Treacherous hardly covers it. My walking poles helped enormously on the way up and were even more use coming down. I have walked the 500 miles of the Camino, over mountains much higher than this, some higher than Ben Nevis, and none of it was as hard as the Reek.

This is Ireland, and people here talk to each other with ease. We met so many amazing people. Young and old helped one another along the way, which was wonderful to see. Of all the people I spoke to, one moved me.

He worked in the Irish education system and, in his own time, trained a girls’ football team with a good number of others. They were all on the mountain that day, the girls walking it together with their support team, him among them. We talked for some time. Working with young people, we agreed, is about relationships first, and he told me about his work.

It was then he told me why he was walking. Many people climb the mountain to honour someone they have lost, and he was one of them. A friend of his had died in tragic circumstances some time ago, and this pilgrimage was for him. The friend’s ma had asked him to watch for a sign.

He had been away at the time and couldn’t get back for the funeral. Funerals in Ireland happen quickly, often within one to four days, where in the UK the wait can stretch to six weeks. He was there, though, for the Month’s Mind.

The Month’s Mind is a Mass offered for the person who has died, about a month after the death. Family and friends come together again to pray, and anyone who couldn’t make the funeral, as he couldn’t, has a place to be. For a grieving family, being surrounded once more by people who loved their son is a wonderful thing.

A couple of days before his friend died, he and the lads had been due to go on holiday together. Some time later the holiday was organised again. Sitting in a circle by the pool, each of the lads said what their friend had meant to them. Afterwards the hotel staff told my new friend how moved they had been.

I wanted to remember the man who died, so I asked for his name.

“Damien Kelly.”

I asked him to say it again. Damien Kelly. To be sure, I repeated it back, and he said yes.

My name is Damien Kelly too, I told him.

“You’re kidding.”

I wasn’t. My dad was Damien Kelly as well, which is why family and friends call me Gerard. To everyone else, I’m Damien Kelly.

He was very emotional. We talked a little more, and I promised I would not forget Damien Kelly and would pray for him.

Through Isaiah, God tells his people, “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1). On the Reek that day, Damien’s name was said again and again.

Was it coincidence, or God’s providence? Kelly is one of the most common surnames in Ireland, and Damien is hardly rare. Put enough people on one mountain and two men with the same name will cross paths sooner or later. Damien’s ma, though, had asked my new friend to watch for a sign, and of everyone on the Reek he fell into conversation with a stranger from Teesside who carried her son’s name, as his father had before him.

Our meeting is close to what happened on the road to Emmaus. Two friends grieving the one they had lost were joined by a stranger, and only afterwards saw what it meant. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?” (Luke 24:32).

Thomas Aquinas gave this kind of question a great deal of thought. In the Summa Theologiae he argues that nothing falls outside God’s providence, down to the smallest particular. An event can be chance from where we stand, two separate chains of causes crossing without either one intending the meeting, and still be no accident in relation to God, who orders them all. The Catechism teaches the same, calling God’s providence “concrete and immediate” and saying it reaches from the least things to the great events of history (CCC 303). Aquinas also held that God ordinarily works through secondary causes. There is no need to suspend the course of nature to bring something about. On that reading, a sign would need nothing more than two men talking on a mountain and one of them asking a name.

My new friend went up the mountain carrying Damien Kelly with him, and on the way he met another. I believe I was put on that path at that moment because God knew he needed someone to stop and ask his friend’s name.

The Church has always prayed for the dead. In the Second Book of Maccabees, Judas Maccabeus has prayers and a sacrifice offered for fallen soldiers, trusting that they would rise again (2 Maccabees 12:43-45).

So today I ask you to pray for Damien Kelly, his ma and his family and friends.