Fr Gerry Reynolds as an Icon of Christian Unity

Yesterday I spoke about ‘Fr Gerry Reynolds as an Icon of Christian Unity’ at the ‘Ormeau Churches Together’ group’s annual prayer breakfast marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity (18-25 January).

The text of my address is below.

Fr Gerry Reynolds as an Icon of Christian Unity

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I have written a biography of Fr Gerry Reynolds, called Feet in the Clouds: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds, Priest and Peacemaker. It will be published by Redemptorist Publications this June.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was important to Gerry, so this is an appropriate time for me to share with you something of what I have learned from immersing myself in his life. I began my research for Gerry’s biography only a few months before he died. It started with an email from his good friend Rev Ken Newell, who was then writing his own memoirs. Ken had tried to convince Gerry that he should do the same, but Gerry was reluctant. So Ken suggested me, and I was more than happy to take on the project. More importantly, Ken was able to convince Gerry that this was a good idea! I interviewed Gerry seven times before he died. Gerry also had provided me with some of his personal journals. After his death, the Redemptorists at Clonard provided me with the rest of his journals and papers, which were found in his room. I also interviewed friends and colleagues of Gerry. These are the resources I will be drawing on in my remarks.

The theme I have chosen to speak on is ‘Fr Gerry Reynolds as an Icon of Christian Unity.’ An icon is something or someone who helps us see beyond ourselves, and I can think of no better way to describe Gerry. Even though there has been remarkable progress in inter-church relations over the years, sometimes it is still difficult to see beyond the divisions. But Gerry truly did see beyond the visible divisions in the Christian churches. He believed that we are already sisters and brothers in Christ, and that we should be living in such a way that we communicate to others that we were no longer divided.

Even though he is no longer with us, Gerry can continue to be an icon for Christian unity if we remember his example. To help us do that – given that it is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, after all – I am going to focus on Gerry’s commitment to prayer.

For Gerry, prayer was as regular and as natural as breathing. His Redemptorist colleagues testify to his commitment to the Community’s daily prayers. He also tried to set aside an hour each day for personal adoration before the blessed sacrament; this was often in Clonard or in the Adoration Sisters’ Convent on the Falls Road. Many, many of his journal entries are actually prayers, addressed to his beloved Íosa Grá (that’s an Irish name for Jesus, focusing on his love). One of Gerry’s daily prayers was that of Christ in John 17:21: ‘That they all may be one.’

Gerry also was inspired by Fr Paul Couturier, the French priest who had helped establish the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Between 1987 and 1989 Gerry wrote a column for The Irish News called ‘Communion’ under the pseudonym Couturier; perhaps there are some of you here who remember it?

Occasionally Couturier’s ‘Prayer for Communion in Christ’ was reprinted as part of the column. Gerry also produced and distributed pocket-sized cards with the prayer printed on it. In a January 1988 column, he wrote that ‘thousands’ of these prayer cards had been distributed throughout Belfast over the ‘last four years.’ Gerry returned to again and again to this prayer over the course of his life. I think it is appropriate now to pause, and join him in it. This is his own translation of the prayer from French:

Lord Jesus,

who on the eve of your death,

prayed that all your disciples might be one,

as you in the Father and the Father in you,

make us feel intense sorrow over the infidelity of our disunity.

Give us the honesty to recognize,

and the courage to reject,

whatever indifference towards one another,

or mutual distrust, or even enmity lie hidden within us.

Enable all of us to meet one another in you.

And let your prayer for the unity of Christians,

be ever in our hearts and on our lips –

unity such as you desire it and by the means that you will.

Make us find the way that leads to unity

in you who are perfect charity,

through being obedient to the Spirit of love and truth. Amen.

In a November 1987 column he drew attention to the prayer with a story called ‘In Memory of Mickey Power’:

The prayer printed in this Communion column was found in the prayer book of Belfast taxi man, Mickey Power, who was shot by loyalist assassins in front of his family on his way to Mass last August. His wife sent copies of the prayer to all who sympathized with her at the time of her bereavement. In memory of Mickey Power make it part of your own daily prayer from today. Write it out for yourself before you forget!

The example of Mickey Power reminds us that Gerry’s prayers for Christian Unity were inextricably linked with his prayers for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Another way that Gerry prayed for peace and reconciliation was through his intercession for the Rev Ian Paisley.

Gerry began praying regularly for Paisley shortly after he was posted to Clonard in 1983. In January 1985 he experienced his first Free Presbyterian protest when he attended a Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service at St Anne’s Church of Ireland Cathedral in Belfast. He wrote:

The Unity service in St Anne’s Cathedral brought me up against the blind resentment of the Free Presbyterians. It stunned me to be reminded of the persecutions and burnings during the reign of Queen Mary Tudor – Íosa Grá make us deeply penitent for what was done then by the Catholic zealots. Help us find the way to reveal the penitence to the Free Presbyterians and evangelicals who fear us.

