Ancient Order of Hibernians, Div 16 Society St Oliver Plunkett, Freehold

Ancient Order of Hibernians, Div 16 Society St Oliver Plunkett, Freehold Our organization is dedicated to uniting Irish Catholic men in Friendship, Unity, and Catholic Charity.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians in America is an Irish Catholic men’s organization. The AOH was originated in the United States in nineteenth-century New York City by Irish immigrants who banded together in protection of the Catholic Church. The AOH in Ireland was formed in the fourteenth century for many of the same reasons. The Ancient Order of Hibernians purposes and goals are:
•To promote fri

endship, unity and Christian Charity
•To foster and sustain loyality to country and community
•To aid and advance by all legitimate means the aspirations and endeavors of the Irish people for complete and absolute independence, promoting peace, with justice, and unity for all Ireland
•To foster the ideals and perpetuate the history and traditions of the Irish people
•To promote Irish culture and encourage civic participation
•To encourage an equitable immigration law for Ireland, and to cooperate with all groups for a fair American Immigration Policy
•To accept and support, without prejudice, the concept of free expression of religious practice for the people of the world

06/12/2026

June: the Month of the Sacred Heart
Photo: James Burke, Cloonamore, Inishbofin, sitting by his fireplace on Inishbofin, under the Sacred Heart. God rest his gentle soul (RIP).
Oíche mhaith, codladh sámh agus beannacht Dé

♱

Sacred Heart Devotion in Irish Tradition

The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus became deeply rooted in Irish Catholic life from the late 19th century onward. Promoted by missionaries, especially the Jesuits, it gained wide popularity through parish missions, religious orders, and the influence of the French tradition via St Margaret Mary Alacoque.

Key Aspects of the Irish Practice:

Sacred Heart Picture in the Home:
Almost every Catholic home in Ireland had an image of the Sacred Heart, usually framed and placed prominently in the kitchen or parlour. This was seen as both a religious statement and a protective presence. The image often included the words: "Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in Thee."

The Red Lamp:
A small red lamp or light was traditionally kept burning in front of the image. It mirrored the sanctuary lamp in churches and signified that Christ was present and honoured in the home. Keeping the lamp lit was a sign of continuous trust and faith, especially in times of hardship.

Enthronement of the Sacred Heart:
Priests would sometimes visit homes to formally “enthrone” the Sacred Heart — a short ceremony declaring Jesus the spiritual king of the household. This practice became popular in the early 20th century and was especially strong in rural areas.

Daily Acts of Consecration and Trust:
Pious customs included the daily repetition of short prayers to the Sacred Heart, often as part of morning or evening family prayer. The most common was: “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in Thee.”

Link to the First Fridays:
Irish Catholics observed the First Friday devotion — receiving Communion on the first Friday of nine consecutive months, in honour of the Sacred Heart. This was widespread and seen as a serious commitment, especially for those praying for special intentions.

Cultural Significance:
The Sacred Heart image became more than a religious object — it was a cultural icon, associated with hospitality, endurance, and quiet resistance, especially during times of poverty, emigration, or political uncertainty. It was not uncommon for emigrants to carry a small picture of the Sacred Heart when leaving Ireland.

Sacred Heart Badges and Medals:
These were worn by schoolchildren and adults alike, often pinned inside clothing or schoolbags. They symbolised protection and personal devotion.

As part of the Jubilee Year celebrations, Ireland will be consecrated once again to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—a renewal not seen in over 150 years. Launched by a group of clergy and laity under the banner of the Sacred Heart Crusade, four pilgrim statues blessed by Pope Francis in January have been journeying across Ireland’s ecclesiastical provinces since February.
On the 22nd June these statues will converge at the Marian shrine in Knock for a solemn Mass celebrated by Archbishop Eamon Martin will re-consecrate Ireland to embrace the love and mercy of the Sacred Heart anew.

More information available here:
https://sacredheartcrusade.ie/prayer/

© Photo is with thanks to Francis Loughlin and prints are available to purchase at [email protected]

06/11/2026

In the largest gathering of Catholics in Ireland since Pope Francis’ visit in 2018, the annual All Ireland Rosary brought over 13,000 people to Knock Shrine on June 6 in a joint prayer for peace.

