Proscenium crutches in images, nostrils, Libra Nos Deus noster.
You know many patries ET felia spiritus sancti.
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 mother, Immaculate St Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian
Angel intercede for me. Well, to that list of our usual
intercessors and patrons who guide us in our prayer, we can
add Today, Saint Patrick, pray for us and we're grateful to
Jesus for the gift of Saint Patrick.
We are celebrating this day with with solemnity in our churches
and possibly also with maybe the same amount of solemnity in a
different way, in our dining rooms, in our in our sitting
rooms, in our pubs, in our streets.
But it's a day to be joyful because this day recalls for us
the blessing of having a patron St one who came among us here in
Ireland and who brought the good news.
And that act of generosity on his part continues to bear fruit
today in our lives and, and in the mission of the Church, in
the fruitfulness of the Irish Church, not just here, but
throughout the whole world. That missionary impulse for
which Saint Patrick shared with our forefathers and, and, and
those who heard this message for the first time, to have an
eagerness to spread the gospel, to be a friend of Jesus and to
help others to understand the great love that God has for
them. So I see all of this as an
Irishman and grateful in Ireland for this national feast.
But of course, Irishness is only a part of the story.
Though the Feast of Saint Patrick increases the fervour of
the green, white and gold throughout the world, Irishness
is only a a very small part to play in in the Feast of Saint
Patrick and it reminds me of the film which is an adaptation of a
a book by a well known Irish author Walter Mackin called The
Flight of the Doves. A film from the 1970s is very
old, but it's actually worth seeing.
If you get a chance to to see it, or if you've seen it
already, then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
But the basic plot of this story concerns 2 little orphans from
England who are escaping a life of difficulty that lies ahead
with a, with a, a kind of a wicked step grandparent there in
England. So they flee and they make their
way for for Ireland, knowing that their grandmother is
waiting somewhere in rural Ireland to take them in.
And they're they're sure that all will be well in Ireland and
that granny will look after them.
So these two young children smuggle their way across the
Irish Sea and they land into Ireland on Saint Patrick's Day
and they're hiding at one point in, I think it's bushes in Saint
Stephen's Green. Whenever a a guard, a policeman
comes upon them and says you're not joining the parade or words
to that effect. And these two little little
urchin children, as they look, they say that way you're not
Irish. To which the the guard responds,
you don't have to be Irish to be Irish.
And then begins a a kind of a triumphal chorus to the same
words with lots of singing and dancing and reflecting a kind of
a multicultural approach to Ireland even back then.
And there you go. There's something in that, that
being Irish is at least on this day, more about being joyful,
being joyful in our in our patron St.
And there are many people who, who who are experiencing the joy
of Saint Patrick and the faith of Ireland today, even though
they have similarly come across the the waters, different shores
in order to, to bring something of a different flavour of the
faith to the church here. And it's, it's a reminder to us
that it is a universal church that we play a small part in
our, in our individual places. But the church is so much bigger
than just you or me and that we are called into the body of
Christ, which is, which is a wonderful thing and which
strengthens us all throughout the world today.
And it's also true that of the missionary impulse of many Irish
people who, who left Ireland in order to be like Patrick, to be,
to be a missionary, to go and spread the good news.
And many Saint Patrick's days. I enjoyed also living abroad
and, and maybe with a certain degree of nostalgia, thinking
about home and thinking about all of the, the glories of the
past. It's not completely out of place
to have that, that sense of nostalgia because we are
grateful to Jesus for all that the church has has achieved.
But we have to find our place today in, in the church.
And it's not just about looking back to the past and thinking
about how things were back then or the certain belief that
perhaps things were better in a certain age.
No, the Today of of, of, of now is the time that we have to be
faithful to Jesus and to be faithful missionaries, that we
are essentially called to be like Saint Patrick today.
I went yesterday to a local primary school to talk about
Saint Patrick. And I was thinking how best to
tailor this message to little children, only a minority of
whom were actually Catholics. And some, of course, were, were,
were were foreign born or maybe didn't have English as a first
language. So there they were, all gathered
for the assembly, many of them wearing green, which of course
is typical for today, apart from the priest at Mass wearing white
vestments. And I said, well, Saint Patrick,
boys and girls, is a great hero. And instantly I can see all
their little faces looking up and, and, and, and that's true.
