Journey Home 2012 07 16 Former IRA Marcus Grodi with Mark Lenaghan

hello and welcome from ireland this is marcus grodi your host for the journey home program and we're here in ireland sitting in again in this garden in the center of st patrick's seminary in minute ireland and it's just a beautiful place a great privilege that i have to be here but i'm not here only to see the beautiful scenery and the churches and the monasteries but to allow you to hear some of very inspirational conversion stories of men and women who here in ireland were drawn home to the catholic church and our guest in this episode is mark lenahan from northern ireland uh he'll give his whole story of the journey and mark first welcome to the journey hopefully thank you it's great thank you and part of the reason that we're doing this is we know that uh those in ireland can now see ewtn and so we want them to see and hear some of the fine stories of men like yourself who i say had the courage to come home to the church because in certain environments it does take a lot of that though we both know it's grace right but would like you if you would to begin is start from the beginning and give us where did you come from spiritually the background of your journey of faith well um i came from a catholic family living and would have been a predominantly protestant or loyalist area and i was as a young child i was brought up in the faith it was baptized uh communion confirmation and um let me ask you was that difficult no not at the time no because this is this is before the troubles in northern ireland which exploded really in 1969 so my parents would have brought me to chapel um and i would have been familiar with the local local chapel brought as a a young child you know um but i think that changed in 1969 1970 of the troubles and a number of attacks on our home and our home was attacked on two occasions two loyalist gangs attacked our home the first time was with a bomb and the catholics were being driven out of a lot of protestant areas and vice versa it was a two-way street um but we were very vulnerable uh where we lived at the time um we were apolitical non-political we weren't involved really in the civil rights uh at the 1960s and my mother and father weren't really interested in politics at all so in a sense the politics of northern ireland really exploded into our home in 1969 1970 and uh by 1971 this attack happened and then a second attack really happened in our home uh just after internment that was uh in 1971 after what uh and tournament and tournament was an event in the north of ireland with the british army because the troubles were so bad they decided to arrest a suspect people they suspected were involved it was called internment people really taken off the streets there was no courts involved no judicial no legal process and at that time i would say it's 11 and i think then i think the reality of the troubles the gravity of the troubles uh the terrible nature of the troubles and the suffering of the troubles came to our home and i think it's then that that really uh i i very slowly turned away from religion as a young boy and and we moved we had to get out of that house we were the second attack pardon me was when a gang actually put us out of her home physically took over our home and we had to leave her home and there was a terrible sense of resentment of anger rage very tangible through many many catholic boys and girls 11 12 13 that lost their homes and that initial part of the troubles and um in terms of where i wasn't regard to faith my i lost my faith i think i think i had i abandoned my faith i think from from those early teenage years you know was that you know i think um every day in the liturgy of the hours when we pray the benedictus there's a phrase in there that says about a time of being able to worship free without fear and that's when you think about that that's a part of the prayer every day of the church every day when the church prays in unity for the freedom for people to worship without fear but often when we say that i think of places around the world under great let's say communism or socialist depression it doesn't always come to my mind that i'm thinking about ireland or england but in fact that's that's what you brought up as a young man unfortunately that there was there was a there was a great fear and essentially had to hide your catholicism you know because of the nature of if people find out you're a catholic in those areas you were killed there were many many people lost lost their lives because people simply found out not that they were republicans or nationalists not that they were fight moore's but that they were a catholic um so we moved to another area which was exclusively catholic it was full of other people like myself like my family who had a terrible sense of grievance terrible sense of loss and we moved into those ghettos it was catholic ghetto seething with resentment uh against the the army against the police against the state and suppose that the innocence that early innocence have gone up uh it was stolen away um and i suppose my the nature of my personality i i chose to sort of get involved there's many people experienced a lot of pain and didn't choose to get involved and and and violently did inside probably you know well they worked their way they worked their way through it in different ways and i chose they got involved i chose to fight back uh i began to read irish history uh i i was at school at the time as well i was a student of various history and i read all about my history about how this had been an ongoing thing and irish affairs for a long long time and by the time i was about 15 and 16 still at school um learning history just doing the usual thing of going to school but in an area that was pickled in violence troubles uh riots bombs multiple deaths um chaos chaos in the north of ireland throughout there was a rampage an orgy of violence going on and at a young age i think about maybe 16 17 still at school still doing the school thing but i chose to join uh the the irish republican army the ira um as a young man back in 1977-78 at some point i want you to step back and tell the audience a little bit more about the ira whether this is the time or not because a lot of people read about it in the paper or hear about it really don't know what that symbolizes to say you became a part of that the ira for many people in a sense were where it was an