Lest We Forget is an occasional series in Mount Carmel dedicated to honouring members of the Carmelite family who have shared in our life and mission, and who have now entered eternal rest. The following article is a homily delivered by Fr Vincent O’Hara at the funeral Mass of Fr Nicholas Madden, held at St Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street, Dublin, on 25 March 2025. Fr Nicholas, a former editor of Mount Carmel, passed away peacefully on 21 March 2025 — ninety-five years after his birth on 15 December 1929. Marked by gratitude and quiet hope, the homily offers a spiritual reflection on Fr Nicholas’s life, ministry, and enduring legacy. To help readers reconnect with his voice and vision, we invite you to revisit the April–May 2022 issue (Mount Carmel 70/2), in which he shared profound insights into the magazine’s founding purpose and its relevance to contemporary readers. At the time of his passing, Fr Nicholas was a member of the Carmelite community at St Teresa’s Church, Clarendon Street, Dublin.

Contrary to general perception, we friars do feel it when one of our brothers leaves us—especially someone like Fr Nicholas, who was a striking presence wherever he went, and who sparkled at many a gathering. One of the things we ask for upon our reception into the Order is what we call ‘the society of the brethren’—and when all is said and done, our best times are the times when we are all together, whether at jubilees or funerals.

To say something remotely adequate about Fr Nicholas would require something of the eloquence of the man himself. You will all have your own personal memories of him. He was part of the life of many of us for many, many years.

In my own case, and for some of my fellow priests here, our first contact with him was over sixty years ago, when he was a fleeting but refreshing stand-in teacher of Latin in Castlemartyr. He was a natural teacher, with a deep love for and knowledge of the Latin language. He was still reading Cicero in Latin well into his nineties.

We caught up with him again in a more substantial way five years later in Wincanton, in the West Country of England, where he held the title Father Master. Five of us raw youngsters were somewhere between novices and newly professed, and he was not only a mentor to us but also a friend. He opened up many things to us. He lightened our spirits in the dog days of a Somerset winter and was a genial companion on sunny summer days as we explored the countryside around mysterious places with exotic names—Cucklington, Stourton and Buckhorn Weston.

As well as giving us substantial teaching on Scripture and English literature, he also introduced us to classical music. A great favourite of his, then and to his dying days, was Cardinal John Henry Newman. He brought an eminent Newman scholar of the day to speak to us about Newman’s classic dissertation entitled ‘On consulting the laity in matters of doctrine’—a document that has become even more relevant today in the Synodal Pathway on which the whole Church now journeys.

As Newman’s Gerontius discovers, confronted with the awesome grandeur and holiness of God, a natural human response is to draw back and ask to be purged and made ready for the face-to-face encounter that God desires for us.

Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
That sooner I may rise, and go above
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day¹

It is in that spirit that we gather here today. Fr Nicholas would not want us to canonise him prematurely, for that would deprive him of the prayers normally offered to speed the dead on their way. He was humble enough to know that, ultimately—like St Thérèse—we all go to God ‘with empty hands’. He would want us to pray for him as he prepares for that encounter with the living God—the God to whom he gave his life, and whom he spent his life reflecting on and speaking about.

His great mentor in all this was St Thomas Aquinas, a figure of profound admiration and enlightenment for Fr Nicholas. I was present in our Student House on Marlborough Road in the 1990s when it was Nicholas’s turn to preach at morning Mass on the feast of St Thomas Aquinas. His homily that day (and I kid you not!) lasted a full forty minutes—so much so that, when Mass was over, the students dashed out the door without breakfast to make it to class in Milltown Park.

With Aquinas in mind, I felt it fitting to choose that first reading from the feast of St Thomas (also used on the feast of St Teresa). It is that lofty Chapter 7 from the Book of Wisdom, and so much of it describes Nicholas and the pursuit of wisdom that was his life’s work. Love of wisdom—that is what philosophy means in Greek, another language Nicholas maintained throughout his life. ‘I prayed, and understanding was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than sceptres and thrones … for she is an inexhaustible treasure.’

Wisdom is described elsewhere in the same book as ‘the breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty, a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished image of God’s goodness’. But it comes at a cost, for there is no escaping the cross, which St Paul calls ‘the power and the wisdom of God’.

Fr Nicholas had his dark days too, which gave him a compassionate understanding of the human condition. He could empathise with that immortal line of Virgil: Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt—‘There are tears at the heart of life, and mortal things touch the human spirit.’²

Returning to St Paul in that second reading, we find the hope that sustains us: Paul speaks of the transitoriness of life, this tent we live in, and the promise of what awaits us—a house built by God, an everlasting home in the heavens. Here we are at the heart of things, central to our Christian faith.

For, in the face of death, we who believe are not like those who have no hope. We believe that death, far from being an end, is the gateway to new life—when the immortal part of us enters into something wonderfully new; when youthfulness is restored and we taste something of the glory of the risen Lord, who is ‘the first-born from the dead’.

