March 17

Greetings, Dear Ones,

I've been thinking about St. Patrick all day, as I imagine many of you have as well.  Maybe it's the Guinness, maybe it's figuring out what you have in your closet that's green.  Maybe it's just the fun of everyone being Irish for a day that makes this such a popular holiday. But like Valentine's Day, the saint behind the celebration has gotten lost.

The thing about Patrick, of course, is that on the one hand he's been lost to us for a long time.  He lived in the 5th century, and by the 7th century people were trying to tell his story, but for their own purposes, and with precious little to go on.  And on the other hand, we miraculously seem to have two (two!) documents that are genuinely his own testimony to his life, and work, and faith.  Absolutely remarkable, really.  And, whatever we think was important to know about Patrick -- snakes (there weren't any) or shamrocks (no evidence for that one, either), even the lovely 8th century prayer known as St Patrick's Breastplate -- those aren't the things he thought were important enough to write about.
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I looked at his Confessio, his testimony to his Christian faith, today.  You can read it on line if you like, the link is here.  What is most impressive about this fairly short document is his humility, his frank acknowledgement that his faith wasn't all that strong, that his mastery of Latin isn't all that great, that he's not terribly adept at the social niceties that his church colleagues seemed to think important.  But what Patrick valued -- and in places is absolutely lyrical about -- is God's infinite capacity to call people to new adventures, new possibilities, indeed, completely new lives in completely new worlds.

Patrick claimed to have heard the "voice of the Irish people" call him to come to them.  They called him "holy boy," and summoned him to come back to a place where he'd been enslaved in his youth, and begged him to come convert his former captors to the Christian faith.  He reports that he baptized "thousands" of native Irish, mostly adults, in his years of ministry. He established religious communities for his new converts to live in, so that they could devote themselves to prayer and study.  But all of this, he claimed, was work done by God's grace.  Patrick, like most of us, was just doing his best at the thing he understood he was supposed to be doing.

How might we follow Patrick's example?  Maybe by admitting our own limitations and doing what we're called to do anyway.  By opening up the door of the heart so that others can pass through and find where they belong.  By welcoming people into relationship with a God who sees them for who they are and who they can be. We do it by being faithful in the hard, ordinary stuff of life -- showing up for a job that's not the one you always dreamed of, and being kind to people there anyway.  Remembering that your partner is only human, and offering him the gift of patience when that's what he needs most.  Not taking yourself (read here, "myself") too seriously every minute of the day, and make some room for grace to rescue you ("me") from obvious failure.

At least it's worth a try. Sláinte.