To Walk with Saints and Scholars

June 7, 2026

“Mass on the Earth” by LKV Walsh

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In liturgical Christian traditions that follow the lectionary, today is the Feast of Corpus Christi – the feast of the Body of Christ. In the local parish here, churchgoers were told of the importance of receiving communion and of going to church as they were warned against the dangers posed by the devil and AI. While it would be tempting to chalk this focus up to Ireland traditionally being a Roman Catholic country, even the priest admitted only 13% of Irish Roman Catholics attend church today. Moreover, Ireland has a long and storied history of Christianity of a sort that sees the Body as far more than a wafer transformed. And it is that history that has me in its grips today.

Just a bit down the road from me is a Roman Catholic church called Prince of Peace Fossa. Built in 1977, the octagonal building is unique in many ways, but the most striking thing for me is the altar. Behind the wooden carved altar, the entire wall of the church is glass, and the view out that window is of Loch Léin and a few of the numerous mountains that surround Killarney as well. All this adds up to mean that from the vantage point of the pews and the parishioners in them, the Earth in all her glory is on the altar. In essence, the Earth becomes the Body.

I’m not the first person to think of the Body of the Earth as the Host. Jesuit and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously wrote about just this thing in his essay Mass on the World during World War I. In fact, it is probably because of his essay that my first time at Prince of Peace Fossa took my breath completely… in that way where all the air is squeezed out of you in a little moan. I walked into the building expecting to see what human hands had made of God, and instead, I saw all God can be. The Irish, though, have long had the sense that God is to be found through and in the Earth. The desert fathers of early Christianity could only be emulated on this island by seeking the edge of the world, and so monks without affiliation other than orientation came to this part of Ireland to find God in the wild and the wooly. The lakes, the mountains, the cliffs, and the sea taught the lessons of scripture, and the experience of them was access to the Holy One. To be with them was to be, “nourished with spiritual food,” as the Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican tradition puts it.

Prince of Peace Church in Fossa is a reminder that the Body is alive. At the same time, it reminds us the Body is far more than what human hands have made. Prince of Peace Church reminds us that what is sacred is meant to be on the altar. And it reminds us that what is on the altar is meant to be held sacred. What a blessing… Buíochas le Dia. And thanks be to God.

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