Our Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus, and the conviction it gives us that—as Hopkins says—‘we will one day be what he —Jesus—now is, for he once was what we are now’. Otherwise, we might be tempted to echo the words (often quoted by Nicholas) of the woman attending the funeral of the great Cork hurler Christy Ring, who said: ‘It’s a sin to bury a man like that!’

No, we believe, as the reading says, that ‘there is laid up for us a weight of eternal glory, which is out of all proportion to the troubles of life’.

And then the Gospel we have: well, we have kept the Gospel of the Annunciation, which is today’s feast—marking Nicholas’s devotion to the Mother of God. It ties in beautifully with what we are about here: the primordial revelation of God, the beginnings of things for us, and that astounding irruption of God into human history, when Mary gave her Yes to God and opened the way to so much. In all his comings and goings, Fr Nicholas reflected the attitude of Mary: ‘Be it done unto me according to your word’. (Luke 1: 38).

He was a great conversationalist, on all sorts of topics—sacred and secular. And it wasn’t always on an intellectual level, for he was a man with the common touch. His trademark sense of humour—sometimes quirky, never disparaging—was often on display, glass of whisky in hand, as he gave a running commentary on whatever television programme he was half watching and half hearing. He had a comment on everything and everyone, including the newscaster and the weather forecaster!

Ah, he had his eccentricities (don’t we all!) and he was generous in sharing them with the community—and with his friends. He had a vast network of friends, including several close women friends, though he had his own views on women’s issues and never quite warmed to women’s rugby!

All in all, he was a substantial man, and it was a privilege to be in his company over the years, exposed to the boundless mind and the stimulating conversation. He was someone you’d approach to bounce things off—spiritual or otherwise. He was an avid reader. I know of nobody else who could manage to be reading five or six substantial books at the same time! And The Tablet, of course—that weekly English religious publication—which he never missed, week in, week out, and read from cover to cover, though not uncritically, I assure you.

He had an inquiring mind, and that stayed with him to the end. He wanted to know everything—like Alice in Wonderland, he got ‘curiouser and curiouser’. In a lesser person, that might be nosiness; in him, it was intellectual curiosity.

Confronted with the breadth of his vast knowledge, many of us felt like echoing the words of Oliver Goldsmith about the Village Schoolmaster: ‘And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew’.³

He certainly lived life to the full. One of the plays he did with us in Wincanton sixty years ago was T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, and he was particularly taken by the recurring words there, referring to people as ‘living and partly living’. No ‘partly living’ for our Nicholas!

He has been one of the shining intellectual lights—not only of our Province, but of the Carmelite Order. We knew we could hold our own with the best when we put Nicholas in to bat for us. We often felt like uttering the words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus’. And yet you never felt small in his presence, for he was always appreciative and affirming of others’ lesser talents, just as he was humble about his own considerable gifts.

He was a Carmelite through and through, and could hold forth on all the Carmelite saints—though in latter years he had a particular interest in St Edith Stein, whose vast intellect he admired, alongside her total commitment to the Christian and Carmelite calling.

For such an intellectual man, he had a refined appreciation of art in all its forms, and he was never happier than when visiting art galleries—here, in London, and indeed further afield, even to Istanbul, which he knew as Constantinople. He dabbled in art himself, with no mean paintbrush. You could say: he used both sides of his brain. One of our Australian brothers wrote some months ago, reminiscing about Nicholas:

‘When I was a student, new to Ireland, any encounters with Nicholas were mightily uplifting and encouraging. He is one of the few people I’ve met who combined a powerful intellect with a highly developed aesthetic.’

He took great pride in the magnificent stained-glass windows in this church, commissioned for its second centenary in 1993 and beautifully crafted by Phyllis Burke—Phyllis is happily still with us. Fr Nicholas wrote a delightful booklet on the windows, and the more cynical among us felt that Nicholas saw more in them than Phyllis ever intended!

I could go on—and we will go on—as the days unfold, for Fr Nicholas was a substantial man, whose passing leaves a vacuum. But we release him now into the merciful arms of God, into the land of eternal youth, grateful for his time on this earth, enriched by his presence here for ninety-five years.

We’ll leave the final word to his beloved Newman, now a saint. One of the great joys of Fr Nicholas’s final years was being present in Rome for Newman’s canonisation in October 2019:

‘May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!’⁴

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal!

(By the grace of God, may his noble soul rest!)

1. John Henry Newman, The Dream of Gerontius, Part X. Available via Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg .org/ ↩︎
2. Virgil, The Aeneid of Virgil, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (Toronto; New York: Bantam Books, 1981), Book 1, line 462. ↩︎
3. Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (London: W. Griffin, 1770), line 215. ↩︎
4. The quoted prayer is widely recognized as a traditional evening or daily prayer attributed to John Henry Newman. While variations exist, the version cited here is commonly used in religious and devotional contexts. For further reference, please consult the Notre Dame – Newman Centre for Faith and Reason (https://newman.nd.edu) or the Liturgy Office of the Catholic Church in England and Wales (https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk). ↩︎