A Church of Ireland bishop commended the decision to invite her, a female Northern Protestant, to speak at a Catholic, republican commemoration in Dublin's Arbour Hill on Wednesday. It was a "very surprising invitation" and a "courageous and a generous decision," she said.
Bishop of Meath and Kildare Most Rev Pat Storey spoke at the annual 1916 commemoration Mass in the Church of the Most Sacred Heart. Those in attendance included President Michael D Higgins and Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
“If it is true that ‘history is not simply what happened, but the way what happened is remembered’, then it is vitally important how we conduct this decade of historic commemorations,” she said.
“ I believe too that it is vital that every part of the Church on this island takes its place in not only remembering the past, but creating and shaping the future. Since we have all been a part of the problem, we should all be a part of the answer. As Christians, it is vital that we take the time and the energy to generously walk in the other’s shoes.”
The bishop said it was difficult to imagine what it is like to be a relative of someone who died in the Easter Rising.
“It is not a part of my story. But I want, and I need, to try to understand it. I need to walk in your shoes generously.” It meant “relating to the commemorations of your community when I would rather remember wrongs done to mine.”
She asked: “Could we, together, commit to walking in each other’s shoes for a time? Could we vow to be generous when we commemorate? It would take personal sacrifice, especially when you have endured personal loss, but perhaps this is the time to mend, and the time for generosity.”
She was “deeply sorry for the lives lost in our country’s history – for lives lost in the Easter Rising and in more recent years. But I do not want to end our history there....I am in this for the long haul: mending; generosity; resurrection.”
Quoting US president Barack Obama, she said: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
She concluded with a question: "Are you willing to be the change that Ireland is waiting for?"