The 1986 Christian Unity service at St Anne’s brought an even larger Free Presbyterian protest. Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens was speaking at the event, which also was attended by Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich. Paisley, his daughter Rhonda and hundreds of supporters ‘barracked’ Suenens inside the cathedral during a raucous protest.[1] Many of the supporters had entered the cathedral and when Suenens said, ‘my dear brothers and sisters,’ some stood up on their pews and shouted, ‘you’re no brother of mine.’ A few days later on BBC Radio’s ‘Good Morning Ulster,’ Gerry described Paisley’s picket as ‘devilish.’ On 8 February he noted: ‘At the Bible group on Thursday night [Protestant friend] Eric Turgin showed me that love in my heart is the only answer to Paisley and his followers – it is Paul’s doctrine “do not be overcome by evil; overcome evil by good.”’[2] A couple of months later, Gerry was interviewed by English journalist Trevor Barnes. He wrote:

At the end he asked me, “Do you consider Ian Paisley a Christian?” [I said] “Yes, because he believes in Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.” It was the first time I was asked such a question. It was good to declare the common bond I have with Ian.

Over the next few years, Paisley’s supporters disrupted several ecumenical events that Gerry helped organise – to the extent that a police presence was required to keep order. Paisley himself wrote pamphlets condemning these events and mocking those taking part in them. (These episodes are explored in detail in my forthcoming book.)

From reading Gerry’s diaries, it is clear to me that these encounters with Paisley convinced Gerry that Catholics should respond to Protestants by repenting and apologizing for the sins of the Catholic Church during the Reformation. Paisley’s protests also helped Gerry better understand some Protestants’ deeply-held fears about the Catholic Church. This knowledge shaped his interactions with Protestants as he pursued his ambitious and wide-ranging ecumenical ministry, which he saw as key not only to achieving Christian unity, but to transforming conflict.

It was not until 2001that Gerry prayed publicly for Paisley at Mass. He also began to think about going to Paisley’s church and joining him in worship. In 2004 he wrote:

It is not appropriate for me at this time to seek to worship with Ian Paisley. If an opportunity unfolds I will take it and ask that he speak about God’s mercy (Luke 15 and Psalm 130). I will worship with him in a spirit of penitence, asking forgiveness of God and of the Free Presbyterians for the sins committed in the name of the Catholic Church – particularly the burning of Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley.

Fr Gerry never did join Paisley for worship.

It is striking that it took so long for a man whose Christian identity was so whole-heartedly ecumenical to pray publicly for Paisley. It is equally striking that a man who developed the Unity Pilgrims – a group of Catholics who join different Protestant congregations for worship every Sunday – and who has been described as worshipping in more Protestant churches than any priest in Ireland – never worshipped with Paisley. A few days after Paisley’s death in 2014, Fr Gerry wrote this in his journal:

            I often asked people, ‘Pray for the Big Man.’ Some replied, ‘Are you serious?’

… I choose now to remember Ian Paisley, no longer angry, arrogant and contentious, but as the truly born again man making his farewell speech to the Northern Ireland Assembly full of wisdom and warmth to all of us who live in Northern Ireland, lauding reverence, neighbourliness and kindness in our relations with one another, and telling us to ‘remember it’s the heart that should drive us on.’ A miraculous change in him – God’s grace at work.

To a certain extent, Gerry had to forgive Paisley for his attacks on his own ecumenical ministry as well as for his wider role in contributing to the divisions that he was striving to overcome. In the end, Gerry re-imagined Paisley as a neighbour, in the biblical sense of the word: a brother in Christ. Gerry’s prayers for Paisley reveal another perspective on Christian unity.

Gerry’s last publication was a chapter titled, ‘Ecumenism: A Personal Pilgrimage,’ in a 2015 book edited by Niall Coll, Ireland Since Vatican II. Gerry’s purpose in the chapter was to ‘inspire’ Christians to commit themselves to ecumenism. You are an inter-church group, so I assume you share Gerry’s commitment.

But I hope something of what I have said today leaves you feeling challenged. To think of Gerry as an icon who can help us see beyond ourselves requires that we examine ourselves, always asking what we can do to live out Christian unity – not just this week, but every day.

 

 

[1] ‘Barracked’ was the word used to describe what happened in Suenens’ obituary in the Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/belgian-cardinal-suenens-dies-aged-91-1.46685, accessed 7 November 2017.

[2] Turgin was a member of the Church of Ireland who regularly participated in ecumenical bible studies in Clonard.

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