organization that was uh had seen itself as a defender of the community it's in itself as the defender of of niceness it's seen itself as uh i suppose its political philosophy was to to drive britain out of ireland and for irish people to have control of irish affairs um so it wasn't catholic per se it was it was it was exclusively catholic it was exclusively niceness and it was exclusively republican and they belong to a tradition of violent militant aggression fighting against the british and i locked myself into that i became convinced as a young man that the only way to get britain out of ireland was to fight them and to join this guerrilla underground organization um and i i did that there was no place that the police would have been regarded as an army uh an element of the state and people in catholic areas didn't trust the police yeah they were the enemy and also the catholic church were also seen as the anime because the catholic church was seen as part of the institution and any anyone who who kept that institution going kept that institution taken over was seen as one strand off it so the cat i began to see the catholic church as as not just a religious organization that i had been brought up and i began to see the catholic church as part of the people i was failing i was going to say is was it sadly as you look back that in fact some of those the leadership of the church in that area had folded i mean would the priests have in fact folded under that pressure to give in to the not to my knowledge okay so in reality they were innocent of what they were being suspected of and that's they were the catholic church wasn't a part of the system really but the perception of a young uh boy young man involved in the political revolution or violence was that if you're not with us you're against us and and a lot of priests at that time were we're just being pastors we're trying to do their job in a difficult situation at that time um i i suppose i slowly gradually could see myself unraveling in terms of morals the first part of the republican movement i joined was the police force it was called the auxiliary iris republican army and our job was to police the area and i was only 17 at the time now you can imagine dozens if not hundreds of 17 18 year olds policing local areas and it give people a leeway and and freedom to abuse a lot of people and to abuse the fact that um you know we said that we were the policeman and what we actually did was that we took a lot of people out and we would have battered them we we painted and we put paint on people we would have tired people we would have shot them shot them in the knees shot them in the ankles shot them in the elbows and that was our policing our policing really was that we had no courts we had no legal system and we took people out of their homes we put people out of the country um and i suppose the more you get involved in it the more you get involved in any obsession or any addiction um you could became better at it you you became more sophisticated sophisticated than what you were doing and the sense of uh you know there's no sense of shame no sense of guilt about conscience there was no there was no sense of conscience in it because we were we regarded ourselves as you're in a group of people that all agree with the same thing your leaders and so your conscience gets seared and buys right into it and in one sense we were connected to the community because the community would have come to us and said do this there's two people who are thieves you go you know in a sense they're here they were under pressure from the community to be the police force in that sense so i suppose there was a there was a a spiral for me um of of i suppose into this dark world of violence and what have you and the next stage it reached was i decided to really get involved in the ira i suppose in its most deepest sense which was the active service units and asu an active service unit of the ira really was another step up it was the heart of the ira it was where you actually joined a unit you trained with ira units with rifles with handguns with grenades with explosives and you were taken away you trained and all different types of techniques uh it was a very much a psychological feeling as well and one part of the training i always told you was that you know it's not the gun the gun doesn't kill you kill you kill them in here and par part of the pathology and the psychology of violence was that you learned to kill people in your heart you killed people in here first and the pull and trigger thing was was a you know a relatively small finishing off whatever it was finishing off but actually it happened in here and it was wrapping up what you had sort of performed and here and i think over a period of two years or so i quickly moved down that road to to what i would have called a killing machine where i quite easily could have all if i hadn't been told to kill anyone there would have been you know there would have been no uh compulsion um it would have been clinical and there would have been disappointment if it hadn't been done well that was the feeling that and most people there was always a sense of terrible fear and trepidation in it but um i i think that this is what violence does to you it peels away like an onion it turns away at the the the values that you have the morals that you had the things that you're brought up with as a young child it eats away at them and peels about them and the next thing you know um you're really uh sort of not quite maybe a moral but you're very you can justify all the evil things that you that you did at the same time i was i had actually gone to queen's university uh so i was living the dual life i was a student in the university and i was an ira volunteer as well and part of the the the degree i did was in marxism was was a political philosophy i did a degree in russian studies so i suppose intellectually and academically i i was i was a stud a student of marx of lenin and of all those political philosophies and that fed into my sense of you know grievance historical grievance and my personal history uh the loss of the home um a lot of things that were going on in ireland at the time that were quite bad you know the army themselves were responsible for an awful lot of bad things and they murdered a lot of people and that fueled the sense of grievance further you know so it was that old thing of violence beginning violence you