The last part of Sunday Sequence today on BBC Radio Ulster was about Day of Reflection. You can hear Father Martin Magill from St John’s Parish Falls Road and Brian Lambkin, Chair of Healing Through Remembering, in conversation with Will Leitch 43mins into the programme.

Will Leitch started the interview by reminding that: “Yesterday was the longest day of the year and also the date chosen each year for the Day of Reflection. Developed by Healing Through Remembering, it asks us all to pause and to think about the conflict here and also about a brighter future.” His initial remark to his guests was that some people might worry about what they were expected to do to take part in the day and the broader reflection about the past.

As Brian Lambkin noted: “the temptation is, after violent conflict ceases, is to think, is to relax. But actually, that’s when the hard work really does begin”, because accepting that “opposites can be true simultaneously, just like on the longest day in the Northern hemisphere being the shortest day in the Southern hemisphere is very difficult for people to grasp, for us to grasp as human beings and to apply in our daily lives.”

On the question of personal responsibility, Will Leitch said: “Lots of people look back through our own conflict, our own Troubles, and say, I wonder if I did enough, I wonder if I said enough, I wonder if I condemned enough, or I wonder if I didn’t laugh at the right kind of joke, or I shouldn’t have, or did, or whatever. And you can regret it. We all have a personal responsibility, but there’s a very strong sense of worrying about what can I do.

Brian Lambkin replied: “I think the most important thing we can all do is tell a calming story to our children, to help them to understand what’s going on around them, what’s disturbing the grown-ups, and to reassure them. Because after all, this is an intergenerational commitment to peacemaking, and that they’re the next generation. So what we mustn’t do is to do anything to obstruct the flourishing of the next generation.”

Towards the end of the interview, Will Leitch asked Father Magill about how the service in Saint Anne’s Cathedral on the Day of Reflection had changed the way he thought or reacted. Father Magill responded: “I suppose the conversations that I had with a number of victims there yesterday, I think probably has left me the sense of that this is such sacred ground, if I might use that language. And yet, I suppose the piece that stayed with me is each of them was talking about hope.”

The full programme will be available to listen to online for four weeks.