Mission In The Mall

By Father Dan Joe O’Mahony OFMCap

Deep-sea fishing is very hard work! It’s also a good image of what I’m doing at the moment. It’s very different from the time I was chaplain in various community schools where life was very structured and I had great support. But, we work under the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit; each day praying, ‘Oh, that today you would listen to the voice of the Lord...Listen...Today...Listen to the Spirit.’ And this has led me to my present position: I am an industrial chaplain, working in a town center or shopping mall.

The Oratory, beside the Yellow Entrance to The Blanchardstown Centre in West Dublin, Ireland, is my base of operation. It seats 70. In the Centre itself, we have 4,000 staff working in 156 outlets and we had 14 million shoppers last year. We in The Oratory are tenants. We are part of a collaborative effort between the Archdiocese of Dublin and the Capuchin Friars.

Let me say I am happy to work here in this oasis of welcome, friendship, silence, peace and prayer – a witness to God in the marketplace. Hopefully, we are flexible, user-friendly and especially want to show the compassionate face of Christ to the 200 or more people who visit The Oratory each day. This demands that we live the incarnation each day – dealing with the messiness of life, with its joy, pain, hurt, confusion, anger, reconciliation and peace.

I know why St Paul said, ‘We apostles are at the end of the parade, the scum of the earth, the off-scouring of the universe,’ in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth. We’re laughed at by the practical ones of this world. They ask: What have you to show for your work? We’re fishing around, we answer. We’re enticing hearts and calling them into love. Our catch is hard to measure and the product is never completed by closing time.

In a sense, The Oratory is like a hermitage, as we spend about 70 hours a week waiting or gazing on the Lord – a God of surprises who helps us be creative in our prayer and liturgies. St Aidan got it right when he said, ‘Meet people where they are.’ He realized that the Spirit of God works from below up, prompting and urging us to risk at times and to speak the truth in love.

We are blessed in many ways here in The Oratory: with the good will of the manager, our volunteers who staff the office and phone, the people who give alms and food which ties in with the life of  a mendicant friar, which is what I am. The Blanchardstown Centre is a focal point for 100,000 people, many of whom are anonymous – people who work in IBM, 3Com or Mailinckrodt, developing a Silicon Valley here in Dublin 15. And we are still growing; we have about a dozen builders’ cranes working in various parts of The Centre at the moment.

http://bcoratory.irishcapuchins.com/chaplain.html