know i remember there's also a common thread there and you're a student of this so tell me if i'm right that one of the things that linked what you were drawing into with the ira marxism was this idea that what's important was not you but the system the the bigger picture you were just one yes in other words it was the good the one the good for the big and if you die in the process that's not why and for the individual individuals had really no value yeah there was a greater good and and in the sense the morality of that was that you could justify anything for the big picture you know and that's a sort of it's a sad moral decline when you you get that into your heart in your head that that's because it touches your conscience too it says that even if you start to feel that what you're doing is wrong it's what's good for the for the big uh the long-term goals for what we're trying to accomplish here you've already made tools the battle with your conscience you can tell your conscience these things might be bad okay they are fairly bad never but there's a greater good here and i think that's part of what that one of the lies really of being involved in political uh violence that you deceive yourself and you find justifications for for bad things you know so you're in college and you're studying so i was in college um i i i had a fairly good reputation in the ira i was i was well known i worked in different areas for i worked in the the ira took me out of an active service unit and got me to work um during the hunger strike i was a liaison between bobby sands who was on the first one of the hunger strikes the 1981 hunger strikes that caused uh terrible political turmoil um i was working with the ira and intelligence working um with uh as a quarter master with weapons um but what i wanted to do was i wanted to be involved in the active service units and eventually i went back to active service units and our job really was to kill the army they we attacked them whenever we could um when you say the army the army was a british army pretty sir uh on one day kimberly ahead with him they had one day and february of 1982 we were ambushing the the army with two semi-automatic rifles and the ambush the plan was that the army drove down to a junction and we were to fire down out of a house into the back of the jeep and they hit all the soldiers who were in the back i was the the sniper i was the the man on the the semi-automatic rifle and i fired into the cheap now as i was about as i was the as i fired the army had just taken off and instead of hitting the army i i shot a guy who was standing was saying the chief of civilian a charlotte civilian so he fell he was wounded and as we went to get away um we we got on a bicycle i collapsed the weapon and the young boy he was driving the bike went took off and we drove into a fit patrol an army foot patrol later in court the the soldier said that he was about to shoot me he was able to shoot me off the back of the bicycle when the bicycle went up in the air so um i was i was arrested by the army brought to castle ray police interrogation center for five days and of course me being a big tough firearm and i didn't say anything i was brought to crumlin road teal and i was remanded there for about 18 months and i suppose one of the one of the ironies of my story my journey is the the sale i was in a sale for 18 months and the sale i was in is today uh 500 yards away from this from the class in which i teach religion i always i always laugh with that yeah god has a sense of humor you know god's good you know so there's i think there's a there's an iron in that somewhere um i went to there i was sentenced in january of 1984 i got 12 years a prison sentence wow and in easter of 1984 i suppose where my my my faith journey but really to put to put a time or to put a date on it was round of easter of 1984 and um every week in the jail we used to meet together on a sunday and the priest would come in on a sunday and he would set up the mass set up as we alter and we used to come in and the idea for us was that we went to mars we didn't go to listen to the mass it was you met all your friends you swapped your messages you passed all sorts of stuff contraband and that was the purpose of the mass but this day uh this priest come in his name was father patty kenny he was from kilkenny and he was a mill hill missionary working he had been on the missions so he came in this day and of course i was very popular in the ira i was you know i had been officer commanding of the prisoners and one of the wings involved in intelligence had a great reputation among the the ary volunteers and he came in one day and he stopped us all talking and he said um lads um i want to talk today about the mercy of god about god's goodness and god has a plan for you boys it doesn't matter what you've done it doesn't matter how many people you've killed it doesn't matter how many bombs you let off god loves you and god has a plan for you so i heard us and i thought far you know we're not listening to us you know so after the mass i adopted him and i says um father look um you don't understand you don't understand politics so you don't you don't understand what it's like to to you know to lose your home to suffer politically you know so when you're speaking to me about god's mercy you know i can't understand that the only thing you understand really we understand here is political violence so he said he listened to me he sat back and he listened you know big guy full of wisdom um larger than life and he says we'll tell you what he says i'll come back next week and you can tell me all about it we'll have a chat i said that's okay if you're backfired i'd have a chat with you i'm okay you know i'm quite secure in my beliefs you know so we came back in again we stopped here before we go because this is great that's good yeah you said you're quite secure in your beliefs yes would you have succeeded at that point my beliefs would have been very strong and as much as i i believed in what the ira was doing i believed in the armed struggle i believed that i i i knew there was a political context and historical context so i thought that this i i thought these were great truths when you said my beliefs yes you were not saying belief in god belief no that was my beliefs were political no no no so so uh the next week and the next week father patty comes back and uh i was thinking to myself i'm going to convert