Speaking to EWTN News after the rally, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamon Martin said: “It was a very special joy for me to preside at the Eucharist in Knock at the rosary rally. I felt a tremendous sense of joy and hope among the people who were gathered there. And it was especially gratifying to see many young people, including the childrenʼs rosary group, who made a very important and beautiful contribution to the day.”

Credit Dáithi Quinn

https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/europe/13-000-gather-at-knock-in-ireland-for-largest-catholic-rally-since-papal-visit

06/07/2026

Before the day began. Before the world made its demands. Before the sun had fully cleared the horizon — the Irish monk stood on the hilltop and put on his armor. Not iron. Not leather. Something older and stronger than either.
The Lorica of Saint Patrick — Luireach Phádraig in Irish, better known in English as Saint Patrick's Breastplate — is one of the oldest and most magnificent prayers in the entire Irish Christian tradition, and its antiquity and power are inseparable from the specifically Irish understanding of what prayer is and what it does. A Lorica — from the Latin word for breastplate — is a prayer of protection, an invocation of divine and natural forces as spiritual armor against the dangers of the day ahead. The tradition of the Lorica prayer is pre-Christian in its structure, rooted in the ancient Celtic understanding that the world is alive with powers and presences that can be invoked or appeased through the correct utterance of words — a tradition that the coming of Christianity did not erase but transformed, replacing the invocation of natural spirits with the invocation of the Trinity, the angels, the patriarchs, and the forces of creation understood now as the work of a personal God. The prayer attributed to Patrick — I arise today through the strength of heaven, through the light of the sun, through the radiance of the moon, through the splendor of fire, through the speed of lightning — is a declaration of such comprehensive, confident, specifically Irish faith that reading it today, fifteen hundred years after it was first spoken on Irish soil, it still feels like putting something solid between yourself and the world. The Irish have always understood that the day is a battle and that the right words, spoken at the right moment, are the strongest armor you can carry.
If St. Patrick's Breastplate is part of your Irish faith and heritage — if you have ever spoken those words at the beginning of a hard day and felt them work — drop a 🌅 in the comments and tell us what they mean to you. Follow along for daily Irish morning prayers, faith, and the ancient spiritual heritage that has armed the Irish soul every morning for fifteen centuries. Tag someone who needs to put on their armor today.

06/06/2026

While the pandemic raged through Chicago in the winter of 1918, the city's Catholic hospitals — built by Irish religious sisters over the previous fifty years — became the front line of the American medical response. And the women running those wards were the daughters and granddaughters of Famine survivors who had crossed the ocean with nothing and built something extraordinary.
The contribution of Irish and Irish-American Catholic religious sisters to American healthcare and education is one of the most significant and most consistently underacknowledged chapters in the entire Irish-American story. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, waves of Irish religious women — Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Dominicans, Ursulines, and dozens of other orders — arrived in American cities and set about building the institutional infrastructure that a rapidly growing immigrant Catholic population desperately needed. They built hospitals in cities that had none, schools in neighborhoods that had none, orphanages for children the state had forgotten, homes for the aged, refuges for women with nowhere else to go. They did this work with virtually no resources, sustained by their faith and their organizational genius and the particular Irish conviction that the work in front of you is the work that gets done. By the time of the 1918 influenza pandemic, the network of Catholic hospitals built and staffed largely by Irish religious women was the largest private healthcare system in the United States — and during the pandemic's peak, the Sisters who staffed those wards worked with an exposure and dedication that cost many of them their lives. They are buried in convent cemeteries across America, their graves marked with the simplest of stones, their names known to fewer people than they deserve.
If your Irish-American heritage runs through the convents and Catholic schools and hospitals built by Irish religious sisters — if a Sister shaped your education or saved someone in your family — drop a ✝️ in the comments and tell us your story. Follow along for daily Irish-American heritage, history, and the extraordinary stories of the people who built a nation's institutions with faith and Irish determination. Tag a family member who was educated or healed by the Irish sisters. ☘️💚

