SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE CLONARD REDEMPTORISTS
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT THE LAUNCH OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS WITH THE CLONARD REDEMPTORISTS BY JAMES GRANT IN CLONARD
Dia dhíobh, a cháirde.
Tá an áthas orm bheith libh arís i Mainistir Cluan Árd. Go raibh mait agaibh as an chaoin chuireadh is as an fáilte a chuir sibh romham.
I first came to this Monastery as a child, hand in hand with my mother. We walked from Ardoyne, down the Shankill Road and across Clonard Street, week in and week out, part of the throng that made its way to the weekly novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. She and my father had made the same journey during their courting days and I in turn made the journey with Martin. In later years I was honoured to speak from Clonard’s altar at that same novena and again on the occasion of the Monastery’s centenary in the Millennium Year when we were enthralled by St Agnes’ Choral Society and Mozart’s Requiem as well as Meán Scoil Feirste’s feast of Irish music - and who will ever forget the gang of comic geniuses in “The Sky is the Limit”. I have many memories of this sacred place among them the hours I was privileged to share in the Redemptorist peace ministry with its humble, saintly champion Fr. Alex Reid, one of the many extraordinary men who made this place into a legendary sanctuary, a place where God greeted his broken people with an abiding, patient and forgiving love.
If ever a place deserved to have its history chronicled it is Clonard. So you can imagine the joy it is to be back here and to have the lovely task of launching James Grant’s fine book - “One Hundred Years with the Clonard Redemptorists”.
The word “with” may seem an innocent and unremarkable word, easily overlooked but in the context of this book and this Monastery it is the most significant word of all, for Clonard’s great charisma and great success has come from simply being with the people. It would be impossible to describe or quantify what this city and this island owes to the generations of Redemptorists whose loving leadership has been such a source of hope. Here men, women and children came with their problems and worries, their prayers and petitions, their disappointments and their dreams and here they were helped to cope, to overcome, to transcend, to succeed, to believe. Here the fractured communities of Northern Ireland’s miserable history found a shareable space in which to grow in respect and friendship. Catholic and Protestant alike have been made welcome here and this monastery is able to make the proud boast that it was here that the first ever Catholic mission outreach to the Protestant community took place in Lent of 1948.
Under this roof there are many stories which are worth telling, re-telling and documenting. James Grant tells the bad and the good, the uplifting and the embarrassing. It is a chronicle not just of Clonard but of changing times and changing attitudes. Whatever the changes though, one thing has always been unalterable in Clonard and that is the profound faith in God which is its centre of gravity, its very essence.
Nothing done here was done for thanks or for recognition , though it was surely absolutely right that the quiet, effective work of the Clonard Fitzroy Fellowship should have been recognised with the 1999 Pax Christi International Peace Prize. If this monastery had received all the awards it was due, there would be no room left for the worshippers. And still the work goes on. The monastery has been beautifully refurbished in recent years – sending out an unambiguous message that, as the author says “ … the Redemptorists intend to stay in Clonard for (at least) another hundred years”.
From the old tin hut to this solid stone building, it is ultimately men and women of faith who have created the stories that amount to a hundred years of Clonard. They have prayed here, sung here, polished floors and pews, raised funds, raised families, gathered the bits and pieces of their lives and brought them here to show what they believed and who they believed in.
This book tells of their response to the bell of Clonard. Priests and people, church and community, together travelling the journey through life’s ups and downs, guided by a common map, a common shepherd, bridging the frightening gap between this world and the next, bridging the terrifying gap between neighbour and neighbour.
It would be impossible to tell of all that Clonard has been, of all it has meant. Each of us could write our own book and still not do it justice but we surely owe a huge debt to the man who made it his business to write the book that was crying out to be written. My congratulations to James Grant and the Columba Press for this fine chronicle. When the story of the next one hundred years comes to be written, I hope Clonard’s great gift of love and faith will be rewarded by the existence of peace, prosperity, partnership and equality and a new generation showing the world what happens when Christians learn at last how to love one another.
Gur raibh maith agat.