Redemptorist Communications have recently re-posted two videos of the late Fr Gerry Reynolds, which were recorded by Matt Howard of the Australian Province.
In one, Fr Gerry speaks about the Unity Pilgrims initiative. His words include the hopeful assertion that ‘there is an instinct for peace and right relationships inside of every one of us.’
Gerry was the founder of the Unity Pilgrims, which inspired the title of my new biography about him, Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR.
You can watch the video here:
Or read a partial transcription of the text:
I think if we pray together we do commit ourselves to a form of human relationships that are according to the purpose and the will of God.
… [in the Unity Pilgrims we are] with that [Protestant] congregation for their Sunday worship in a spirit of friendship and faith. Asking nothing, only the privilege to be with them. And I’m absolutely certain that that action of being together before God in worship does create human bonds that overflow into social life. But it’s a long haul.
Identity has a sovereignty to it and nobody can tell one of us who I ought to be. We have to give one another the non-negotiable rights. There’s something in each one of us, if we give to each other his or her non-negotiable rights that moves the other to give us the same. So there is an instinct for peace and right relationships inside of every one of us. Fr Alec Reid would always say that the solution to the conflict and the Troubles is … to express that demand for justice to one another in a way that we hear one another’s need and give one another’s entitlements to each other.
In the other video, Gerry talks about the role of religion in time of war. He explains his conviction that the will of God is that we live peacefully together, and that we should therefore work for peace because ‘God doesn’t ask the impossible of us.’
You can watch the video here:
Or read a partial transcript:
One of the texts of the scripture that I always am inspired by … [is] in the prophet Isaiah, that the nations would meet on the mountain of the house of the Lord. And in that encounter with the living God they would come to discover who they were, and would hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
The conviction that true religion brings people to an awareness of the bond between them and that they are children of the one God, the one Father: that’s the basis of the role of religion in times of war. Those who truly believe will always want to make an end of conflict and build bridges.
I always believed that the Almighty, the living God, doesn’t want us to be in conflict. … God created us to live together in harmony and in peace and in right relationship with one other and in genuine justice. So that will of God has to be achievable. God doesn’t ask the impossible of us. So that if we do work with the living God, who works in history, we will work all the time towards peace and justice and right relationships. All the religions have a role in that working for genuine human relationships in this world.
Unity Pilgrim is available for purchase online at Redemptorist Communications and in the reception at Clonard Monastery in Belfast. Make it a priority to pick up a copy if you are attending the Clonard Novena, which runs 19-27 June.