Saint Patrick is a hero. Saint Patrick is an example to
us. And I said, you know, we think
of heroes wearing capes. And of course, in many statues
and pictures of Saint Patrick, he is dressed in in investments,
vestments of a Bishop, which have a great resemblance to a
Cape. And so it's easy, Mary, for
their little minds to, to comprehend this, this hero,
Saint Patrick. But really what I wanted to, to
talk to them about was the life of Saint Patrick.
And that's the, that's the meat of our, of our prayer in this
meditation, the life of Saint Patrick.
And there's plenty for us to think about and to pray about in
truth, in the, the letter that Saint Patrick writes about his
own life or the confessions, I should say, he begins and
introduces himself in a, in a very beautiful way with great
humility, as a Sinner. I am Patrick, a Sinner.
And that's how he chooses at this moment of his life,
whenever he is, he's making his confession, he's making his, his
public statement of his faith. That's how he wants to identify
himself. And, and for me, there's
something very attractive about that.
It's to say that, you know, whenever I look at the, the
totality of my life, I see my own, my own weakness, my own
fragility. And at the same time, I see the
wonderful gift that God has been to me.
Now, this isn't just false humility on the part of Saint
Patrick, because he speaks at various times in his confession
about his experience of his own sinfulness.
And I think this must have been a way in which he was able to to
preach so effectively to Irish people.
And it is true that whenever we we we touch a little bit of this
sense of guilt that we might have for our sinfulness, then we
have something to offer by way of Christ's forgiveness.
It's not enough to just say that we are, we are sinners.
We're we're miserable sinners. We are sinners who are forgiven
by Jesus, principally in the sacrament of confession, but
that we are nothing without that mercy and forgiveness.
And so to say I am a Sinner also in some sense recognises the
other great part of that identity.
I am a Sinner who is forgiven by Christ.
And that as his primary identity is, is really something so
beautiful that he doesn't start off by saying I am the apostle
of the Irish, something that we attribute to him, but to
himself. He sees only his own fragility,
his own weakness, his own vulnerability, which is caused
by his sin. So of course it's a great act of
humility. But in his his introduction to
his life, when he goes on from this identity of Sinner, he
speaks about the conditions on which he was then taken to
Ireland as a slave, but not before telling us that his
father was a Deacon, his grandfather was a priest, which
of course in the early church at that time was was not uncommon.
But he says I did not yet know the true God.
And that might seem a little bit surprising or shocking that if
his father was a clergyman, his grandfather was a clergyman.
He comes from good stock. How could he not know the true
God? Well, maybe God was not openly
discussed in their home that perhaps the practise of religion
there in the their homestead was, was perhaps a little bit
formal or it was something that dad did whenever he went to
church, but it wasn't something that they, they maybe lived out
in their homes. So that can come as a bit of a
challenge to us is that is, is the true God, God, not just of
my, my heart, that I love Jesus and I, I want to, to please him.
But how good am I at sharing that with the people around me
and even in my own home? Is it, is it obvious that that
the true God is the God not just of my heart, but of my home as
well? That, that my home, my place of
work, my town, my parish. It's a place where God is really
enthroned. And this sense of his, his
sinfulness, his weakness, his, his, his lack of knowledge of,
of true God, it makes him in some sense all the more
surprising that he is such an effective apostle.
But we, we heard that even on Sunday, you know, about the man
born blind in the Gospel. And they say who sinned this man
or his parents? And Jesus says, no, neither he
nor his parents, but he was born blind in order that the wonders
of God might be made manifest in him.
And we have to look at the life as Saint Patrick and say that
there's, there's something of the truth in that for him too,
that the wonders of God were manifested in this.
This young boy taken the age of 16 as a slave to Ireland.
And the wonders of God perhaps not seen in that immediate
moment, which must have been a terrible moment for him and for
his family. But slowly but surely, the
wonders of God do emerge from that.
And, you know, maybe there's a timely reminder for us to to say
that the individual moments of our life do not comprise the
totality of our life, you know, either the good things, but
especially also the bad things, the struggles.
And maybe at times of sickness or, or, or, or real genuine
struggle, that message maybe gets a little bit out of focus
that my worries and my fears kind of overtake me a little
bit. And I don't say, well, this is a
moment that reminds me that the wonders of God are going to be
made manifest in me. You know, how God is going to
save me from a particular situation, how he's going to
give grace in order to forgive me whenever I I seek it, how he
is going to help me overcome difficulties.
It's, it's his wonder to be achieved yet.
And it's, it's, it's my pleasure to to be able to receive that.
And so Patrick helps us a little bit in that regard to see that
even this, this disastrous moment of his being taken as a
slave becomes. And we have to persevere a
little bit to, to understand his life.
That all of that suffering and that difficulty is not wasted by
the by the loving mercy of, of God for him, that there is a
wonder to be made manifest even more so in his life.
And just like the man born blind, whenever he receives his
sight, he receives a gift of faith as well.
And, and it's a little bit like Patrick too, that in the midst
of this suffering, he experiences great faith.
And this is a moment whenever he, he really comes back to the
Lord and, and that becomes his strength.
And so amongst all of the difficulty, you can just picture
it, you know, this, this teenager being sort of ripped
away from his family home and screams and the shouts perhaps
of his mother, his sisters. Whereas Patrick, will we ever
see him again? The the longing that he has just
thinking about on the boat, the high seas back over to Ireland.
The God is, is, is, is seeing all of this and God is going to
use this for his own glory. And it's in the isolation a
little bit that he experiences the true God, the true God that
he did not know even in his home with a father, a Deacon and a
grandfather, a priest. It's only in the, the, the, the
isolation, the cold, the, the, the poor weather of Ireland that
makes him see the true God and the God who loves him.
And this is a profound moment for him.
And he says in, in his conventions.
After I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day and I
prayed frequently during the day.
More and more the love of God increased and my sense of awe
before God. Faith grew and my spirit was
moved so that in one day I would pray up to 100 times and at
night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and
on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow
and ice and rain. I never felt the worst for it
and I never felt lazy as I realised now the spirit was
burning in me at that time. Gosh, I, I hear those words and
I, I instantly think, oh, I, I could do better.
I could do better. You know, often when the alarm
clock goes off and we jump out of bed and we, we, we are, we're
offering our day to God and we say Serbia.
But you know, it's the moment after that that we think, oh,
I'm tired. Maybe I'm just going to sit back
down or I'm going to take my time now.
And how quickly laziness sets in, you know, how quickly other
things get in the way of our faith.
But we don't see that so much in Patrick.
We see this great determination to give more that the more his
heart opens to to the loving God and the more frequently he
prays, the more he he opens his heart in faith, the more burning
desire he has. And so, oh, that could be like
us too, you know, serve you and, and we continue on in the same
sense. I, I want to serve you, Jesus, I
will serve you and I want to continue to do it.
And, and I have to think that it's part of this experience of
hardship that that brings him to that point.
It's like a kind of a purification.
And maybe that's the experience of the Holy Cross.
He experiences the difficulty of the cross.
And then he, he, he sees us in the next moment, the kind of the
joy of it, the joy of carrying the cross, of being, of being
there at your service, Jesus become something very sweet for
him. And so for all of this time, six
years that he spends then tending these little sheep on
the various hillsides and Dales and planes and all the rest of
Ireland, there must have grown within him a kind of a great
resilience. And at the same time he's, he's
eagerly longing to go home and of course, praying for that.
And so there must have been a patience that that came with
him. And when I was telling the kids
this and saying, you know, like, we have to be kind of, you know,
resourceful. And we can't just, you know, sit
back and say, oh, I'm in this dreadful situation and there's
not much I can do. But we have to try to start
thinking about what can I do now?
And I said, you know, and for Patrick, it was looking after
sheep. You know, it mightn't seem very
important, but he, he, he was resourceful.
He, he was able to do that in that moment.
And he gave himself completely and totally to that.
So look, let's look at our own lives at this moment and say,
well, what are my resources and what am I putting at the service
of Jesus? And and then I asked for the
gift of perseverance and patience that I can do it for
you, Jesus, that I can maybe struggle on that I can, I can
achieve something for your glory.
And for most of us, it won't be looking after sheep, but it
could just be the daily grind of our work.
I could be struggling, maybe even in retirement and trying to
find a new direction. Whatever it is, give me the gift
of patience. You know, sheep are notoriously
difficult to deal with. I say this, of course, as a a
city boy who has no experience whatsoever shepherding.
But you kind of observe them in in fields, they they go their
own way. And you know, we know enough
even from our reading of the gospel about this 99 sheep and
the one that goes astray. So sheep, the sheep do whatever
they like. But I remember hearing one time
somebody giving an explanation of the Psalm, the Lord's my
Shepherd. And you know, it says the Lord's
my shepherd. Nothing shall I want to?
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
And the person who's given this explanation said that it was
very unlikely that most sheep would just lay down in a green
pasture, that sheep tend to do their own thing.
They're scared. They run around and follow one
another. And so it's really only through
the, the, the Good Shepherd, who, who, who helps them and
contend them and, and get them basically to, to do what he
wants to, to make them to, to lie down.
And he said that, you know, sheep will only do that if first
of all, they experience the care and the concern of the shepherd.
They know that the shepherd is there for them, is, is there to
protect them and loves them. And then secondly, when they
sense that there is no danger present, And that's because they
know the shepherd is going to protect them.
And then finally, if they're well fed and if all of those
things are there and then they're happy to lie down,
they're going to be very docile. So look, there's the same for us
is that I know God is my shepherd.
I know that he's a Good Shepherd.
I know that he protects me. I know that he will protect me
from all danger spiritually. He will support me.
He's given me the church. He's given me my friends, my
family, my vocation in order to to help me to avoid danger,
dangers that cause my sin and temptation.
And then I'm well fed. I'm well fed by Eucharist
sacraments, by the circle, by the caring concern of my
brothers and sisters for my well-being, for my formation.
And so if I can add to that, then my own resilience and
patience, then I can be a good sheep.
So there we have the thought of Saint Patrick, who is a Good
Shepherd also, he's a good faithful sheep as well in in the
flock of the Lord. And so it, it helps us a little
bit to, to understand and that experience of, of six years of
slavery, of resilience, of courage, and, and all these
wonderful virtues that, that he must have had, humanly speaking,
to help him to overcome and to endure even at a young age.
But nourished by prayer and faith in a sense like he, he's
remarkable that at this, this tender age, he's able to, to
process these kind of traumatic experiences and then bring faith
from them. So he's, he's truly heroic in
that sense and inspiring us at whatever age we are that surely
we can do the same. We can be heroic with God's
grace, with faith as our guide. In any case, after six years, he
does get his moment of escape. And Jesus, you answered his
prayer because he was able to get on a boat and head back to,
to his family. And you can imagine the scene
then, of course, as he gets on the boat and he through kind of
miraculous events and he's able to get back home again, the, the
closer he sees the shoreline and then he knows he's safe.
And you'd be thinking to yourself, oh, I'm glad that's
over. And I'm sure like me, you've had
those experiences too in life where we feel our prayers have
been answered because we've been delivered from a particular
circumstance or situation of even a person.
And we say, thank God, that's over.
Thank God that's over. And we can and we should take
relief whenever God does answer our prayers and helps us to
persevere. And he brings it to an end that
it's not kind of interminable. So there's something of, of, of
hope there that that God really did answer his prayers.
And then he's, he's, he's left with, with the problem of what
to do next. If that was just the sum total
of Saint Patrick's life, it still would have been a good
life. You know, he was kidnapped.
He, he, he, he learnt to love God through his perseverance,
through his resilience, through his great acts of faith and, and
penance. And, and then he came home.
End of story. Great Saint Patrick.
Let's all go and celebrate. But there's of course more to
the story. And the more of the story is, is
his vocation and he has begins to have these, these stirrings
of the heart about what to do next and, and how best to to
serve God. And, you know, he didn't sort of
sit back after this painful experience and say, well, I'm
just going to now look for a few sheep around Britain.
But he he says, no, there's more, there's more.
And you know it, it, it, it reminds me of that point in the
way 913 Don't doubt it. Your vocation is the greatest
grace God could have given you. Thank him for it.
