Peter McGuinness RIP

Peter near the peak of Croagh Patrick, July, 2022

Friends,

Peter McGuinness, who for the last thirty years was responsible for filming and produring 90% of my video presentations on the Nonviolent Jesus and His Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, was born to the full experience of Eternal Life with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit on September 5, AD 2022. Please pray for his Eternal Repose**.

I first met Peter and his wife, Vera,both professional artists, in Ireland on July 1,1988 at a weeks GNV retreat I was directing at the beginning of that year’s Forty Day Fast for the Truth of Gospel Nonviolence, at a Spiritual Center, Emmanuel House of Providence, operated by Michael Cullen, a member of the “Milwaukee 14” who had been deported from the U.S. to Ireland, and his wife, Annette. The Center was built around the ruins of the ancient monastery of St. Brendan in Clonfert.

At the conclusion of that retreat Peter and Vera and I talked extensively. I learned that Peter had his university degree in photography and film and that Vera had her University degree in art. The gist of the conversation as I remember was that they both felt that the Nonviolent Jesus and His Way of Nonviolence as presented in the retreat was the truth of the Gospel and they wished to employ their artistic talents to help proclaim that. Over the next three decades they did exactly that. Probably everyone reading this email has seen and benefited many times over from Peter’s video work on behalf of Gospel Nonviolence. In fact, those of you who have been viewing and are still viewing my Ten Concise Minutes on Gospel Nonviolence since August 21 have been looking at a series on GNV that Peter produced and directed.

It is here important to note that everything Peter did in recording and/or filming my various presentations on Gospel Nonviolent Love across years, he did at his own expense. He did it as a labor of love of and fidelity to the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels, who for the last 1700 years has been given short shrift by the Churches of Christianity, including his own Roman Catholic Church. But, just for the record, this abysmal failure of the institutional Catholic Church did not keep Peter from standing firm in his belief in and with his lifelong choice to participate in the Eucharist daily.

For reasons that are infinitely beyond my comprehension, when God finally gives me someone who will do filming on behalf of Gospel Nonviolence, He chooses someone across an ocean and 3,000 miles away in Ireland! This, of course, meant that getting GNV things done was often very difficult to impossible! Still, we both trusted that God knows what He is about, even if from our tiny perspectives it appeared to be very poor planning by Him!

Peter’s film and photography work on behalf of the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances is a legacy to be honored on earth and in heaven. However, I do believe that Peter’s best and most enduring legacy is the love he had and gave and sowed into the hearts of Vera and his children, Miriam, Therese and Joseph by a zillion and one anonymous thoughts, words and deeds on their behalf. That love is theirs forever and is forever as close as a heartbeat. Nothing can separate them from it as nothing can separate Peter and them “from the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:18-19).

I, certainly, am eternally grateful for Peter, for his love and for his generous spirit in giving so much of his personal time, talent and money to proclaiming the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels and His Way of Nonviolent Love of all under all circumstances. I know it cost him dearly. But, I am also certain that there are at least tens of thousands of folks who exist far beyond my awareness, due to the Internet, who are also grateful for having encountered Peter’s work for Gospel Nonviolence Love but who will not know until the Day of Eternity the name, the faith and the sacrifices of love of the man who devoted himself to placing the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels—the only Jesus there is, was or ever will be—before them by the free and gift of his God given artistic talent.

**Let us pray.

May our Nonviolent Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ grant His friend, Peter, eternal rest and peace with the saints in a place where there is no pain, no tears, no sorrow, no sighing, but only everlasting Life and Love. 

Amen.