father polly i want to convert him i'm going to convert him to the armed struggle i'm going to teach him you know says i to myself you know but how wrong i was because father party started in a sense he was very gracious and very soft and and uh let me talk and let me talk away and he would say to me but are you happy with where you've come from and what you're doing and you know and it kept us up and yeah another place would have come in and i would have had other conversations with them and i think i always look back on that time as as a seed as a moment as a grace moment where i began to question a lot of my motivation who i was where i was coming from and what i was doing and i suppose until you have a lot of time to think about this and uh this this sort of seed was what was was slowly been it was slowly being planted and um i found myself questioning my own motivation and and the masks some of the masks that i was wearing and i found myself questioning why i was doing what i was doing and i began to discover in myself that really what had driven me was was rage was anger was shame was guilt that a lot of bass motives had actually propelled me into doing you know my brokenness and i think what patty kelly did was he got me to to be truthful to be authentic really and he asked me who are you you know what really drives you you know so i i always look at at that moment that that his confrontation with with uh with truth him confronting me with with the truth um and of course he always give it a religious connection he always he always talked about jesus he always talked about god's grace but there was one line that always uh stuck out with me and it was from isaiah and i think it's chapter two chapter one and he says though your sins he used it with me says do your sins be as rare as scarlet i will make them as white as as snow and though they be as crimson you know i would turn them into into wool you know and i think the motif of of blood and of red and of whiteness again that's that was a piece of scripture that he used that always always stayed with me and again very very gradually it wasn't a moment or anything it wasn't a hallelujah overnight thing it was very very slow i i was a thoughtful person i i was a person who thought about things he went back into the cell and reflected and meditated and thought you know what well what does this mean and i find myself and i find myself being contaged by these ideas of father party by god and i think um what he did was he got me to think about an image of god that i didn't know a god who wasn't a judge who wasn't a policeman he wasn't a cold executive but a god that was was full of love a god that loved me and and at the same time another sort of twin track thing was was running with us was was my mom my dad and the power of prayer you know i i'm always very convinced by the awesome power of prayer to take anyone in any broken situation and bring them to the good while i was in the ira walking down the street sometimes i would put my hand in my pocket and there would have been a a religious badge a cross a crucifix a scapular a holy picture i used to find under my bed in a pillow medals they used to throw them away i used to think where did this come from and of course it was my mom my mom my dad they were worried about me they knew that i was slipping into something and of course they raised their hearts to god they were praying to god they were interceding to god for their son you know i suppose it's like that we story of uh matthew's gospel there's a mark of chapter two where the paralyzed man is brought in down down through the roof and the lord looks and he sees that the faith of the people who who bring the paralyzed man down and uh it's not so much the paralyzed man but the grace and the faith of the people who drop them down in the sense i was dropped down to the lord you know by a lot of good people by my mum my dad a lot of relatives were praying for me i didn't know how much prayer actually there was for me and here i was deep in the ira full of hate full of rage being prayed for and the part of that prayer you know um i believe that that the part of that prayer had a great effect on me uh to turn to open the door and to be a bit more authentic and i look at myself um and to open up these new new images of god you know and the whole thing of christ and after months some friends left and stuff about prayer and i found myself praying and it was very heartfelt prayer you know this is why you're still in this was i i was still i was still in jail and i i'm still on the wing with 24 ira man yeah and i found myself saying to myself what am i going to do here um and one priest come in one day and he said you know he says you should go to confession go to confession get it off get open that out bring it to the lord bring all your baggage bring all your stuff to jesus you know and i said to him well you know i i feel that's something you know i feel there's something in my heart that wants to do that but i can't you know i'm here i'm with the lads i have a status here i have an image here you know so there was my image my status my sense of belonging to the lads and i was in the sense that the lord was saying to me knock it down knock it down and come to me and if you come to me you know i'd be there for you so one one sunday the wee priest comes in and he says he offered confession and i looked at the lads and looked at the priest and it was a decision moment it was a very conscious decision and i went up the priest and i said his father i haven't been to confession for a long long time what do you do and he was bringing out someone for confession you know he rubbed his hands and all you know this is fantastic and to my horror he put his hands in my head and started praying and then allowed me to say the confession and almost tangibly egged here at the bottom of the wing i could hear the boys talking and saying what's he doing you know he's a lion that prey you know and the body language was obvious there was a moment there was a breaking away there was a conscious decision by me to break away from the status from the honor from the press stage that that had been made you know almost like an unspoken vow to the organization or to the group of yes yes it was it was a moment brotherhood yes commitment yes yes and and i felt that the lord was saying that to me you know if you want if you're serious i will give you great things you know i i