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| The Google Doodle for St Patrick's Day, 2012 |
This was the question posed to me by a young girl of twelve years of age in a small rural school near Castlerea a few years ago. I was still training for the priesthood, and out getting experience in parish and school. I asked the class could they tell me the proper name of the parish. One young fella put up his hand: 'Kilkeevan', he said. I said, 'Thats right.' I then showed them how that name actually meant Church of Kevin. I mused with them that there must have been someone called Kevin who had founded a Church here at some stage. How do we know there is a God? Because other people share God's story with us. They preach it to us, they teach it to us, and they are instrumental in allowing us to mysteriously, or rather, sacramentally enter and maintain a relationship with God.
Patrick was sent to preach
Not only did he leave his homeland of Britain, but he went back to a place that had enslaved him. This was not only a crossing of a national boundary – it was a profound crossing of a personal boundary on Patrick's behalf. We can only imagine what this was like for Patrick. The link between him and Christ through his prayer seems to have been the force that enabled Patrick to set out on his mission to preach the gospel of freedom to the very people who had taken his freedom away.
There is a radicalness to Patrick's preaching
because he did not identify himself as being a narrow-minded, parochial person. As a Roman, Patrick had a truly global worldview, and because of that worldview, Patrick was able to go beyond his own family, his own country and homeplace to share the story of freedom with a people not his own. And that is a core expression of the universalism that is at the heart of Catholicism. It is a global, international, universal expression of Christ's instruction to: 'Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.'
Before Patrick left his homeland for our homeland, Christ left his Father
Christ emptied himself of his divine inheritance for a time in order to become one of us, that Christ might be God for us and that we might become part of the great relationship that God is, the Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that Patrick illustrated with the Shamrock.
Christ went on mission from heaven to earth and back again
Patrick was taken from freedom into slavery and back again. Strengthened by his experience, Patrick copied Christ once more, this time voluntarily and returned to Ireland, this time bearing the mission of Christ and the commission of the Church.
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| St Patrick |
The greatness of Patrick is shared by all who cross great personal journies from addiction to recovery, from slavery to freedom, from sin to redemption, from death to life. The greatness of Patrick is shared by all those who have historically left these shores to make a new life for themselves and their families – and not just historically but also those who are emigrating in the hundreds and thousands right now to eek out a new life for themselves.
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