If there is anything that the Reverend Fr. Vanier Menes Hodge, MBE, can boast and be thankful about it is that, in retrospect, he has so far lived a lengthy life of active service, fulfillment and enjoyment.
With almost four score years behind him, his multi-faceted and unblemished career has seen such roles as an Anguillian Customs Officer, Radio Anguilla Broadcaster and Director, Principal Assistant Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office, Creator of the current Motor Vehicle Registration and Licensing System, Chief Commissioner of Scouts, Rotarian and Paul Harris Fellow, Anglican Priest and a “Maracas Musician Man” in community and church life up to Sunday, February 10, 2019, at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, The Valley, Anguilla.
The fifth of nine children (six boys and three girls), born to the late Herbert and Esther Hodge of Little Dix, he is literally a product of a household of priests. They comprise his elder brother, Irad (St. Maarten), Stafford (United States), Valentine, a retired Archdeacon (St. Kitts/Antigua), Reginald (St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands) and the deceased Vernon Hodge. A secular worker, Vernon never aspired to ordination in the ministry but was the first to occupy a pulpit in St. Maarten in the absence of a priest, before moving to St. Thomas).
Menes, as he is popularly called, could easily have settled down following his retirement from the public service as Principal Assistant Secretary, but he entered Codrington College in Barbados to train for two years, in the Supplementary Ministry of the Anglican Church, and graduated in 1996. He was assigned to St. Kitts and was eventually brought back to his native Anguilla as Assistant Priest to the Rt. Rev. Errol Brooks, OBE, Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeastern Caribbean and Aruba, his Anguillian compatriot and much younger ministerial colleague.
He should have officially retired from his priestly appointment when he turned 70 but, with reasonably good health, a zeal for the ministry and a shortage of priests, he stayed on. It was only in September 2017, after failing health, advancing years and medical advice, that he finally gave up the priesthood rather than wait until his 80th birthday. Now fully-retired from active community and church life, he intends to take it easy. In his words, he does “not intend to die tired.”
Menes was the subject of an interview by The Anguillian newspaper on Monday, February 11, 2019. It was conducted by Nat Hodge who succeeded him in 1992 as Director of Radio Anguilla and, like him, has retired from the public service. Snapshots of the interview, which covers mainly his years in the priesthood, are as follows:
Rev., do you have any regret having been obliged to leave the ministry?
No. I really had been looking forward to going up to age 80, but I realized that ‘it is hard to kick against the pricks’. I think that what happened to me (a serious fall in St. Mary’s churchyard) was, to some extent, the Lord’s intervention that it was time for me to retire.
Given your fervency for the ministry, would you say your eventual retirement was something you had to adjust to?
The ministry was [as] if it were a part of me. From the time I knew myself, I was always in the church whenever the doors were open. It was something about the ministry that seemed to attract my attention – and it was always my purpose to pursue it, in course of time, after my secular appointments. I was a Lay Reader many years before being ordained a Deacon, and then I went into the Ordained Ministry – a dream come true. I really had to adjust myself, but was prepared for that eventuality.
What may have been your greatest satisfaction in serving as a Priest?
It was to hear people comment on the services I conducted. One thing they used to say was: ‘Reverend, we enjoyed that service’. But I never felt satisfied with that word ‘enjoyed’ because, if you preached a sermon the way it ought to be, it should trouble the congregation.
I understood what they meant, but I wish they had said they were inspired or something as that. I was able to monitor the congregation to see when they were paying rapt attention or were just dosing away, as some people do, if the sermon was not inspiring or enlightening as they would like. It was my greatest satisfaction and delight when they would say, instead, that the service was a blessing to them. I was always grateful for the opportunity to share in the work of the Lord.
You entered the priesthood at a time when there was still a good deal of interest by persons wanting to serve in the ministry not only in the Anglican Church but across the entire religious spectrum in Anguilla. Do you now see a declining interest?
The sad thing is that there are now a lot of people, these days, who are very interested in money; but in the priesthood in the Anglican Church, like I guess in many other denominations, there are limited funds. The cost of living now is higher than it was in times past and salaries have not kept pace with the cost of living. Because of that people may not be interested in the ministry, saying there is no money in it. But the point is that it is not about money but a sacrifice. We are to do a faithful ministry and make sacrifices. If it had been a question of money, I would not have remained in the ministry as long as I did. I felt it was an opportunity to render service and there was a need for me to serve. So the reason for the shortage in the ministry is that people are now more interested in lucrative occupations than sacrificial service in the ministry.
What other feelings of satisfaction has the ministry afforded you as an active participant and servant?
It gave me an opportunity to have established and maintained a closer walk with the Lord and, by His grace, to have the blessed assurance of sins forgiven. Even when one slips and misses the mark, one can go to the Lord, asked for mercy and start afresh. Having been in the ministry gave me a good opportunity to interact with people because I see myself as a people’s person. I have been that kind of person in customs, radio and in the ministry. If I can help somebody, as I travel along, then my living would not be in vain.
The Reverend Fr. Vanier Menes Hodge has been succeeded by the new Assistant Priest, Antiguan-born Reverend Fr. Raliville Christian, who was inducted on Sunday, February 10, at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, by Bishop Errol Brooks.
