True Devotion to St. Patrick

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 14, 2008

Because Holy Week is so important that it liturgically trumps every other feast, it's led to some changes in the Church's liturgical calendar this year. The solemnity of St. Joseph, normally March 19, has been moved to tomorrow, the day before Palm Sunday. And in the dioceses that are observing the feast of St. Patrick, normally March 17, it's generally been moved to today.

These liturgical changes have upset some of those who invoke St. Patrick's memory without following his example. The organizers of the Boston St. Patrick's Day Parade, for example, have decided to ignore the liturgical changes and keep their march and political roasts on Sunday, notwithstanding the fact that Sunday is Palm Sunday. It seems that for them it is more important to commemorate St. Patrick than the Lord he served, to have their own parade rather than to remember the Lord's processions from Bethany to Jerusalem and from the praetorium to Calvary.

This is the culmination of a recent pattern in which the feast of St. Patrick, rather than serving as a means to honor him, has grown — unintentionally perhaps — to mock what he stood for. Since the time I was a teenager, it has always struck me as odd how Irish-American groups always lobby the local bishops to lift the law of abstinence whenever St. Patrick's Day falls on a Friday. They seem to think that eating corned beef and cabbage is a better way to pay homage to the saint than giving them up in union with Christ.

Yet St. Patrick is one of the great "Lenten" saints, famously fasting once for 40 days and 40 nights on what is now called Croagh Patrick in prayerful bodily supplication for the conversion of those entrusted to him. To use St. Patrick's feast as an occasion for indulgence rather than reverent sacrifice is as contradictory as it would be to play hooky from work on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

A much better way to celebrate the feast of St. Patrick is to imitate his virtues, especially his zeal for the salvation of others. With St. Paul and St. Francis Xavier, St. Patrick is without question one of the greatest evangelizers of all time.

Born in Britain, he did not have much of a life of piety until he was captured by raiders at the age of 16 and sold into slavery in Ireland. Suffering and hardship often remind people of how much they need God. Patrick said that during the six years he tended his master's herds, he prayed constantly in the daytime and prayed almost as much at night, sometimes spending all night outdoors in prayerful vigil of the dawn.

One night in a dream, he heard a voice telling him to be ready for a brave effort to secure his freedom. In the morning, he escaped and hustled 200 miles to a boat that he saw in the dream was about to depart. After adventures and hardship during which he was able to bring many of the ship's crew to conversion, he arrived home. But after several days of joyous reunion with the family he loved very much, he began to be moved in prayer and in dreams to think of all those back in Ireland who had never known the Gospel. Against the wishes of his beloved family, he decided to use his newly found freedom to dedicate himself to returning to the land of his captors, to preach to them the truth that would set them free.

He had no illusions about how difficult the task was that lay in front of him. He went to France to prepare for the priesthood so that he would be able to bring the greatest gift of all, the presence of the Lord in the sacraments, to his missionary land. In France, he prayed, fasted and readied himself for 20 years. Then, at the age of 43, having been consecrated bishop so that he could found churches and ordain priests, he set off with a few apostolic collaborators.

Over the course of the next 30 years, he labored tenaciously for the conversion of the nation. Village by village, chieftain by chieftain, he planted the seed of the Gospel. Though his life was in constant peril due to the hatred of the druids, he soldiered on, and through prayer, mortification, disputation, and miracles, he bore enormous fruit. Twelve years after his arrival, he was able to found the Church of Armagh, Ireland's primatial see. By the time of his death in 461, the whole nation was Christian.

He bore such fruit, of course, not by his own power but as an instrument of the Lord. He was ever conscious of his total dependence. He composed a "Lorica" which he inscribed on his breastplate and prayed each morning as a means to renew his total trust in God. From the time I discovered it at age 18, I have prayed it, too, each morning. It shows his faith and Christian manliness, which stand in sharp contrast to the flaccid frivolity of those who pretend to honor him with green beer.

By these excerpts it is obvious that, to St. Patrick, the best way to honor him would be to bind unto ourselves the same God he did:

"I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity, by invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three.

"I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead, his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken to my need; the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward; the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard…

"Against the demon snares of sin, the vice that gives temptation force, the natural lusts that war within, the hostile men that mar my course…

"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…

"Salvation is of Christ the Lord."

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.