St. Patrick, March 17th

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“Now it happened that he was standing one day by the lake of Gennesareth, with the crowd pressing round him listening to the Word of God, when he caught sight of two boats at the water's edge. The fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, which was Simon's, and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowd from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into deep water and pay out your nets for a catch’” (Luke 5:1-4).

St. Patrick based his apostolate on prayer and mortification.

The whole story of his life is a divine adventure from start to finish. He was born into a Christian family in Brittany towards the close of the fourth century, and while still a teenager he was carried off by Irish pirates in one of those periodic raids which became progressively more pronounced as the once great civilization slowly sank into decay.

In Ireland he was sold off to a petty chieftain who put him to work amongst his pigs. According to tradition, the place of his captivity was in modern-day Antrim in the north of Ireland.

Patrick always regarded this calamity as divine punishment for his sins. As he himself describes it, he was then about 16 years of age.

He said, “I knew not the true God; and I went into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of persons, according to our just deserts, because we departed away from God, and kept not his commandments, and were not obedient to our priests, who used to admonish us for our salvation.”

But in his misfortune, he remembered the lessons of his youth, and he turned to God.

He said, “Now, after I came to Ireland, tending flocks was my daily occupation; and constantly I used to pray in the daytime. Love of God and fear of Him increased more and more, and faith grew, and the spirit was moved, so that in one day I would say many prayers, and at night nearly as many.

“Sometimes I used to stay even in the woods and on the mountain to this end. And before daybreak I used to be moved to prayer, in snow, in frost, in rain, in ruin. And I felt no hurt, nor were there any sluggishness in me—because the spirit was then fervent within me.”

After six years in these conditions, Patrick decided to escape, first to France with the help of some friendly traders, and eventually back to his own kindred, where he was received with great rejoicing.

At that particular time, he had no intention of ever returning to the place of his captivity, but God had other plans.

He continues, “And there verily I saw in the night visions a man whose name was Victoricus, coming as it were from Ireland with countless letters.

“And he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter which was entitled ‘The Voice of the Irish’; and while I was reading aloud the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those who lived beside the wood of Foclut, which is nigh unto the Western Sea.

“And thus they cried, as with one voice: ‘We beseech you, O holy youth, to come and walk once more among us.’ And I was exceedingly broken in heart and would read no further. So I awoke. Thanks be to God that after many years, the Lord granted to them according to their cry” (St. Patrick, Confessions).

After this, Patrick spent some years in France, where he prepared for his mission by studying under St. Germanus of Auxerre, who had been empowered by Pope Celestine I to prepare the mission to Ireland.

However, to Patrick's bitter disappointment, when the time came, he was not chosen for the expedition. Instead, the task was given to a man named Palladius.

But Palladius died shortly after arriving in Ireland, and so his companions returned to Auxerre. In the circumstances, Patrick was chosen to go in his place and was consecrated Bishop by St. Germanus of Auxerre.

When Patrick landed in Ireland in the year 432, charged with the mission of evangelizing that pagan and warlike people, he brought with him a serene faith that stood to him in all the trials that lay ahead, allied to a shrewdly practical mind and a knowledge of the country, its language, and its customs.

In his work, Patrick followed a fairly stereotyped pattern. Whenever he entered a district, he would first present himself to the local chieftain and preach the Gospel to him, and, following the custom of the time, make him an offering of presents.

Although some of the chiefs did embrace the faith, the ancient annals make no secret of the fact that by and large, those worldly-wise men were content to retain the less demanding customs of their ancestors.

But Patrick always asked for two further favors, which were invariably granted: a title to a plot of land where he could build a church; and the chief's permission to preach to the people.

Patrick next directed his efforts to the sons and daughters of the chiefs; and here, by contrast, he was spectacularly successful.

“Then, in Ireland,” he says, “they who never had the knowledge of God, but until now only worshipped idols and abominations—now there has lately been prepared a people of the Lord, and they are called children of God. The sons and daughters of Irish chieftains are soon to become monks and nuns of Christ.”

It says in his Confessions, “Especially, there was one blessed lady of Irish birth, of noble rank, most beautiful, grown up, whom I baptized; and after a few days she came to us for a certain cause. She disclosed to us that she had been warned by an angel of God, and that he counseled her to become a virgin of Christ, and live closer to God.

“Thanks be to God, six days after, most admirably and eagerly she seized on that which all virgins of God do in like manner; not with the consent of their fathers; but they endure persecutions and lying reproaches from their kindred; and nevertheless their number increases more and more. And as for those of our race who are born there, we know not the number of them, besides widows and continent persons.”

