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"However the love for Michael Collins and the hatred for Dev fuelled the passions and led the youngest into the “movement”. ..."
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Born into a working class background which was a bit different then most, in that both parents were very republican and would tell stories about the past when they weren’t fighting. This had to with the fact that the eldest daughter who died of the then dread disease of TB (tubercle loci’s) at the age of 18years and the father who was more then found of the drink and lost his job as a result. Then sold the family home in the then suburb of Marino, without anyone knowing and drank the money. Then having to come and live in a tenement house in the city centre. They were not a happy couple and family life was difficult but then so was a lot of others.
Believe it or not religion played a big part in the mother’s life, which she passed onto her remaining four children. Who dutifully went to mass and anything else mother thought best for them? However the love for Michael Collins and the hatred for Dev fuelled the passions and led the youngest into the “movement”. The years that followed were mixed with fear and excitement but never fulfilment or satisfaction. Eventually in trouble with the police because of association with the wrong kind, as it was put by the Garda, led to all kinds of problems.
Eventually coming out of what might be termed as a phase led me into religion. This was to have a big effect on my life because then I began to consider and search for the meaning of life, which I believed at the time, was committing my self-wholeheartly to the church, which I loved with a passion. Because of a misspent youth and a lack of education I was unable to further my desire to becoming a priest. But remained with the church and gave it my all. I met my wife Margaret who was also very religious and married and had a family and started to settle down.
My twin brother met a “born again Christian” at work. He shared the Gospel with him and he in turn shared it with me. I of course rejected it, as been a cult and refused to listen but he kept going on about it. He accepted an invitation to go to a “Gospel Meeting” and included me in the acceptance of it. We went and were bold over by the way the people prayed and the presumption of their statements. They were certain of sins forgiven and going to Heaven. All of this they claimed was based on the Bible. A book I had never read or had any desire to read.
It troubled me a lot as to what they were saying and the apparent influence they were having over the people present at their meetings. So I decided I would be a defender of the “Faith” and go and sort them out and brake up their meeting by exposing them for what they were. I went armed with my religious arguments but the Lord had other plans. While not entering into the room where the meeting was taken place, I stood on a landing two flights of stairs down. I was going over the reason in my mind and heart why they were wrong and why I was right, when suddenly a still small voice cut across my thinking with the words, “All your good works are but filthy rags in my sight”. It was not a line of reasoning that every crossed my mind before and I did not recognise it as a line from the Bible. But as soon as I began to pay attention to it then it happened I realised for the first time my need of Jesus and why he died on that Cross for me.
Life would change in ways I could not have foreseen or known about but God became real to me for the first time ever. The Bible became not just another religious book but the very Word of God and the living Word of God. As I began to read it verses would jump out and as it were speak to me. Some were not so nice as they would point to something wrong in my life and I would realise that it needed attention or I need to seek the Lord about it, other verses would bring me joy and comfort and assurances. At last this Jesus was not a dead hero but a living Saviour who was interested in me and wanted to help me.
Life to day as a Bible believing Christian is a blessing and as I look around me there is nothing to compare with the life I now live by the grace of God and the existence that I had. I am still married to the same wonderful woman and have four children. One married two in collage and one starting second level education. This is a very shorten version of my story, because it still going on.
Vincent Gannon.
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