06/05/2026

Every night she walked through the darkest lanes of Cork City carrying a lantern, slipping through unmarked doors into rooms where children sat waiting in the dark to be taught — because the law said they couldn't be, and she had decided the law was wrong.
Nano Nagle was born in 1718 into a prosperous Catholic family in County Cork at a time when the British Penal Laws made Catholic education not merely discouraged but illegal — punishable by imprisonment, fines, and transportation. The law was designed to ensure that the Catholic Irish remained uneducated, unskilled, and unable to organize or advance. Nano Nagle, who had been educated herself in Paris precisely because no legal education was available to her in Ireland, returned to Cork and looked at the children of the city's poor quarters and made a decision that would define the rest of her life. She began opening schools — secret schools, hidden in laneways and back rooms, operating at night and in the early morning hours to avoid detection. She funded them herself, from her own family inheritance. She taught in them herself. She walked those dark lanes every night with her lantern to reach them, earning the name The Lady of the Lantern from the people of Cork who watched her pass and knew what she was doing and protected her silence. By the end of her life she had founded six schools educating hundreds of children, established the Presentation Sisters religious order dedicated to the education of the poor, and laid the groundwork for the Irish Catholic education system that would eventually transform the country. She was officially beatified by Pope Francis in 2023 — recognized at last by the Church she served with everything she had.
If Nano Nagle's courage and conviction move you — if her story speaks to your Irish heritage and faith — drop a 🕯️ in the comments and share what she means to you. Follow along for daily Irish heroes, history, and heritage that honors the women and men who defied every power arrayed against them for the sake of the people they loved. Tag someone who needs to know this extraordinary woman's name. ☘️💚

06/05/2026

📿🕯️ Every night, without fail, without discussion, without anyone needing to be asked — the chairs were pulled back, the rosary beads came out, and the family got on its knees together. It was simply what you did. It was simply who you were.
The family rosary is perhaps the single most universally recognized spiritual practice in the history of Irish Catholic life, and its hold on the Irish domestic imagination runs so deep that even people who no longer practice the faith carry the memory of it as one of the most formative experiences of their childhood — the smell of the turf fire, the sound of a parent's voice leading the decades, the particular hypnotic rhythm of the responses washing over you in the warmth of a kitchen night after night until the words became as automatic as breathing. Father Patrick Peyton, the Irish-born priest who became America's great apostle of the family rosary, built his entire ministry on a phrase that every Irish family already knew in their bones — the family that prays together stays together. In Ireland, the rosary was not merely a devotional practice. It was the heartbeat of the household, the nightly gathering that drew every member of the family into the same room, on their knees, facing the same direction, for twenty minutes of enforced togetherness that no force on earth could interrupt. The Irish summer evening, the Irish winter night — they ended the same way, decade after decade, generation after generation, until the prayer and the family and the firelight became a single memory inseparable from the experience of having been Irish and having been loved.
If the family rosary is woven into your Irish heritage — if you can close your eyes and hear your father's or mother's or grandmother's voice leading those decades in a warm kitchen — drop a 📿 in the comments and tell us your memory. Follow along for daily Irish faith, traditions, and the spiritual heritage that has held Irish families together through everything the world has thrown at them. Tag someone who still hears that voice when they hold their rosary beads. ☘️💚🙏

06/05/2026

When everything was taken from the Irish, they held on to this. ☘️

During the Great Famine, between 1845 and 1852, over one million people died on Irish soil. Another million fled. Families watched their children starve. Landlords evicted the dying from their own land. The British government looked away.

And still, in cold stone cottages with empty hearths and empty tables, Irish hands reached for the rosary.

These beads weren't just religious objects. They were the last thread connecting a broken people to something larger than their suffering. Worn smooth by desperate, daily prayer, passed from mother to daughter, clutched in the dark when there was nothing else left to hold.

Your ancestors may have carried beads just like these. Their faith didn't save them from the Famine. But it carried them through it.

Do you have a rosary or prayer beads that have been passed down in your family? Drop your county below and tell us where your people were from.

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