felt the lord's bigger than my heart in those early days if you want to come to me i will i will do good things for you but there'll be a suffering there'd be a price you'll have there's a price you will have to pay but it'll be worth it you know um and uh so i i i started searching in prayer i found that the the mosque one of the great rocks for me was the eucharist um and even the scripture the scripture had been dead wood to me the scripture words of scripture were empty words it didn't mean anything to me they were like these stories but i found the scripture you know i was the paralyzed man suddenly i was the deaf the deaf and the the the dumb man suddenly i was lazarus all those stories spoke to me stories from the old testament they're like words to my heart words to my ears and i found that the words of scripture were just for me you know um i found myself not cutting out prayers and bringing them back and of course i was it was all about clandestine it was all about i didn't want the lads on the wing to see that i was moving away i was uh you know melting i was sort of it was at the same as a weakness to give yourself to god was seen as you're going mad you're bonkers you're going crazy that's that's the way it was it was sold you know you're letting the team down betrayal are you leaving us for this that sort of thing you know so there was uh there was a tension were they literally saying that to you or you were sensing that would say it it was it was in the body language it was in the eyes it wasn't the looks um you know where you're going with us what are you doing here um you might pose a threat to us and i suppose it was like upbeat story of jacob you know in in the old testament where jacob um runs away into the desert shame the guilt of having stolen his brother's heritage his birthright and he finds himself wrestling you know wrestling with the angel wrestling with god and and the the desert you know and that i i was wrestling with god you know i always it was a big struggle there was a big big battle um with me and god i suppose there's always still a wee battle i mean god you know are you bailing with god and all the voices what you like doing you know yeah all these all these influences your status i'd say my status in the community was very high in terms of you know revolutionary um i was an i guess but iconic in terms of political um figure he was ira figure strong hard line um why don't we stop there that's a good place to stop we're gonna take a break and then we'll come back and find out uh you know again natalie how you follow through with that decision that you're still in prison at this time right i'm still in president we'll come back to that and then we'll see how the lord has continued with that with his your own journey so let's take a break i'll be back just a minute welcome back our guest on this uh episode of journey home which we're filming here in in minute ireland is mark lenahan mark thank you very much for joining us let's pick right up where we left off before the break you were talking about you're still in prison but uh you're you're facing this difficult decision where uh in essence you you had become very much a part of what you might call group think i mean the ideas of this brotherhood that you not only were a part of but had risen within leadership respected as a a person who would take a step to lead others and of all things you respond to you respond to the grace of this priest i mean that when you're thinking about how god works i mean the courage of that priest to talk to you yes yes and that's the power of that and that priest later on uh was was one of three he was there when i was married he was a priest that married my father father patty kenny as well so he journeyed he journeyed with me um but as you say the peer pressure thing is quite enormous um you know there's there's we all want to be respected we all want to be revered we all want to be uh you know held up there with an esteem that pride we have um and i just felt one of the challenges in jail at that time for me was to break that down i felt that god was saying that if you want to come out of this situation that you're in this dark hole that you're in you you i felt i had to break away you know and i suppose political violence for me actually was an addiction it's like any vice it's like anyone who becomes obsessed with something or addicted to something it gets in part it gets into your heart and your mind and like any addiction or vice which is difficult to break away from um i felt that god would give me the grace and god give me the strength and i i felt i had many strands to do that in jail i had prayer i had the eucharist i had mass i had her lady i knew he was very very powerful in my own story too i developed a great devotion and a great love of our lady too um and and the saints a lot of saints were opened up to me people like padre pale uh and this whole element of suffering and how you know you can turn your desert into an oasis that god can give you the grace and the strength to come through terrible situations and bring greatness out of it and and i felt that that's what was happening to me although i i still suffered greatly in the latter part of the jail sentence i i think the suffering was worse how long told you i was in jail i had a 12-year jail sentence and i was in jail for about six years and three months so it was a contradictory thing it was a struggle it was it was that i was on the wing me on the wing with all the boys and i actually had to go to one one of the the ira man in charge and i had to write down and tell him why i resigned on paper to him and he wrote that i wrote down i'm resigning from the ira on moral reasons i wrote that down a paper i gave it to him and he laughed he laughed at me he says yeah you know he's not serious you know and i felt part of my heart felt i i can and i suppose i i didn't verbalize it too much but it's something i wanted to try to live out uh i wanted to try to pass on share some of this grace that i had received you know it's a major a loving god loving father you know the practical son the god who stands on the bride of the hell waiting for the sons and daughters to come home i wanted to hand it on the other prisoners um and we i got together with a couple of priests and we had an all-night vigil and dozens of prisoners and different parts of the deal joined us we had an all-night prayer vigil and we got people