This success laid the basis for what was a subsequent massive conversion of ordinary people. This is clear from Patrick's own reference to having personally baptized many thousands.

“Therefore it was exceedingly necessary,” he said, “that we should spread our nets, so that a great multitude and a throng should be taken for God, and that everywhere there should be ordained clergy to baptize and exhort a poor and needy people.

However, it wasn't all plain sailing from then on. Time and again Patrick's life was in danger from various quarters, principally from his great enemies the Druids; that he managed to survive them all was due to his own shrewdness, and, on more than one occasion, to the special intervention of divine Providence.

The greatest trial, or what he regarded as his greatest trial, was the opposition to his mission which he originated within the circle of his fellow Christians in Britain and in France, who circulated many scurrilous stories about him that he felt called to defend himself in writing.

Thanks to this, he was fortunate enough to have his Confessions, which are the main details about his life. It's interesting to see the contradictions that St. Patrick had to endure, and the extent of them, and where they came from.

It's sort of a lesson to us not to be surprised or worried about scandals, opposition, contradictions, from whatever source. We have to be very focused on the supernatural nature of our mission, to think with great supernatural outlook, great apostolic zeal.

We're here to fulfill the will of God, not to be too concerned about human respects, the things of this world, but to be more concerned about divine respects.

The Church that Patrick founded was from the first endowed with a number of very well-defined characteristics.

The Gospel message took root in the native Celtic culture. In the Irish language, the greeting, hello is Dia is Muire agat, which means “God and Mary be with you.”

The reply is Dia is Muire is Pádraig, “May God, Mary, and St. Patrick be with you.” His message took on life in the words and culture of the people. He transformed it from within without replacing what was there.

With the perspective of centuries behind us, it's difficult to conceive of a people in their culture as anything but profoundly Christian.

It’s always this way with the faith. In every country, we come to bring the faith, to evangelize culture, to change some things, but not many, but to lift it up onto a supernatural plane.

For this very purpose, then, catechesis seeks to know local cultures and their essential components; it will learn their most significant expressions; it will respect their particular values and riches.

There's an Irish nun who's very famous in Uganda, not known in Ireland, Mother Kevin, who came in 1903. She set up about fifteen different convents with a school beside it and a small clinic or small hospital on the other side.

Over the past hundred years, those schools and clinics have grown to be the most important schools and hospitals in the whole country. What this lady achieved was just enormous.

She started one of the major hospitals in Kampala the capital, Nsambya Hospital. The bus stop just outside the hospital is called Kevin. Bring me to Kevin.

The name Kevin has come part of local culture. It has come to mean a charitable work, a kindness, a present. There were Ugandan soldiers fighting with Britain in the Second World War in Burma. They were cut off at one point. They had to receive supplies by airdrop, and they used to refer to the airdrops as Kevinas. There's a Kevin coming in today. You see how people's names and words, with a very Christian sense, come to be part of local life.

Pope St. John Paul II, in a document called Catechesi Tridente, (“The Handing On of Catechesis”), says, “Two things must, however, be kept in mind. On the one hand, the Gospel message cannot be purely and simply isolated from the culture in which it was first inserted (the Biblical world, or, more accurately, the cultural milieu in which Jesus of Nazareth lived), nor, without serious loss, from the cultures in which it has already been expressed down the centuries…On the other hand, the power of the Gospel everywhere transforms and regenerates.”

When you look at the history of Ireland over the past almost twenty or seventeen centuries, you see the enormous influence that Christian culture has made on a country, schools, hospitals, orphanages, old people's homes, every sort of social work that stemmed from this catechesis that took place very early on.

“When that power,” says John Paul, “enters into a culture, it is no surprise that it rectifies many of its elements. There would be no catechesis if it were the Gospel that had to change when it came into contact with cultures. To forget this would simply amount to what St. Paul very forcefully calls ‘emptying the Cross of Christ of its power’” (1 Cor. 1:17).

The second characteristic of the new Church that Patrick founded was its profoundly apostolic nature.

St. Josemaría liked to say that Ireland was about the only evangelizing country in the world, almost totally Catholic, and had sent so many missionaries all over the world.

It's rather interesting to travel in different places and find schools and hospitals that have been founded by Irish missionaries—incredible men and women who did incredible things in past histories.

We have to look forward to the 21st century and see how we can repeat some of those great feats of those who have gone before us, bringing Christian culture to many other places, and first and foremost, ensuring the Christian nature of our own culture, through Christian families, taking care of the domestic Church, through sound doctrine, through formation in virtue, through all these factors that go to build up a civilization of love and a culture of life.

