Courtney McGrail“For Gerry Reynolds, the unity of the Churches was nothing less than sharing the Body of the Lord at the common table”, writes Fr Brendan McConvery
Fr Brendan McConvery
Fr Gerard Reynolds, who died early on the morning of November 30, was a pioneer in many ways. Born in the village of Mungret, Co. Limerick, Gerry belonged to a family with a long Redemptorist pedigree. Two of his uncles, Frs Gerard and James, were already members of the congregation, as well as a cousin, Fr Dermot O’Mahony, and Gerry’s young brother Pat also entered the Redemptorists.
Soon after his ordination in 1960, Gerry became part of a team that transformed The Redemptorist Record from a run-of-the-mill missionary magazine – a type that proliferated in Ireland from the 1930s well into the 1960s – to make it a magazine of comment and information on the changing Church of the period of Vatican II, changing its name to Reality in the process.
Gerry’s interest in journalism drew him into a circle of young priests, who with the encouragement of the oft-maligned Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, were using the media in creative ways, including training brother priests to use it in their ministry.
Along with Fr Peter Lemass, Gerry was a founder member of the Jesus-Caritas fraternity of priests inspired by the life and teachings of Charles de Foucauld.
Central to De Foucauld’s spirituality was the spirit of Nazareth, based on humble presence and Eucharistic adoration.
For several years, Gerry organised the ‘month of Nazareth’ when priests from around the country spent part of their holidays in the rough and ready surroundings of the Redemptorist students’ holiday house at Clifden.
Programmed for friendship
There was an intensively contemplative side to Gerry and it was this that brought him to Clonard Monastery in the early 1980s. Clonard’s experiment with an ecumenical apostolate had begun in the 1940s when his uncle, Fr Gerry Reynolds Sr, was rector.
Despite its unfortunate title, the ‘Clonard Mission to Non-Catholics’ was not a proselytising mission but an attempt to make the teachings of Catholicism better known, free from the hostile and polemical spirit that usually reigned in Belfast. Gerry drew inspiration from the French priest, Paul Coutourier. Fr Coutourier believed that all Christians could unite in prayer according to their own traditions for the sanctification of the world and the unity of Christ’s people since “the walls of separation did not reach to Heaven”. This became a saying Gerry made his own.
Ecumenism in Belfast in the 1980s and ’90s, was no vicarage tea party. When a person might be murdered or a family home bombed just because they were known to be Catholic or Protestant, it demanded moving far beyond the boundaries to find friendship. Gerry’s heart was programmed for friendship. He formed a particularly close friendship with Rev. Ken Newell, minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church and his wife Valery and through them, with the Fitzroy congregation.
The web of friendship just kept growing. With another member of the Clonard community, Fr Al Reid, Gerry walked the dangerous path of promoting dialogue with the most unlikely people, the paramilitaries of both sides. They were often suspect and criticised by Churchmen and politicians alike, but the fruit was the ceasefire and IRA disarmament.
Longed-for unity
For Gerry Reynolds, the unity of the Churches was nothing less than sharing the Body of the Lord at the common table. Each Sunday morning, he led a group of ‘Unity Pilgrims’ to a service in a Protestant Church somewhere in Belfast.
For Gerry, it was important to observe the discipline of his own Church and of the host tradition.
It was an intense grief to be deprived of the gift at Communion time, but Gerry was able to find a moment of unity that was, in its own manner, sacramental.
In an article for a forthcoming issue of Reality, he describes Communion service at Fitzroy: “I was sitting between two Fitzroy couples who devoutly took their sacrament of Jesus’ presence as the bread and wine were passed along.
“In the conviction that our obedience to Church discipline will bring nearer the longed-for day of a common Eucharist, I did not partake of the sacramental bread and wine, painful though abstaining was, but I took the plate and the tray reverently into my hands, held each of them for a still prayerful moment before handing them on”.
Fr Gerry was suddenly taken ill on Saturday, and died early in the morning of November 30, the Feast of St Andrew.