Seems like yesterday when you were celebrating your seventh birthday and wiring into your birthday chocolate cake. Then years later and your seventeenth birthday only comes once in a life time and celebrations can go on for a week and last evening, with your two big brothers one with us and one in London zooming in, we celebrated as a family with a terrific Indian meal. Indian Delight on Belfast’s Antrim Road is both a takeaway and delivery and to phone up and order and have it on the table half an hour later makes a party easy to organise. Butter chicken, chicken korma, lamb brume, lots of rice and garlic naan and peshwari naan bread – wonderful, sharing and talking, laughing and chocolate cake with candles.. So Charlie, thanks for giving us a good reason to get together and have some fun. And, happy birthday, enjoy being sweet seventeen.
Rev. Steve Stockman at Clonard Novena
I was once told, if you want to grab the attention of your audience, make sure your first sentence is a belter! And it was.
“Thank you for your invitation to give this afternoon’s homily at this year’s Solemn Novena, my wife and I are delighted to join you. I bet you haven’t heard that said in Clonard Monastery before!”
The speaker is Reverend Steve Stockman minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian church in Belfast and he’s certainly popular with the worshipers as this was his forth visit.
He told me he struggled with the theme, “It was like banging on the wall of a dyke to get a chink to let the water flow,” he said: “however, near the end of my preparation time, it all happened.”
I joined by zoom and the picture was glorious, the flowers the young people taking part, the vestments of the priests and the singing and, by great good fortune, as I joined the congregation Steve was walking toward the microphone.
“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.” He spoke of the state of the world, wars, Gaza and the black veil hanging over humanity. He highlighted our own societal issues here in Northern Ireland and told us 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 and soldiers murdered at the funerals of those killed at the funerals. Our wee place was in a deadly spiral.”
Was there any hope he asked and if so where was it?
“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, Father Alec Reid was disturbed deep inside himself at what was going on in his neighbourhood. Father 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. He was standing close to the graves when the shots rang out at Milltown, he then gave the soldiers the kiss of life in an alleyway beside Casement Park.”
It was world news. Twenty five years later Doubleband film company were making a documentary, they had one last interview with Alex Reid during which he mentioned The Letter.
The Importance of a Letter
“Just before Father Alec had found himself trying to give the dying soldiers the kiss of life he’d 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 he came back to Clonard, the blood of the soldiers was on the envelope, Alex Reid changed the envelope and drove the letter to John Hume in Derry. 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. Father Alec’s peace building gives me hope. 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.” He ends: “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.”
Full homily at https://stocki.typepad.com/soulsurmise/2025/06/peace-hope-in-a-dark-world-clonard-novena-address-2025.html
I used to think the worst punishment in the world would be to be send to Wimbledon to be a linesman – or woman. Now I think it would be to replace Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Poor woman, something pretty awful must have happened to her, her tears were genuine but no one wants to be shown on television looking so distressed. Her life must be very stressful, being criticised and disliked, very little time to be on her own an not even having a boss who cares. Rather her than me! Talking of stress, Donald Trump must be getting his knickers in a twist over Elon Musk who’s going to no end of efforts to annoy his one time friend, even to the extent of forming a new opposing political party.
Trump responded by threatening to cut off the billions of dollars in federal subsidies Musk’s companies enjoy . The president also threatened to consider deporting Musk back to South Africa where be was born. Read rag to a bull – two matadors waving their capes – where will it all end.