PEACE & HOPE IN A DARK WORLD - Clonard Novena Address 2025

photo: Shannon Campbell

 

I say hello to you today in a dark depressing world. As a pastor I’d encourage you to ration your News watching, listening or reading. In April 2024, before he was elected, I committed to not watching, listening or reading about Donald Trump. My life is better for it.

BUT the world isn’t. Trump madness. Wars increasing by the day and seemingly getting closer all the time. Then there are the inhumane things we are watching daily in Gaza, a black veil hanging over humanity.

And we have our own societal issues here. Friday night’s racist attack on the Islamic Centre, 25 women murdered in 5 years, punishment beatings, poverty, hospital waiting lists, lack of housing… 

It’s dark out there. Hope is hard to find.

Let me take you back 37 years. The shadows so dark on the streets outside here that you would never have been able to see as far as Russia, Ukraine, Iran or Gaza.. 

Murders in Gibraltar… 

… shootings in Milltown at the funerals…

… and then soldiers murdered at the funerals of those killed at the funerals. 

Our wee place was in a deadly spiral.  

It was dark right out there. Hope was very hard to find.

BUT there was hope. Where? Well, let me tell you exactly where the HOPE was. RIGHT HERE. When our wee city was going down a murderous blood gurgling plughole there was a human being who lit a candle in the thick black night and prayed for a brighter day.

Somewhere here, inside these Clonard Monastery walls Fr Alec Reid was disturbed deep inside himself at what was going on in his neighbourhood. Fr Alec surmised that what was happening on his streets was not civil. He heard Jesus in the Gospels saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers”. As a follower of Jesus he sensed that he had to do something about it.

So having prayed, he got up off his knees, left the safe walls of Monastery and took his flickering candle into the heart of the dark.

Standing close to the graves when the shots rang out at Milton,  giving the soldiers the kiss of life in an alleyway beside Casement Park. 

Twenty five years later Doubleband film company decided that those two weeks in our history should be captured in a documentary. Fr Alec was obviously a part of that.

But the Directors Jonathan and Dermot at Doubleband told me that they were nearing the end of the filming and they did one more interview in Dublin with Fr Alec. It was then he mentioned The Letter.

“What Letter?” They asked.

“The Letter” he said again

Just before Fr Alec had found himself trying to give the dying soldiers the kiss of life he had taken a letter from Gerry Adams. In the letter were the conditions in which the IRA would go into talks with John Hume about a possible cessation of military action. When Fr Alec came back to Clonard, the blood of the soldiers was on the envelope. He changed the envelope and drove the letter to John Hume in Derry.

The Letter became the key part in the entire documentary.

At the very darkest bloodiest most violent of moments, a candle lit in the imagination of a Jesus follower here in this very Monastery flickered to life… and many people including myself believe that that was the moment of light in the dark that brought us peace gave us our hope.

And here WE are. 

In the same building. 

Enveloped in the same dark days that are currently taking hold across our world. 

In our Gospel reading today, Jesus tells us he came to bring us peace. 

The apostle Paul in our reading from 1 Thessalonians wrote of a God of peace and how to live out that peace: See that none of you repays evil for evil but always seek to do good to one another and to all.

Fr Alec’s peace building gives me hope. Hope that Jesus followers can critique the darkness and then bring the words of Jesus into the equation. We all can be particles of Jesus light piercing the dark with hope through peace.

Oh and I don’t mean only clergy or priests or monks or nuns. I am thinking Stephen Hughes and Brendan Dineen’s youth work on the streets outside, Diane Hickey from Women’s Aid, Tim Magowan in 174 Trust, Debbie Waters in Alternatives, Jim Deeds poet and dog walk gatherer, Fitzroy’s Community Kitchen and the Clonard’s Unity Pilgrims… Aye and more ordinary than that. I am thinking of you and me. All of us.

In a world of deep division and despair - we are a cluster of party popping, evil stopping, darkness toppling, hope dropping pilgrims of peace to all those we come across. 

We don’t return evil for evil, we turn the other cheek, we do good to those who hate us, as far as it depends on us we live at peace with everyone.

Professor John Brewer speaking about Fr Alec’s contribution to our peace process said, “His legacy is evident around us but his greatest achievement would surely be if the next generation of Alec Reids would come forward and complete the task of peace building.”

What a legacy would it be of Fr Alec’s work for us all to bring hope through peace building, what a legacy for these days of 2025 Novena built on the hopes of the late Pope Francis in this Year Of Jubilee, what a legacy to Jesus who came to earth to find those that he was at enmity with, to die for them and make them his friends again in resurrection life through his redemption and grace.

Let us imagine what actions we can do for peace and then take our flickering candles out of the walls of this Monastery into the heart of the dark. It has been done before, let’s do it again… and again… 

Peace GO with us all!