Will Patrick Be Going To War?

On this feast of our national Apostle, we can only pray for Ireland - she's in a bad place at the moment. I do not think Patrick would be impressed with the state of the country, or with the state of the Church - not quite the evangelical community he wanted it to be. Nor, I think, would he be too happy with the shenanigans that are carried out in his name on this day each year.

That said, he would be happy, I'm sure, with the small shoots of faith emerging from the rocky ground. Good young priests and seminarians emerging to help rebuild the Church here, dedicated young lay people joining older faithful, and often long suffering Catholics who feel like strangers in this land. 

There is hope for the future, and we must nurture these young shoots, feed them with sound doctrine and encourage them to centre their lives on Christ. Many of them are attracted to the Tradition, that is good, but they must also foster a real evangelical spirit which may at times create tension with the Tradition. Interestingly now we need men and women like Patrick, not to go abroad to preach the Gospel, to do so here, to face what is really now a pagan culture, to relight the fire on the hill and defiantly stand by it. And let's be realistic, we cannot rule out persecution.

But we have Patrick as our advocate. We can look to him for an example and an intercessor. 

Explaining God

Preaching on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as per yesterday's solemnity, can be pretty difficult. Many of us resort to St Patrick's supposed use of the shamrock to explain it, however that itself has its hazards, as you will see in the video below. Thought you might enjoy this.

Happy St Patrick's Day

I wish all of you a happy St Patrick's Day.  May the great Apostle of Ireland, he whom we Irish call our Spiritual Father, intercede for all your intentions and watch over you and your families.  May he keep you in his heart and guide you in your daily living of the Gospel of Christ.

Yesterday at Mass, as I announced the schedule for today's solemnity, I reminded our parishioners that on this day we do not celebrate being Irish, we celebrate being Christian.  Patrick did not bring Irishness to these shores, he brought the proclamation of the Gospel, and he probably doesn't care what nationality we are as long as we are faithful disciples of Christ. To take St Paul's point: there are neither Jews nor Greeks nor Irish for we are all [to be] one in Christ Jesus (cf. Gal 3:28).  But of course I'm not saying we don't aim to have to good time, or to use those things which are Irish to celebrate this solemnity, just to bear in mind what this feast is all about: being Christians.  That said, have a great day and feast, insofar as Lent allows.  

For all our friends overseas, please say a prayer for Ireland and for the Church here.  

For all my readers in Ireland, you're welcome to join us here in Rathkenny for a special Holy Hour of prayer for Ireland followed by Holy Mass at St Patrick's Church, Rushwee, beginning at 6.15pm.  You can find the church on Google maps.  It starts early and it will finish leaving people time to spend some [more] time to celebrate the feast.

The Celebration Of Faith

A happy St Patrick's Day to you all from Ireland.  As we celebrate the life and teaching of our patron saint, we pray that he will intercede for all your needs, and we ask you to pray for Ireland.

Today is the celebration of the mystery of faith - the Christian faith, which St Patrick taught.  He was not the first Christian missionary to Ireland - we already had Christians here, and even a number of Saints.  Neither was he the first bishop to the Irish - St Palladius was here before him.  St Patrick, however, seemed to have had a particular charism, he travelled around the country preaching the faith, converting and baptising, to an extent which had been unknown up to that time.  He initiated a spiritual revolution among a barbarian people, and for this he is the Apostle of Ireland.

So in our Masses we honour this holy man, our Father in faith, and our celebrations as Christians must first and foremost be founded on faith.  Yet, for many people "Paddy's Day" is not about faith at all.  As I said in my homily at Mass this morning, there are people in Ireland who are trying to wipe out Catholicism, and today they will be raising their glasses in honour of "St Paddy".  Meanwhile the rest of the world are dyeing their rivers green, eating cabbage and downing gallons of alcohol as they celebrate "Irishness".

The marriage of St Patrick and "Irishness" is only a recent phenomenon.  It developed in the 19th century when Irish Nationalists hijacked the feast of the Patron of Ireland to further their cause.  The St Patrick's Day parade was originally a civil rights march, and as for the leprechauns, the diddly dee and the clay pipes, well that's just stereotyping, and it drives some of us Irish crazy.  There are many who think we still live in thatched cottages, have red beards (even our women?) and sprinkle our conversation with "begorrahs".  God help us! 

Even worse than all this is that many of those out "drowning the shamrock" never darken the door of a church, and yet the man they celebrate was a man who wanted to bring the Irish to God, to keep them faithful to the Mass and to the practice of the faith.   There is no doubt that we need to reclaim St Patrick and his feast and begin to divorce it from nationalism.  Ironically, it makes no difference if one is Irish to celebrate this feast, it's all about Christianity.  Indeed today the British may well celebrate, not Irishness or the Irish among them, but that a son of Britain who left his people and his land to proclaim the Gospel among an alien people.  In this St Patrick serves as an important link between Britain and Ireland, a link which is firmly grounded in the Christian faith.  And, it seems, there may well be a church in Britain which was built by the Saint himself - see here for the article.

In other news: it seems it may be the end of the road for the Society of St Pius X: the Vatican has not accepted their response to the doctrinal preamble - it is inadequate for the restoration of full union. A friend said to me yesterday that it is all a game to the SSPX - they think that because the Pope desires reconciliation they can do what they want because they think the Pope will just bring them back in without their having to say they were wrong.  They will still continue to reject Vatican II.  It is an interesting position, and I think there is a level of truth in it.  Traddie blogs are convinced that reconciliation will take place without their having to move an inch because they are in the right, they believe. 

