Today is a feast day.
We are honoring and celebrating the courageous and godly St. Patrick of Ireland this March 17th in our grand custom of having a feast of corned beef, braised carrots, cabbage and potatoes, irish soda bread with butter, dubliner and dûnbarra cheeses, and guinness. I’m sure pictures will be forthcoming later from that.
Though our family loves our Irish roots, on St. Patrick’s Day we are less about celebrating all things Irish than we are about celebrating the godliness of a man who risked life and limb to strike the roots of paganism and solidify Christianity in one of the fiercest mission fields in all of Europe: Ireland, a fiercely heathen and barbaric nation that even practiced human sacrifice. St. Patrick should also be honored as a man who resolutely taught the Trinity, and the deity of the Christ, in an age where Arianism and Pelagianism were rampant heresies… how differently the history of Ireland (and even the history of the Christianity) would be if those heresies had taken root and spread like a rash through Druidic Ireland! Ireland was an anchor for Christianity later when the rest of Europe was crumbling politically and religiously, and St. Patrick’s monasteries preserved many Christian and classical works that would otherwise have been lost.
Of course, there are many myths surrounding St. Patrick — I think I’ve read every single one that’s been included in children’s picture books and history books about Ireland. St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. St. Patrick demonstrated the Trinity to the Irish people by holding up a shamrock. St. Patrick performed miracles with his ash walking stick across all of Ireland. Differentiating now between legend and truth is rather impossible… many of these legends, though, are probably rooted in a grain of symbolic truth; driving the snakes out of Ireland is symbolic for St. Patrick driving the “snakes” of Pelagian heresy from the green shores of Ireland. And his 3-leaf clover illustration of the Trinity is really clever once you think about it.
My favorite “legend,” however, is the legend that St. Patrick wrote this renowned hymn, “St. Patrick’s Breastplate.” The words are attributed to St. Patrick, but some people think they could have been written in the 8th century instead. The beauty of this hymn or poem, however, is that it speaks of all the daily protections of Christ for our body and spirit; what do we have to fear when we bind Christ unto ourselves, and place Him to our right and our left, and behind and before us? Here is part of that hymn:
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.
So today, I am not simply celebrating my Irishness (St. Patrick wasn’t even Irish, he was from Britain), but I am celebrating a man of God who bound unto himself the strong name of the Trinity, and who left behind a mostly Christian Ireland when he died on March 17, 493. May my life likewise model that of St. Patrick’s: that Christ is in the heart of every man who thinks of me, every mouth that speaks of me, every eye that sees me, and every ear that hears me.
Now go feast. We are remembering again God’s love for us in Christ; and just as St. Patrick and St. Brigid did, we should in good and hearty conscience celebrate the fulness and richness of God’s gifts given to us on this earth. And let your souls upon remembering Christ cry, “Aye!”
Coram Deo!