The first to feel the benefits of that apostolic impulse was the pagan Picts of Scotland, and later still the barbarian tribes that were settling in the Roman provinces of northern Europe: in France and Germany, and as far afield as Lombardy.

A few centuries after Patrick, in the sixth and seventh centuries, many Irish missionary monks were to go to Europe and found monasteries in Bobbio in Italy, in what's called St. Gall today in Switzerland or Germany, St. Gallen.

These were to be focal points of learning and of culture, academic excellence, education, of development. Local people who were often warring tribes would come to these monasteries to learn new ideas in agriculture, to build up the local countryside, to make it more economically viable.

From these monasteries many of them became schools and eventually, universities. These saints planted many wonderful seeds, all fruits of the sowing of Patrick.

In our daily apostolate, in our family, in the culture where we have been placed, you can dream of all the wonderful things that God wants to work with our correspondence, how He wants us to transmit that Christian culture down through the ages.

How many vocations for the universal Church have to come from the fruits of our labors, which possibly we will see from heaven. It is from this period that the homeland of the missionaries acquired the fame for holiness and learning that caused it to be known throughout Christendom as ‘the island of saints and scholars.”

It was a very glorious period in Irish history. There hasn't really been another one since.

Although this Golden Age was brought to an abrupt end in the ninth century when Ireland was to fall victim to foreign invaders, this time the Vikings, Patrick's legacy continued unabated and has survived the vicissitudes of history.

Later on, in the 19th century, when there was a great famine in Ireland—1850s, 1860s—at the time there was a population of six million. One million died in the famine. Two million emigrated to South America and North America.

That was the beginning of the great Irish influence in those places—of course, all those people brought the faith with them, and that produced clergy and schools and hospitals and so many other places. Patrick's legacy was to live on in all sorts of ways.

The third characteristic of the faith enkindled by Patrick was the link with the See of Peter, ever since Pope Celestine's initial mandate. Patrick could describe the Church of the Irish as the Church of the Romans.

Pope St. John Paul II, when he visited Ireland in 1979, referred to this. He said in the century following St. Patrick's death, St. Columban could address Pope Boniface IV in these words:

“We Irish…are disciples of Saints Peter and Paul…; we hold unbroken that Catholic faith which we first received from you” (Quoted by John Paul II, Address, Sept. 30, 1979).

In a statement reiterated by John Paul II in 1979, he said, “Ireland, semper fidelis, always faithful!” ( John Paul II, Farewell Address, Oct. 1, 1979).

Today we can thank Our Lord for the gift of faith that St. Patrick handed on, and resolve to follow his example in our own generation.

In season and out of season, in the face of the challenges or the difficulties or the problems, or maybe the scandals, we've endured so many things in the past. The grace of God will be there with us in the future.

The well-known prayer of St. Patrick is a good prayer to pray today.

Christ beside me, Christ before me
Christ behind me, Christ within me
Christ under me, Christ over me
Christ to the right of me
Christ to the left of me
Christ in lying down, Christ in sitting, Christ in rising up
Christ in the heart of every person who may think of me
Christ in the mouth of every person who may speak of me
Christ in every eye that may look on me
Christ in every ear that may hear me.

We could think of St. Paul's words to the Corinthians: “Mark this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. But he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Let each one give according as he has determined in his heart, not grudgingly, but as if by compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:6-7).

In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel), Pope Francis says, “Because we do not always see the seeds growing, we need an interior certainty, a conviction that God is able to act in every situation, even amid apparent setbacks: ‘We have this treasure in earthenware vessels,’ says St. Paul (2 Cor. 4:7). This certainty is often called ‘a sense of mystery.’ It involves knowing with certitude that all those who entrust themselves to God in love will bear good fruit (cf. John 15:5).

“This fruitfulness is often invisible, elusive, unquantifiable. We can know quite well that our lives will be fruitful without claiming to know how, or where, or when. We may be sure that none of our acts of love will be lost, nor any of our acts of sincere concern for others.”

We could think of every little gesture in our family that we make to reach out to poor, elderly, or people who need help in difficult situations. Our children are watching; they're seeing all of this. They're learning how to put this into practice.

I was driving along a street yesterday and a motorcyclist had fallen off his bike. We pulled over and the person I was carrying in the car, whom I didn't know very well, immediately jumped out and ran to the aid of this person, whom we didn't know.

It was rather beautiful to see the speed with which this person went to the aid of that other person. I was thinking, The parents of that fellow must have done a good job.

