Homily at Saint John’s Seminary
Evening Prayer
Saint Patrick’s Day, 2010
I want to thank you for the opportunity of offering a few thoughts on Saint Patrick, a patron not only of the Irish but of this great Archdiocese. Indeed, his statue blessed me this morning as I was forced by the high waters to enter the seminary grounds from Commonwealth Avenue, and I suspect he looks down upon you with a particular love and with particular blessings this evening as well.
Three small points I wish to offer, introduced, I hope, in an appropriate form:
For we gather as one in this place
each trusting in God’s holy grace
with Patrick the Priest
to reflect at his feast
on his Passion, Perdurance and Faith
Passion
When 1550 years ago, Patrick of Wales died in his beloved Ireland, it was after living a life filled with a passion for God: a passion so evident, that his very presence ignited a fire of faith which still burns, in good times and in troubles, on the Emerald Isle.
That passion was first ignited, ironically enough when he was taken as a sixteen year old slave slave. His seminary, he tells us, was lived out in a solitary pasture, where he was forced to tend sheep, living in exile among a strange people in a strange and craggy land.
Yet, he reflects in his Confessions, those days of suffering, far from the comforts of home, were days in which God’s love and his Faith flourished. He writes of the lonely days he spent as a young shepherd:
"Many times a day I prayed. The love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. In a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night. I used to get up for prayer before daylight whatever the weather--snow, frost, rain-- without suffering any ill effects. The spirit within me grew fervent."
At one point, that passion led him to flee Ireland and attempt to return home. With the same unbounded determination I see in so many of you every day, he was undeterred by mere physical realities in this quest. If God (or at least his passions) wanted him to do it, no mountain or bog would remain unclimbed or uncrossed as he walked almost two hundred miles to get home.
He was not very much younger than you when he arrived home, overjoyed to be away from those troublesome Irish. He must have dreamt about that moment on Endless star-lit nights in Irish pastures and longed for those who spoke his language, with whom he felt at home and among whom he had grown up for many years. Not so very different than those of you who come to these strange shores from great countries far away.
Yet no sooner did he return home than he had a dream in which a man named Victoricus came to him with a big stack of letters. This somulant mailman was, scholars suggest, Saint Victorious, a saint of whom Patrick’s Father, nd ordained and learned deacon himself, may often have spoken. Victorious, we are told, was a vociferous advocate for missionary activity, especially to the dark and mysterious lands which lay north of Britain.
One of the letters was addressed to Patrick himself, and it began with the words: ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ It said: 'We beg you, young man, come and walk among us once more.'"
Perdurance
So Patrick returned to ireland, and for thirty years he labored in the Irish vineyard. And here, as often is the case in the best of our lives, his youthful passion was transformed by God into full fledged perseverance. One of the more obscure iconographic signs of the great Saint illustrate this well.
It is of a crozier stuck in the mud, or the bog, to be more precise.
It seems that after responding to the vision, Patrick was making his way through a part of Ireland now now known as Aspatria, a place so stubbornly pagan that he could preach until he was blue in the face and these stubborn celts would just sit there and scowl. And so, the ever persistent evangelizer jammed his wooden crozier into the ground and swore he would not shut up until the faith had taken root in that obstinate land. Upon which, roots sprang from the base of his crozier and the great walking stick grew into a small tree, at which the people repented and were baptized by the hundreds.
Such was the perdurance of his faith that he could wait a lifetime, if that’s what it took, for the Faith to take root. He desired neither comfort nor prestige, and its a good thing, because he seldom got much of either.
Of his life preaching the Gospel he once wrote, "Daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity. But I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself entirely into the hands of God Almighty who rules everywhere."
That perdurance, built on the foundation of passion, is what makes a good saint and its what makes a good priest. We need the passion ignited by deep prayer and long hours spent with the Lord and the ineffable consolation of hearts comforted and strengthened by the Holy Spirit. We need passion tempered by the love of holy obedience: obedience to the Gospel, obedience to those whom God has placed over us as our spiritual fathers, and obedience to the truth.
That perdurance is often sorely missing from our society, and sometimes, sadly, from our Priests today. But it is the most essential element in a renewal of Priestly life and one which, thanks to the grace of God, is more and more embraced by our brothers in parish ministry.
A revival of reflection on the ars celebrandi and a renewed liturgical reform leads us to a fervent search for authenticity and interiority in a world which prides itself on slick pitches and shiny exteriors. A deepening appreciation of our obligations to the poor, the dispossessed and the ones whom everyone else would forget, marks a fresh new moment of Gospel Justice in a Church which sometimes seems the lonely voice in the current healthcare debate: the only public institution whose incessant articulated concerns are for the unborn child and the undocumented stranger.
There are many signs of a new golden age of the Priesthood in our country, and not a few of them are sitting right in front of me this afternoon. Saint Patrick would have embraced them all, but he would also have insisted that each will wither and die unless it is rooted in humble faith.
Faith
For the reason we celebrate Saint Patrick in Boston this week is not because of the greatness of Ireland or the influence of the Irish. No, this feast is not really about my great grandparents getting off the boat from Kerry or politicians teasing each other in South Boston or dying the Chicago River green.
We celebrate Saint Patrick because of his faith. Because in his particular time and place he chose to listen to God’s call and respond to it.
We celebrate Saint Patrick precisely because he realized that it was not about him, but about God: that without the Lord he would be nothing. “I beseech all who believe in and fear God,” he once wrote, “that if I have demonstrated any small thing according to God’s pleasure, to remember that it was all God’s Gift.”
You can hear that faith, that utter dependence upon God in The Deer’s Cry, Lorica, a Christian hymn written in the form of Druidic incantation, attributed to him from the eighth century Liber Hymnorum:
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness, Through the confession of the oneness
I arise today Through the strength of Christ's birth....crucifixion and resurrection
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
the service of archangels,
prayers of patriarchs,
preaching of apostles,
innocence of holy virgins,
and deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of demons,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
Which is why it is so good to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day with you, my dear brothers, who seek only to give your lives to the same Faith and to be consecrated in the same Priesthood as he was.
Take courage from his example, as you take comfort in his intercession and trust in his friendship. For he was once as you are now and through his prayers and your perseverance, you shall be as he became.
For in the end, to borrow from Saint Augustine, this is our own mystery which we celebrate on every’s saint’s day. And the question is ever the same: will we, like this good Saint, choose the Lord. The Servant of God, John Paul II said as much when he once told us, candidly:
“What I really want you to realize is this: that God counts on you: that he makes his plans, in a way, depends on your free collaboration, on the oblation of your lives, and on the generosity with which you follow the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in the depths of your hearts. The Catholic faith of Ireland today was linked, in God’s plan to the fidelity of Saint Patrick. And tomorrow, yes, tomorrow, some part of God’s plan will be linked to your fidelity – to the fervor with which you say Yes to God’s word in your lives.”