outside and the the different parishes to join us so i felt that if i could stay on the wings on the ira wings pray and try to bring other people with me and uh one very good friend of mine who's currently in in the north um who's involved in the prayer groups um great devotion to our lady a great devotion to the eucharist and he was in the inla and he joined me but i don't know annaleigh another organization's national liberation army and um he me and him together and other guys he left it as well and he came into faith you know so um i felt that's what the lord was saying you know i can use you i can use your experience i can use your brokenness i can use your wounds um to lead other people to faith you know but it was it was it was very painful um personally i think there was there was an element of fear there but behind it all there was a great strength there was something behind me all the time that was giving me great encouragement great courage and of course i was the holy spirit our lady god god's goodness was behind me always to give me that strength to stay on the wings um and eventually i was released in 1980 1988. so you get an early release uh well no not i think that i mean i i i didn't i wasn't released on good behavior i served my sentence yeah okay i served every day in my sense yeah um but when i was released of course i i i it was it was a bright brand new world you know and and i was bursting with enthusiasm and energy and at one point uh i i i thought about the priesthood and uh i went with patty kenny for a year and a half to his order and mill hill order in dublin and i journeyed there i studied theology for about two years uh in the jesuit college in milton and with the mill hills um but i felt god was god god was speaking to me in terms of retreats and working with young people and school and education so i ended up here in minutes 15 years ago in this college and this college here i was here doing a postgraduate degree in theology and i got that and i went back to the north and well i was involved i i met different groups and different people there was an awful lot of connecting and then you know networking with with people who had heard about me and wanted me to work on this retreat team and work on this team and give a talk here and i eventually believed within myself that it was education however the funny thing my jail background was a double-edged sword and i went to about 10 job interviews and during the job interviews the interviews went very well and there was always the last question and the last question of every interview was have you ever been to jail or have you a prison record and i had to say yeah well i actually i have and they used to look at me and say oh you have a record what is this to do with cars or you know license i says no it's never political violence and they used to sort of turn me away every time they said no no way can you teach in the school with that with your background but again god opens all these wonderful doors and he opened he opened the door for me in somalia's college in belfast and i i did an interview um and i i said look before the questions asked i have a background and here it is and they sort of looked at me sort of suspiciously and decided to check me out you know so um about six months later um they get they they phoned and said look we know your background but we want you to come in to work on our college we'll watch it for two years on probation and after that we'll see you know so uh again god's god's wonderful sense of humor you know the the the the uh i i ended up teaching beside the jail uh one day god sent him i was wondering about that there they are now examine you but for them too i mean here you didn't just serve somewhere you served over there you know i mean that you served right over around the corner from where you're going to teach yes i i could literally look out the window i could literally look out the window and i could literally see the sail where i spent 18 months in the ira and an awful laugh at this sense of humor god has one day i was giving a cross-community talk with a guy who had left a loyalist paramilitary an organization called the ulster volunteer force and as he gave his testimony him and i were working together and we were we were showing people that even fools idiots like us can be taken by god to a greater place and look at us and we were trying to talk about peace cross community involvement so he gave a testimony and during his testimony he said that he was one of the guys who had attacked the homes of the catholics where i had lived he had been one of the guys who had when i was 11 he had attacked our home so there we were together you know a dozen years later him and i working together um another incident that happened was i met a british soldier who had been a soldier in 1982 on the falls road i would have killed him he would have killed me and we met together at a shrine of our lady and we shared a brokenness shared our story shared our journey and we embraced his brothers him and i the two sworn enemies brought together by by god's grace god's goodness you know so um i met my wife catherine the girl from uh castlevale county down through another man the friend a friend called sheamus who i had journeyed with again on my fifth journey he introduced me to catherine i married catherine i have three children so all my my blessings uh all my wonderful blessings have been given to me by god it god is so good and he's brought me to a place now where i can share with with other young people on retreats i bring young people away on retreats um and i talk about your catholic college my college is a catholic college and i actually am the coordinator of junior religious education in the college i work with all the the year eight year nine year ten boys we have one thousand boys at our school and um it's a high school it's a it's a high school yes uh for boys aged 11 to 18. and i believe that god has led me to this place where i can impart and teach and try to be a role model for young people about god's goodness about prayer about the eucharist about faith but god's love god's mercy that i can try to lead them to to know the face of that god that loves them and wants wants to bring them out of many dark places that young people find themselves today in the north of ireland we have some terrible troubles in the north of ireland eye depression suicide alcohol abuse drugs many good young people find themselves in and terrible dark places now and i think they need god's love more than ever and you know when i feel that god's calling to me has been um you know i i've taken yes and patrick said like a monkey stone out of the water so the lord said this in paddock i take you as a dirty stone out of water you know i feel that i'm i'm not i know i'm a dirty stone um a broken person um unworthy but god can can take someone like me uh to try to lead his his weak people home you know there's a verse in the opening paragraphs of second corinthians that when paul talks about uh we are comforted that we might comfort others we go through things so that we have a very unique gift in the sense of of being able to relate to people going through the same things yes indeed that's very much of what's happened to you i've been in it i've been in jail i've been broken by the deal experience but a lot of young people and adults are broken by by all sorts of dark places by family wounds uh social economic people living in north uh ireland with that same anti-catholic perspective or anti-protestant perspective very very much so that that has not gone away we have had a peace process um but the sectarian hatred a lot of the bitterness a lot of the brokenness a lot of the woundedness is still there you know and we need god's love and god's mercy so much you know and i've seen that in my own life um and i i've worked with so many good people who have come through other paramilitaries and who have tried to do that in different parts of of the north of ireland you know so all these broken vessels uh trying to to reach out another verse in scripture that comes to mind is when the father comes to jesus and says would you heal my son and and and jesus says yes do you believe and the father makes a wonderful statement i believe but help my unbelief and and that talks about our own spiritual journey where you know sometimes our heart and our in our head are at different places and you came from a time of even though seeds were planted early you came from a time of being very much against the church suspicion of the church suspicion of the faith like those first statements when you're hearing the priest that wants to talk to you in the jail cell and you're kind of saying come on father give me a break and your desire is to convert him yes then you go through the conversion well what about to those that are listening that said i kind of understand that i'm kind of there in my head but i'm not quite there in my heart did you go through the same struggles yourself of still growing even though the grace had touched you still growing to fight the battles that remained after that powerful conversion i mean what about when you leave the jail cell and you're out in the real world now do some of those doubts come back that you have to deal with i i i think one of the most difficult things for myself and for any faith person is that you're bombarded every day with temptations um you have a past you have a pathological you have a psychological past um you have wounds and scars um and i i have always tried in a sense to to use that when i'm talking to other people who have been broken but in my heart i believe i could never battle i i'd never be strong i could never stay still and move forward without prayer i have to be a prayer person i had to be a prayer a person who is constantly trying to reach out to god my personal strengths have always been the the mass and somalia's college we have a mass every day at 20 to 9. and we try to make the effort to get there every day so that strength is there to take us through what will be a stressy hectic battle sometimes when you're working with boys in school that god gives me that grace every day and i've tried to say that to young people on the treats that you know um you will be tempted in every way it will be worse and i i find worse temptations coming my way uh you know on the faith journey and and like rowing the boat you know against the tide the rowing for me was was the prayer was was the the eucharist was the mass and that that always was my strength you know but if you ask me do i you know it's faith difficult as a difficult journey it is it always is it's a constant battle it really is a constant battle and but i think that keeps my feet on the ground it keeps my sort of head from going too high keeps me firmly rooted keeps me close to the heart of broken people who every day are are tempted or struggling or depressed or suicidal um you know some of the groups i've worked with i worked with a group called samaritans um a a group where people who were suicidal and depressed would phone into um this organization to talk to someone for them to talk about that just just to to to listen on the other end the phone we don't speak we listen we let them talk we let them talk their stuff you know and um people good people every day these are people who were choked by every type of addiction and broken brokenness and obsession they are giving themselves and uh on retreats i i like to say i do to our young people you know god will give you the grace god will give you the strength the holy spirit will give you the power every day to battle through those those temptations those addictions those wounds those scars god will give you the energy you know to work your way through it you know you're sharing of your journey would you say is uh countercultural for you in the sense that the people from northern ireland don't talk about their faith all that much right i mean here you are talking about people people have a difficulty with religion yes yes but with faith i i think there's there's a quest and there's a hunger out there for faith there's no doubt about that absolutely no doubt people might have a difficulty with institutional church they might have a difficulty in those areas in the north we have a difficulty with the whole sectarian conflict but i know for a fact working with many young people there's a hunger right there young people are searching for for truth and for meaning and so many different ways they're and they're losing the battle when they're with cheap thrills you know but when you put to them jesus when you give them when you show them the joy that they can have and knowing a personal savior a god who loves them and you know the young people you can draw that out of young people and they can see the authenticity in it you know and that's one of the the joys i have when i work on retreats to see young people reaching out for jesus you know if you're let's let's assume for a second that somebody is watching who's is right now where you were you know caught up in the politics of that the blindness of that maybe the bitterness where you were and they might be watching you know what would you how would you break through that barrier talking to them want to be where you are but i would say i would say that god's good god's god's loving god's grace and god's forgiveness and compassion is is awesome you know um i can understand why people get get into those places um and i also know that uh my own personal journey revealed to me the immensity of god's love um and i would say one thing if god could do it to me look at me if god could do it to such a low life as i was and god can do it for you if god can give me the grace god can give you the grace there's no dark hole there's no deep well the place where you find yourself now that terrible dark hole if god can do it for me he can do it for you but you have to open the heart up a wee bit to let him in you know when i was taught to pray the rosary on my own journey of faith the way that i was taught was when after you identified the mystery then you would pray mary pray for us you might grow in the virtue of this mystery and then to be a different virtue and i was i remember i startled the first time that i learned what the virtue of the fifth sorrowful mystery he was praying about the death of christ on the cross the virtue is forgiveness that we would grow in that and i'm thinking about the need for forgiveness in your own kind of a journey where you come from this not just bitterness but where you're always pointing fingers it was their fault they did this to us so that justifies what we're going to do to them but what's got to cut through that is this gift of forgiveness now i don't want to get into politics but i mean isn't that the element that's really needed to help heal some of the brokenness that's yeah that's in the environment where you come from i think so and i i think people have to learn to be generous with their enemies i think they'll have to learn to be compassionate with their enemies i i have met a lot of my former enemies i have met uh british soldiers i have met ex-paramilitaries i've met ira people who made life difficult for me too and i know that the healing ointment and all was was forgiveness that when you were actually able which was very difficult it's a nice thing to say and it's very difficult to do it but it's the only way i think in the north and where where we can come to a position where we can maybe not agree with everything but to forgive each other and move forward you know forgiveness is the key it's going to be difficult it's going to be very very difficult but people like myself i suppose in some small way it's our job when you're working with young people that constantly teach them know that we have to be bridge builders that's one of my roles in somalia's college to teach my children that they have to be bridge builders they have the weight in their community they have to be healers they have to be positive to have to be wholesome young christians and i think that that's what god has said to me and your job speak speak about forgiveness speak about my truth you know and well knowing history is essential it's beautiful love history but there's also the element that we read in philippians 3. forgetting what lies behind i press onward for the upward call you know i mean that's what we have to do in our journey which is what you've had to do which is not necessarily easy if we were to pray for northern ireland what should we be praying for i think we should praise for reconciliation for a wholesome respect of each other that we can love each other and our diversity and with different cultures we're different people but we should pray i think for for god's grace the grace of forgiveness the grace of reconciliation i shouldn't have limited that prayer for praying for all of ireland no i mean i we don't when you're not in ireland you don't always think about the division it works north and south that works north and south everywhere that grace of reconciliation we could pray for that if you if you'd like to all right one more thought about your work uh you have a great gift of being able to teach theology uh does that an academic environment enable you to actually deliver the faith are you sometimes caught up in the academics of it all but it's uh yeah yeah i got the academia is always a problem when you're teaching to a curriculum when you're teaching to an exam um it can often be difficult to get to the heart of the shepherd in a sense but i always i always look for opportunities within and and you know in different moments uh to try to not so much tell my story to the boys but but you know try to look for we grace moments where where i can speak i try to connect them with the love of christ try to connect their wee journeys their sufferings their wounds their families everything my i suppose as an educator i have to try to lead down from where they're at to to to christ your students know where you've been well a lot of them do a lot a lot of them do you know yes and uh some of the the boys can be very very gracious they're very good no one has ever abused or belittled their their knowledge of my story you know they're usually very gracious you know some would laugh and tether and others can be a bit cynical maybe you know but um you know they're they're very good mark thank you very much for being here thank you for your witness my my pleasure thank you very much and it's my pleasure to share my journey and i hope that people listening can maybe experience some of the grace of god that's there for them today yeah well i appreciate your work that you're doing with the young men in your school uh and we our prayers are with you thank you witness and delivering the grace to those young men in their own spirits and thank you for joining us on the journey home it's always a pleasure hope you've enjoyed these interviews in ireland god bless i'll see you again next week so so you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 19,143

Rating: 4.8688526 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Marcus Grodi, Mark Lenaghan, Former IRA, Journey Home, Catholic

Id: ZqR5OO8C_H8

Length: 56min 20sec (3380 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 18 2012