Nothing is lost. “No generous effort is meaningless; no painful endurance is wasted. All of these encircle our world,” says Pope Francis, “like a vital force. Sometimes it seems that our work is fruitless, but mission is not like a business transaction or investment, or even a humanitarian activity. It's not a show where we count how many people come as a result of our publicity; it is something much deeper, which escapes all measurement.”

Hence, the value of virtue by a mother, by a father, in the family. Little things that children see and pick up.

I was reading a story yesterday in a book called The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century about a parish in Rwanda run by Polish priests.

There were two kids that were caught by some soldiers. One of the soldiers threatened to kill the other if the other one didn't admit to committing some misdeed. The other fellow immediately said, ‘No, kill me. Kill me rather than the other guy.’

Eventually the soldier let them go. They went home and they were chatting to their Polish parish priest some time later, telling him the story, and telling him how ‘I asked them to kill me first.’ And the Polish priest said, ‘But why did you do that? What made you do that, to offer yourself to be killed?’

The kid said, ‘In one of your homilies you told us about some Polish priest that offered himself to be killed in place of other people.’

The Polish parish priest was amazed. It was the story of Maximilian Kolbe. This little kid had heard this story, and so the fruit of the life of holiness and sanctity and martyrdom of Maximilian Kolbe had borne fruit in the heart of deepest Africa.

A seed had been sown by that story in the mind and heart of this young person. We never know how the Holy Spirit is carrying those seeds from our words, from our example.

“It may well be also,” said Pope Francis, “that the Lord uses our sacrifices to shower blessings in another part of the world which we will never visit.”

But nothing is ever lost. The fruits come. “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “works as he wills, when he wills and where he wills; we entrust ourselves without pretending to see striking results. We know only that our commitment is necessary.”

He says, “Let us learn to rest in the tenderness of the arms of the Father amid our creative and generous commitment. Let us keep marching forward; let us give him everything, allowing him to make our efforts bear fruit in his good time” (Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Nov. 24, 2013).

As we see Pope Francis at 84 years of age going around the world, sowing seeds with his example, he could be moved to the place where we are to try and walk in his footsteps.

The same river that Peter spent the entire night without catching any fish is the same river where they caught thousands of fish in the morning.

The issue is when Jesus came in the morning and said, “Do you have any fish?” and they said no, He didn't advise them to change the river. Instead, He advised them to cast the nets deeper (cf. Luke 5:4-11).

When our life may seem to be going in the opposite direction, the issue is not about changing our place of work or changing our Church, changing your husband, changing your wife, changing your family, or giving up.

It's about casting your faith deeper in God; casting your fellowship with Jesus deep in believing that God will provide. He will heal. He will restore. He will uplift. He will deliver. He will revive and bring blessings and favor along your way. May the Lord give us the grace to go deeper.

At the start of this new millennium, Pope St. John Paul said some wonderful words in a document called “At the Beginning of the New Millennium.”

In the conclusion of that document—it’s entitled Duc in Altum! (Launch Out into the Deep)—he says, “Let us go forward in hope! A new millennium is opening before the Church, like a vast ocean upon which we will venture, relying on the help of Christ.”

The Second Vatican Council has told us that we are all called to be missionaries, every lay person, man, woman and child, by our baptismal vocation. We’re called to set out on this missionary venture.

“We need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart,” he says, “to become instruments of his work. Christ, whom we have contemplated and loved, bids us to set out once again on this journey: ‘Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’” (Matt. 28:19).

St. John Paul says, “The missionary mandate now accompanies us into the Third Millennium and urges us to share the enthusiasm of the very first Christians. We can count on the power of the same Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost and who impels us still today to start out anew, sustained by the hope ‘which does not disappoint’ (Rom. 5:5).

“At the beginning of this new century, our steps must quicken as we travel the highways of the world. … Every Sunday, the Risen Christ asks us to meet him, as it were, in the Upper Room where, on around the evening of ‘the first day of the week (John 20:19), he appeared to his disciples in order to ‘breathe’ on them his life-giving Spirit and launch them on the great adventure of proclaiming the Gospel.

“On this journey, we're accompanied by Our Lady. … She's the ‘Star of the New Evangelization.’ Now I point to Mary once again as the radiant dawn and sure guide for our steps. Once more, echoing the words of Jesus himself and giving voice to the filial affection of the whole Church, I say to her: ‘Woman, behold your children’ (cf. John 19:26).”

We know that the Star of the New Evangelization will be looking out for us along this pathway of new evangelization, as we try to learn from all those evangelizers that have gone before us and as we contemplate the immense and incredible fruit that has come from all of their labors.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF