The Fifth Sunday of Lent (B)
On Saint Patrick
Dear brothers and sisters,
Were today not Sunday we would be celebrating the memorial of Saint Patrick, whose image is enshrined in this sanctuary. Given that many of you have Irish ancestry, it is fitting for us to give thanks to God for the bright light shining through the example of Saint Patrick’s life.
People have put on their green, drunk their beer, and will likely dine on corned beef and cabbage for dinner (though the Irish do not eat this). Many Americans will do this to celebrate a fabricated Irish heritage more so than Patrick himself. An authentic heritage of Ireland, given to the Irish people by illustrious saint, is a well-lived Catholic faith.
The Church celebrates the lives of the Saints because in them we see the light of Christ refracted in a great array of colors showing us the many paths on which we may walk in our daily life to follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus. In Saint Patrick, we see one in whom God created a clean heart and one who, by his teaching of the faith, led many sinners to God (cf. Psalm 51:12, 15).
Much of the life of Saint Patrick remains shrouded in legend. He seems to have been born around a.d. 385 in Britain. We do not know when he was ordained a priest, a bishop, or even when he died, but we do know – because he told us - his father, Calpornius, was a deacon and Roman official with an estate worked by slaves; his grandfather, Potitus, was a priest.
Despite the clerical orders of his father and grandfather, Patrick was not raised in an especially religious family and when he was captured by Irish pirates before his sixteenth birthday he “was indeed ignorant of the true God.”[1] He was taken captive to Ireland as a slave and worked tending sheep for six years.
It is both curious and enlightening to ponder what Patrick must have experienced during these years of enslavement.
To the son of a decurion conscious of his Romanitas and position in society, the status of a slave was deeply humiliating. He may not have been aware of it during his captivity, but for the rest of his life Patrick grieved for the education he had not had. Barely articulate in his own tongue, he was forced to adopt another. Nostalgia for his own country, people, and kin, plus loneliness and poverty and exposure to the harshness of the climate brought him that degree of denudation where God alone is to be the sole, inalienable treasure of the spirit.
Prayer became Patrick’s sustenance. He declares that the call to prayer was so insistent and such a source of joy that he would willingly face frost, snow, or rain to pasture the animals while he gave himself up to it.[2]
“More and more,” he says, “the love of God and fear of him came to me and my faith was being increased, and the spirit was being moved.”[3]
Here is one lesson of the Christian life we can take from Saint Patrick: it is in solitude and times of difficulty that, if we are open to the Lord and humble enough to seek him, his Spirit will stir in our hearts. Is this not why the Psalmist prays, “Give me back the joy of your salvation, and a willing spirit sustain in me” (Psalm 51:14)?
After six years as a slave, Patrick heard a voice in a dream say to him, “It is well that you are fasting, soon you will go to your own country.” A short time later the same voice said to him, “Look, your ship is ready.”[4] Patrick ran away and some 188 miles later found a pagan ship anchored and ready to depart. Patrick again prayed and boarded the vessel, hoping to introduce the pagans to Christ Jesus.
They sailed for three days and landed in a deserted area. Patrick walked for twenty-eight days and at last found himself among his own people; the dream of his heart had been answered. His people begged him never to leave them again, but his time with them was not to last.
In another dream, a man by the name of Victoricius came to Patrick bringing letters from Ireland.
The voice of the people who had first enslaved him invited him to walk among them once more; this time, though, he would consciously and freely enter a different form of “slavery” — the self-imposed exile of Christian mission. He notes: “Now, in Christ, I am a slave of a foreign people, for the sake of the indescribable glory of eternal life, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[5]
In giving his life in service to the spread of the Gospel among his captors, Saint Patrick followed the words of the Lord, who said, "unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life" (John 12:24-25). Patrick went so far as to call himself “a slave in Christ for that remote pagan people.”[6]
Saint Patrick gave himself entirely for the people of Ireland so they might know “the gift so great, so salutary, to know or to love God wholeheartedly, but at the loss of country and kindred.”[7] Here is a second lesson we can learn from Patrick: something must be given up, laid aside, or left behind to help others encounter the Lord. What are you and I willing to part with to lead others to Christ Jesus? Our time, money, career, sports, the esteem of others, family, even everything we know?
A third lesson to learn from Patrick is a simple one, but one always in need of repeating: “What remains constant is the truth exemplified by St Patrick’s career: one lamp lights another. That should encourage us in our own efforts to spread the faith by using whatever gifts we have.”[8] They example of a faith well-lived, with joy and serenity, is attractive. A simple, personal invitation is often all it takes to bring someone to Jesus, to help the Church and the parish grow. Do not be afraid to let the light of your faith be seen by others. This is what made Saint Patrick’s missionary efforts among his former captors so successful; this is what can make our efforts to spread the Gospel successful, as well.
Today, then, in honor of Saint Patrick, rededicate your family to living the Catholic faith well and to invite others to do the same. If you do, then what Saint Patrick wrote to his readers may come true in us: “Would that you, too, would strive for greater things and perform more excellent deeds. This will be my glory.”[9] Amen.
[1] Saint Patrick, Confessio, 1. In Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland: An Analysis of St Patrick’s Confessio and Epistola, Ed. and trans. Maire B. de Paor (Dublin: Veritas Publications, 1998), 221.
[2] Teresa Rodriguez, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, New Full Edition: March (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999),169
[3] Saint Patrick, Confessio, 16.
[4] Ibid., 17.
[5] Salvador Ryan, “Remembering the Historical Patrick,” National Catholic Register, 17 March 2018. Accessed 16 March 2024. Available at https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/remembering-the-historical-patrick.
[6] Saint Patrick, Letter to the Soldiers of Corocticus, 3. In Patrick the Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland.
[7] Ibid., 23.
[8] Aidan Nichols, Year of the Lord’s Favour: A Homiliary for the Roman Liturgy: Vol. I: The Sanctoral Cycle (Leominster: Gracewing, 2012), 42.
[9] Saint Patrick, Confessio, 47.
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