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By Root 321 0

I’ve only ever been to a handful of Catholic Masses, and they always send a prickle down my spine. In the Church of England of my childhood, people enunciated like Radio 4 continuity announcers, even in prayer, but in Catholic rituals, everyone seems to close their throat down to produce an invocation that’s half-voiced, half-hummed. It’s strangely effective, and I remembered being both moved and slightly freaked out on hearing thousands doing it together at the Knock shrine two decades earlier, and, a few years before that, when I went with my mate Liam and his family to see the Pope at Coventry Airport. Not being able to make out the individual words is an advantage as far as I’m concerned: the sound and the feeling are all that matter, washing over me in waves of unfathomable mystery, and I don’t start getting annoyed by the overly pious or bigoted bits. It’s the same reason that I love going to any religious service in a language I don’t understand. Choral Evensong in St David’s Cathedral has been ruined now that I’ve learned Welsh, so I’m always on the hunt for a bit of Latin.

Leaving Boheh, refreshed physically by chocolate and spiritually by Father Fahey’s stone-topped Mass, we were within spitting distance of the Reek, but you wouldn’t have known it. The great mountain had shown us not so much as a glimpse all day: despite being nearly on it, you’d be pushed to guess where it sat in our horizon. Down every lane that we’d walked, houses called Reek View and the like only rubbed it in. Before long we were steadily climbing up the lane that takes you to the back of the mountain. Most of the thousands of Reek Sunday pilgrims climb from the other side, from the bayside village of Murrisk: there was just us and the emergency services on the landward side. The grey day had solidified now into thick fog and teeming rain, the flashing blue lights of the occasional ambulance looming through the murk only making it even more surreal and jangling our nerves. Chatter had evaporated: everyone was now concentrating on every step.

The age range of our band of pilgrims stretched from the teens to around 70, with an assortment of disabilities and difficulties therein. Mindful of what we’d been told, no-one complained, despite the aching limbs and the bleak provocation of the elements. A couple of times, I caught grimaces of real agony on people’s faces, but they’d catch me looking, and those faces would break instead into a smile or a grin, and would ask me how I was doing. In them, I saw some definition of faith, of persistence at all costs and through untold difficulties, and it floored me. I was still on a walk; they were definitely on a pilgrimage. The lane climbed higher, mile after mile, the rain getting steadily worse. When we reached the last point before heading up the sheer slopes on to the still invisible mountain, Patsy’s mobile bleeped. It was a text from his wife, telling him that the radio news was ordering people not to try going up the Reek, as it was too dangerous. There were a fair few Mountain Rescue people nearby, for this was their access point too, and they confirmed the order. We could cross over the shoulder of the mountain to meet our bus at Murrisk, but we shouldn’t try the difficult last bit of the ascent up the cone to the summit. Like being told to get in Father Fahey’s car for a mile, I was quietly relieved and happy to acquiesce.

I’m not sure that I could have made it anyway. To reach the shoulder of the mountain needed a sheer climb of almost a thousand feet, and it killed me. Each footstep felt like my last as we trudged and slid up the stony path, washed over by black, peaty mud. A few of our crowd insisted that they’d still like to attempt the summit, despite the warnings. As if in response, a team of day-glo-jacketed paramedics suddenly manifested through the fog, carrying someone off the mountain in a body bag, on a stretcher. This was the only way they could rescue injured pilgrims, for the conditions had grounded the air ambulance. We watched in silence as they passed in a well-orchestrated