Something about St Patrick's Day

12 Mar 05 (Saturday)

St Patrick Church...

Something I found out about St Patrick Day from the net:

Praying with St Patrick

by Canon John W. Stewart

The Editor has made the suggestion that from time to time this column might examine the life of one of the saints and see how their lives instruct our own prayer. In March I am naturally drawn to St Patrick because his feast day is the day I was born. Though I am not sure that my Scottish Presbyterian relatives were all that impressed at the time!

Patrick is remembered as the patron saint of Ireland and the founding father of the Irish Church, though he came originally from the British mainland in the fifth century.

St Patrick is one of the earliest figures in the Celtic Church who has left us direct documentary evidence about himself. His autobiographical Confessions reveal a humble and deeply spiritual personality but tell us little about his life. His other piece of writing is an address to the soldiers of Coroticus (the Epistola). The soldiers have abandoned the laws of God and Patrick warns them of the consequences which will follow in a piece of explicit teaching about Christian morality.

Many stories and traditions have grown up around him, but more recent research has stripped much of them away. It is agreed that he came from well-to-do Romano-British stock and his father was a deacon in the Roman church. He was captured by Irish pirates when he was sixteen and spent six years in slavery in Ireland, a time when he came to a strong evangelical Christian faith. After his escape he arrived in Britain where he was ordained. In a vision one night he received a call to return to Ireland as a missionary. After being consecrated as a bishop, he travelled once again to the land he had known as a slave, most likely in the year 432. He spent the last thirty years of his life in a ministry of evangelism, baptizing converts and organizing the life of the emerging Church. There is agreement that he died on the 17th March, hence his feast day, but the year is argued by some to have been 461 and by others to be 493.

What help do we find for our own lives in a world and a church very different from St Patrick's? There are three clues for me which are important: developing a sense of God's presence everywhere, experiencing God as protector in times of trouble, and using common images to plumb the depths of the mystery of God. Professor John Macquarrie, in Paths in Spirituality, observes that "the Celt was very much a God-intoxicated man whose life was embraced on all sides by the divine Being." A sense of the immanence of God flowed from an understanding of the incarnation in which God entered the world in human form and was present in the sacraments as well as creation. The profound composition known as St Patrick's Breastplate was almost certainly not written by Patrick but its contents accord with his spirituality. You will find it in the hymn book listed under the first line I bind unto myself today. One verse is a beautiful prayer about the presence of God:

Christ be with me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me,
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet,
Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Another example of the view that the whole of creation is a source of revelation is expressed in the credal affirmation that St Patrick is said to have made to the daughters of the High King of Tara when they asked where God had his dwelling:

Our God is the God of all men, the God of heaven and earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountains and the lowly valley, the God above heaven, the God in heaven, the God under heaven. He has his dwelling around heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them. He inspires all, he quickens all, he dominates all, he sustains all. He lights the light of the sun; he furnishes the light of the light; he has put springs in the dry land and has set stars to minister to the greater lights.

Another aspect important to St Patrick's spirituality is the understanding of God as the protector in times of trouble. Celtic Christians related to the members of the Trinity and the whole company of heaven not just as companions and friends but as defenders and protectors against all evil forces. They read the Gospel accounts of Jesus exorcising demons from people and Paul writing about wrestling with the rulers of the darkness of this world and these stories helped them make sense of their world populated by good and evil spirits. In St Patrick's Breastplate the Trinity is a defensive shield and a suit of armour to be put on in face of danger and despair:

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

The third insight for us is St Patrick's use of images and the imagination to explore the mystery of God. Perhaps the most well known is the shamrock which he uses in a meeting with the Irish princesses to explain the doctrine of the Trinity.

Three folds of the cloth, yet only one napkin is there,
Three joints in the finger, but still only one finger fair;
Three leaves of the shamrock, yet no more than one shamrock to wear,
Frost, snow-flakes and ice, all in water their origin share,
Three Persons in God; to one God alone we make prayer.

Poetic and visual images might help us when our rational concepts fail. If we can open ourselves to a sense of wonder at what we see and hear around us, and learn from the imaginative writings of St Patrick and the Celtic Church, our prayer will be inspired and nourished in new and fruitful ways.

St Patrick draws his Confessions to a close with these words:

We are those who believe in Christ, and adore him who is the true sun. He is the sun which does not perish, and so we too, "who do his will", shall not perish. And, as Christ "will abide forever" so he (who believes in him) "will abide forever", for Christ reigns with God the Father almighty, and with the Holy Spirit, before all ages, and now, and "through all the ages to come".

Amen.

Before any one think I am a christian, I will clarify here that I am not...