Well, if they do not move an inch, then there should be no reconciliation: they must accept Vatican II or stay where they are.  Many think this row is all about the liturgy and so they think that as Pope Benedict has given greater freedom for the celebration of the Extraordinary Form the way is open.  This row is not about the liturgy, it is about the Church's apostolate and her outreach to the men and women of our time, her holding to the truth, but also seeking to engage with those of other faiths and none.  The Society has until April to clarify its position: the ultimatum has been issued. The Vatican, it seems, may well be tired of playing games.

What could happen here?  Well one commentator said that it could lead to a declaration of formal schism, the reimposition of the excommunication on the bishops and priests, and an interdict on their lay followers.  We must pray for them.

Hail Glorious St Patrick

Yesterday we celebrated St Patrick's Day.  Between ceremonies and meetings with friends for the feast day I did not get a chance to blog.  

St Patrick is a most interesting Saint, one, though, who has been reinvented to fit in with the celebration of Irish nationalism.  As I was growing up I came to like St Patrick's Day less and less, and now that the forces of secularisation have created "Paddy's Day" and cut it from the religious, I have even less time for the "traditional" celebrations.   

Am I a killjoy?  Well I'm sure many will think I am.  But I do favour a proper celebration of the feast and an authentic honouring of the man whose feast it is - the spiritual father and apostle of the Irish.  St Patrick was an extraordinary individual: a man of deep faith - a man whose heart was firmly fixed on Christ and in communion with Rome, a man of the Scriptures and a man immersed in the theology of Christ and the Holy Trinity, as his works reveal - that is only to be expected given that he studied at the great school of Lerins. 

I believe we need to reclaim St Patrick - take him back from the bawdy drunken secularists who are using him as an excuse for a knees up - and worse as news out today tells us there has been a rush for the morning after pill in the last few days, God help us!   As we launch out in the process of renewal, St Patrick must have an important role, and Pope Benedict has alluded to this in his prayer for the Church in Ireland.  

The study of St Patrick's life and teaching will reintroduce the Church in Ireland to Scripture and orthodox theology, particularly to the concept of  ecclesial communion; to prayer and the importance of a personal relationship with God; to the beauty of creation, though with the caveat that we do not worship nature as our more "ecologically" minded people seem to.   Reflecting on Patrick's mission we can rediscover evangelical zeal and courage - no fearful hiding from issues with Patrick - excommunicating Coroticus and his soldiers was a daring act, yet it needed to be done. 

St Patrick was not afraid of negative public opinion - some of the established Christians in Ireland did not like him.  It seems he was too strident for them - he probably disturbed their comfortable, lukewarm Christianity, and so he challenged them.  There was no licking up to them, putting them on committees to keep them on side or doing everything he could to keep them in.  He preached the Gospel, and like St Paul he put it to them: "Take it, or leave it".   Yet he was also the soul of charity and tenderness: the virtues of prudent and charity helped him harmonise the zeal and gentleness.  It is the genius of the Saints which reveals how one can be tough and gentle at the same time: in recent years we have seen this in Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Ven. John Paul II.

And Patrick is a true father.  In his Letter to Coroticus he is defending his Irish children, because, as St Paul said in his letters, Patrick has fathered us in faith, and so as we struggle with the various issues which seem to be creating problems for the Church here, we must turn to him.  Blessed John XXIII used to say the Lord every night before going to sleep: "Lord, I've done my best, it's your Church, look after it now" (or words to that effect).  So too with Patrick: we Irish should say to him: "Dear Father, Patrick, Ireland is your responsibility, look after it and help us do what we can to bring renewal".  It would be no harm if our Beloved Patron took his crosier and beat some sense into the Irish Church - it would do us all a little good.  Is that too negative?  Perhaps, though I think not. 

So now, how do we reclaim the feast of St Patrick?   As Christians we have Christianised pagan feasts before, though ironically this pagan feast was once a religious feast.  One possibility could be to add a second feast day in honour of St Patrick - his relics were not translated so that's a non-runner unless we kindly ask the Church of Ireland to allow us exhume his remains from the grave in Downpatrick (if any are left - if he's there at all) and translate them to a worthy shrine and then mark the day as a feast.  We could celebrate the day he arrived in Ireland or the day he established the Primatial See in Armagh - that could be celebrated as a day of evangelisation - and devoid of secular interest could be a feast to celebrate faith.  But those dates are now probably known only to God. 

All that said, why should we give up his dies natalis? So maybe it is time for some counter cultural revolutionary action.  Seeing as the orthodox Christians are now the dissidents in Ireland, we should do some dissenting from the national booze up.  A parade of our own with the Blessed Sacrament and a statue of St Patrick, Holy Mass and prayers and lots of hymns: good old fashioned hymns that rouse the soul - none of the anemic stuff that has bored us to tears for the last twenty years.   No guitars or fiddles just a good organ and strong human voices booming out "Faith of our Fathers" making the secularists nervous and wondering is Patrick himself coming on the clouds with a good hefty crosier to rid Ireland once again of the metaphorical serpents of paganism and disbelief.  Ah, one can but dream!

Rant over.  I had better say my prayers.  First Vespers of St Joseph - another wonderful feast.