COMMEMORATING REVEREND MONSIGNOR HUGH MCTAGUE......1910-1982............

Thirty years ago yesterday I was on a flight from Ireland to California, on the day after ThanksGiving Day in America, plucked from my three months as a first year seminarian at St. Kieran's College, in Kilkenny; by the final turn in my mother Josephine's last illness with Diabetes and Leukemia.  I flew home for the closing six days of her human life and arrived back in Sacramento just after 11 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Friday night November 26th.  Monsignor Edward J. Kavanagh met me at the Sacramento Metropolitan Airport and drove me directly to my mother's bedside at Mercy General Hospital in East Sacramento.  After about an hour's bedside visit with her and my family members, I went back to St. Rose's Rectory in South Sacramento, to get a good night's sleep before the emergent and ending days of her life straight ahead.  Just after 8 a.m. the next morning I returned to Mercy General with Father Jeremiah Boland, to spend the day with my mother and family at the hospital.  Before we went to her room Father Boland suggested we go to see Monsignor Hugh McTague, the Pastor Emeritus of St. Robert's Church, my other childhood parish, who was recuperating in Mercy General after undergoing cardiac surgery earlier in the week.  I had last spoken to Msgr. McTague, on the phone the morning of Saturday August 28th, before going to the airport to depart for Ireland and St. Kieran's.  It was to be the last earthly communication  we would share as during the early morning hours of Saturday November 27th, he died at Mercy General, five days before my mother's passing.  So today, I commemorate and give thanks for the life and priestly ministry of Reverend Monsignor Hugh McTague, born in County Cavan, Ireland in 1910; ordained a Priest of Jesus Christ for the Diocese of Sacramento in 1937; and who served as the Founding Pastor of St. Robert's Parish, in South Sacramento from October 1955 - June 1980.  He was the parish priest who administered First Holy Communion to me in May 1965; who during the three month Campbell Soup Company provided the money for the new pair of Groh's orthopedic shoes I needed at that time for the leg brace I wore as a child; and who constantly from age 11 until I entered the seminary in my mid twenties, was a constant encouragement to my becoming a priest.  Just day's after my mother's death and burial in the opening days of December 1982, this faithful Catholic Priest, whose Funeral Mass and Committal, I attended on Tuesday November 30th, thirty years ago this week; seemed to mysteriously do something it took a phone call to John Seymour, at St. Mary's Cemetery to explain.  A few days after my mother's burial, my father received in the mail a Mass Intention card for the repose of the soul of Josephine Powers, signed and scheduled by Msgr. Hugh McTague.  My father's question and my quandry, how did Hugh McTague, who predeceased my mother by five days, sign a Mass card for a Mass he celebrated in her memory ?  The answer John Seymour, the Director of St. Mary's Cemetery, from where the card had been mailed explained, " Msgr. McTague knowing he was scheduled to undergo heart surgery, had signed a number of Mass Intention cards and celebrated those Masses in the days prior to his hospitalization.  Selflessly putting the people he was ordained to minister to, foremost even at the very time his own life on earth was ebbing away and coming to a conclusion.  One more faithful example to me, of "You are a Priest Forever".  Eternal Rest and Peace, Light and Love, Grant unto him, my mother, and all the Holy Souls this November 2012; 30 years later O Lord.  Alleluia !!!  Amen !!!............Fr.  Troy