So his vocation becomes the greatest thing about him.
His desire to to be an apostle, to be a Christian, his desire
for more. And even just when we think
about the vocation, the gift of vocation that we have received,
it is wonderful, is a, a, a grace for us, you know, and to
not let a day pass without, without saying an, an act of
Thanksgiving for our vocation, for what we have learnt from our
Father, from means of formation. These are all things that that
help us to stay afloat and and more than just stay afloat.
They help us to flourish, to flourish in faith and to say
that there's more, there's more that I can do, there's more that
that God can achieve through me, if only I can just continue to
open my heart and, and to give myself to him.
That's that's kind of the essence of vocation that once I,
I, I, I put my trust in him and, and go with it, so to speak.
When I write the letter, I, I entrust myself to, to the means
of formation and then I want to renew that.
And of course, we're thinking a lot about Feasus and Joseph
coming up in a few days and we will renew our commitment to the
work. You know, this is a a renewed
sense of the gift that has been given to me in my vocation.
And in the life of Patrick, We see the the tremendous grace
that he has in following his vocation.
Because the great thing Patrick is, of course, that the the
story doesn't just end whenever he goes back to his family, but
it's a story of return. And whenever he he mystically
hears this, this voice in a in a in a dream to come back, he
writes in the in the confessions with this voice coming to him
from Ireland. We beg you, holy boy, to come
and walk again among us. And this tart touched my heart
deeply and I could not read it any further.
I woke up and thanks to be to God after many years, the Lord
granted them what they were calling for.
So he becomes the answer to prayers for others because he is
faithful to his vocation. So see how God is is achieving
this, this wonder by by putting it all together.
Patrick could never have seen that, in the same way that we
can't see it in the individual moments.
But there's a whole plan here, and my desire to accept that
plan of God is my vocation to be a Christian, to be a faithful
Christian, to be a witness, to be an apostle.
I'm giving my heart to you, Jesus, in order that you can be
fruitful in and through me. And how fruitful Patrick is on
the return that at first he came with suffering and penitence.
Well, it wasn't lacking the second time either, but when he
comes back as as Bishop and priest in order to boldly
proclaim the the good news in order to support the Christians
who are already here, he is able to achieve so much.
And that's more than just courage to go back to the the
scene of difficulty. It's it's the gift of faith.
Faith can propel me to do things that I could not do by my own
human strength. But God loves a cheerful giver,
as we hear in the 2nd letter of the Corinthians.
And Sir Patrick was very cheerful in his giving.
And there's so much devotion throughout the whole island of
Ireland, in a sense, to Patrick and desire to be associated with
him, and rightly so, because this desire for his vocation,
this desire to serve you God is infectious.
And in the, the writings of many of the early Saints, they're
very keen to stress some connection to Saint Patrick,
that either they themselves were a disciple of Patrick or they
were, they were taught by disciples of Patrick.
And you can go different places in Ireland today, these ancient
monastic sites that claim Patrick was here and there is
that, that desire to be, to be close to Patrick and, and, and
to see association with him. And that's a, that's a wonderful
thing. And so we want to be associated
with Patrick ourselves as, as as men and women who are inspired
by his example to be faithful Christians today, to to have all
of those virtues, humanly speaking, that he had and then
to add to them with supernatural grace in order that I can
achieve so much for God and so much for God's glory.
So he is truly a hero and truly inspirational.
But it's of course not enough, You know, we know that it's not
enough to just look at the sense of the past and say, oh, isn't
that wonderful? Because God is calling for there
to be Saints today. And we ask for renewed graces
for for ourselves and for our country, Jesus, that we can be
faithful to you and faithful to all that you are calling us to
do in this moment. And we entrust that endeavour
especially to Our Lady. And Patrick was faithful in his
love of Our Lady, too. And there's some beautiful hymns
that have kind of an Irish flair, which we can think about
at this time as well. And think of these words of a
hymn. O Mary of Graces and Mother of
Christ, O may you direct me and guide me aright.
O may you protect me from Satan's control, and may you
protect me in body and soul, just as you did.
Saint Patrick. I give you thanks to 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 effect.
My mother, Immaculate St Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian
Angel, intercede for me.