by Fr. Tommy Lane
I was born in 1955 in Belfast. My parents had a family of four. I left school at the age of fifteen. I had to sign on the dole, so we all began to hang around street corners. I began to mix with the kind of people that inevitably drew the attention of the IRA. Some of my mates were members of Republican families so they were able to vouch for me and I joined Fianna Éireann, still at the age of fifteen. Almost immediately after I joined I engaged the British Army on the Monaghan Road. I fired my first shot! I was always first in the line of active duty. I didn’t care for my safety.
In February 1973 I was finally arrested and interned in Long Kesh for two and a half years. When I was freed in 1975 I resumed IRA activities. In August 1977 I was arrested and charged with the attempted murder of a British soldier. That charge was dropped but I was sentenced to seven years for possession of weapons and I began my time in the H-Blocks. All any man had in his cell was a Bible. I used the pages in it, after I read them, for making cigarettes. I called it having a holy smoke.
My release was in February 1982. Although there was a banner hanging across the front of my mother’s home saying, ‘Welcome Home Tom’, I didn’t feel that I was home. I felt empty. I began to ask myself, what had I achieved? The answer was, nothing! I saw only death and ruination. I decided that I wouldn’t get involved in violence anymore. I was now twenty-seven years old.
I met my future wife, Catherine, at a social club. My wife was going on religious pilgrimages and she asked me to go with her on one. So I went to Mt Melleray with her. I must have gone about four times before I asked myself what I was doing. I remember looking closely at the people. They were praying, hugging each other, laughing and talking lovingly about God. I asked myself what it was that they had that I hadn’t. I felt God saying to my mind, ‘Tom, I want your heart’. I remember responding, ‘If you want my heart, then take it. Take its hardness, its blackness and use it.’ This happened in 1986. From that day I haven’t had one regret.
God brought into my life an American priest called Fr Ed Wade. He himself was an ex-American marine, trained to kill or maim, but God took him clean away from it and made him a man of God. He opened my mind to new ways of thinking so that my old ways of thinking were completely obliterated. One Sunday evening Fr Ed Wade telephoned me and asked me to come up to Poleglass to a meeting. He spoke about God’s love. He pulled no punches. It was man to man stuff, no wimps allowed: then it happened. He asked me to witness and I found myself talking to forty men. I repented before them and God and was received by all with nothing but love and compassion. We’ve been meeting every Monday night since. We call ourselves ‘The Light of Christ Men’s Group’.
I was introduced to the Maranatha Community, an interdenominational group. I shared one night and a lady said she would like me to meet her husband Jim. Jim was interned like myself and was in the UVF, the Protestant paramilitary group. Both Jim and myself repented to one another, hugged one another and became great friends. We repented before God and all the people present.
Jim is now the leader of the Light of Christ Men’s Group. God has led us in ways of service and growth. We have made a documentary for Dutch TV. We have visited many places of worship. I had to travel a bitter road before I discovered that the real prison for me was not Long Kesh Internment Camp, but my own heart which was captive to all manner of prejudice, fear, hatred, resentment and unforgiveness. We all need, in some way, to ask God to lead us out of our heart-prisons.
In that beautiful account Tom could single out one day when God called him, it was during his visit to Mt Melleray. In our Gospel Jesus called Peter. We have all been called since our baptism but is there any other time in your life, like in Tom Kelly’s, when you could say, Jesus called me to new deeper friendship with him on that day? Did you notice it was on his fourth visit to Mt Melleray when Tom Kelly heard the Lord's call? Why was God so slow in calling him? Is it possible that he could identify with Samuel in our first reading? We will leave the answer to God. Samuel was called by the Lord four times but it was only on the fourth occasion that he recognized it was the Lord who was calling him? Is it possible that the Lord is calling us but like Samuel we don’t recognize his call and we are wasting valuable time? So if God is calling us how do we recognize it? Samuel was helped to recognize God’s call by Eli. Tom Kelly was helped by his wife Catherine who brought him to Mt Melleray and by Fr Ed Wade who powerfully influenced him. They were like John the Baptist in today's Gospel pointing out Jesus to Andrew and the other disciple, "Look, there is the Lamb of God", and like Andrew in today’s Gospel saying to Peter, "We have found the Messiah" and they took him to meet Jesus. Is there someone who has found Jesus and wants to bring you to Jesus but you are resisting? Or can you help to bring someone to Jesus like John and Andrew in our Gospel and like Catherine and Fr Ed Wade? Those who follow God’s call have no regrets. Let us thank God for calling us, and let us try to be open to hearing Jesus speaking to us.
As our readings follow a three year cycle we will not hear today’s readings for another three years and since our second reading today (1 Cor 6:13-20) is so beautiful I would like us to think about it very briefly. Paul is teaching about the body and asking people to keep away from sexual immorality. The reasons he gives are: our body is for the Lord and it will be resurrected, our bodies make up the body of Christ, our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and we are not our own property, we have been bought and paid for at a price, that price is the blood of Jesus who died for us, we should use our body for the glory of God. I know that Paul’s teaching might sound alien to many today but it is a most beautiful passage teaching the true meaning of our body. Because the gift of sexuality can hurt as well as heal God has put a boundary around it. How beautiful it is when a person getting married can say, ‘Because I loved my future wife so much, I kept myself for her until marriage’. Our body is for the Lord and it will be resurrected, our bodies make up the body of Christ, our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and we are not our own property, we have been bought and paid for at a price, that price is the blood of Jesus who died for us, we are to use our body for the glory of God. I thank the Lord for such beautiful wholesome teaching which heals the many contrary understandings of the body that we hear and see all around us. We thank the Lord for our bodies and ask him to help us always keep them for him.
This homily was delivered when I was engaged in parish ministry in Ireland before joining the faculty of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Maryland.
More homilies for the Second Sunday Year B
Called to be Transformed by Jesus
Related Homilies: vocation to be Christian: Bear with one another charitably, love your children
vocation to be Christian: We are drawn into the love at the heart of the Trinity
For more on the theme of the last paragraph It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer)
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