Some readers already may have heard the news that my biography of Fr Gerry Reynolds, Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR, published by Redemptorist Communications, will be launched on Wednesday 22 May at 7.15 pm in Clonard Monastery in Belfast. (Please RSVP to ccarmichael@redcoms.org)
In due course, I will provide more details about the Clonard launch, a second launch at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick on 27 May, and a talk about the book at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast on 2 June.
But today, I wanted to recall a story that I recount in the book: The 1988 Good Friday walk between the Falls and the Shankill, organised by the ecumenical Cornerstone Community of which Gerry was a part.
Over the years, it became Gerry’s custom to take part in a Good Friday walk. But the 1988 walk took place in the shadow of one of the most notorious periods of the Troubles, memorably recounted in the documentary 14 Days. Those 14 days included loyalist Michael Stone’s attack on the funeral of three IRA operatives shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar; and the murder of two plainclothes British soldiers who (inadvertently, it seems) drove into the funeral of one of those killed by Stone.
To help us remember the hope that was generated on that Good Friday in Belfast, I quote briefly from my account of the walk in Unity Pilgrim:
… The tension generated by that 14-day period cast into doubt the viability of a large-scale public event that Cornerstone had been planning for some time: a Good Friday walk through a West Belfast peace wall, which included carrying a large cross from the Falls to Woodvale Park on the Shankill. They would need to pass through a pedestrian gate, which was always locked.
… The local community needed to be on board [about the walk]. On 23 March, just four days after the soldiers’ murders, Gerry recorded [in his diary] that members of Cornerstone met with residents: ‘[Joan Knowles] had made visits on the Shankill side of the wall with Sam [Burch] during the day. People were frightened at the prospect of having the gate in the wall opened.’
On the afternoon of Good Friday, the walk set out from the Falls in the sunshine. It was reported that 1,500 people took part.
… Sam recalled:
We carried that cross through the wee door and up the Shankill Road and into Woodvale Park and said our prayers. And it got as black as could be and a torrential rain came down, soaked us to the skin. And the sun came out and there was a triple rainbow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a triple rainbow. Of course we said, ‘The Lord has answered us.’
Cornerstone had conceived of the walk as an example of Catholics and Protestants journeying together in penitence for sin. For many on that day, the triple rainbow was indeed a sign that God had heard their prayers.
… [Gerry] also featured the event in his ‘Communion’ column [in the Irish News] the next month (May 1988), with a story titled ‘The Rainbow’:
On Good Friday … people from both communities and many different traditions here gathered to carry a cross together from the Springfield Road, through the dividing wall at Cupar Way and into the Shankill. Here is part of a letter that arrived afterwards:
‘The sense of joy was tremendous with such a great crowd! Even when the rain came on in Woodvale Park, I still felt this was a victory. But when the sun came through the clouds as we finished praying, and that brilliant rainbow appeared, spanning the Shankill and the Falls, I felt that God Himself was really happy!’ …
The rainbow on the Good Friday walk could have seemed insignificant when compared to the 14 days of mayhem that had just passed. But for Gerry and those who were journeying with him, such were the signs of hope that helped them to keep putting one foot in front of the other.