and grew. Though ever a caring teacher, it was during this time of hectic school involvements that John Sullivan's growing reputation as a man of prayer and penance, his extraordinary compassion, limitless kindness, especially his exceptional devotion to the sick poor far and near, together with his remarkable gift of healing came to be so well-known both inside and outside College confines. Then and later, the figure of the man in thread-bare clerical attire flying along the roads on his bicycle with something for the sick poor tied on the handlebars or at the back, was a familiar sight, as was the same figure firmly walking the roads and bye-roads in his patched footwear in all weathers, on the same errands. His Memory: Fr John Sullivan SJ died on the 18th March 1933 after a short illness, and was buried at Clongowes Wood. Numerous reports of remarkable cures through his prayers began coming in after his death as they had been during his lifetime. In 1947, the initial process for beatification and canonization was set up. His body was exhumed and placed in a special vault in St Francis Xavier's Church, Upper Gardiner St, Dublin in the presence of a tremendous crowd, though no publicity had been given to the event. In 1983, the Church of Ireland archbishop, George Otto Simms, gave the address to honour his life and work at a special service in St George's Church, Temple St., where John Sullivan was baptised. Pope John Paul II sent special greetings for the occasion. The beatification process is still on-going. Message for today:The author of this book, Fr Morrissey, states very succinctly the message of John Sullivan's life for readers of the 21 century. In it he says this: "His simple lifestyle invites one to look beyond the self as the centre of attention, to be interested in the well-being of others, and to discover, as people have in every century, the spiritual dimension that lifts one's life out of the traffic that tends "to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the Spirit."* All who met John Sullivan sensed his goodness and felt touched and uplifted by it." * From Stephen Spender's poem, 'I Think Continually' Review by: CC Publisher: Thomas J Morrissey SJ ASIN/ISBN-None
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