St Patrick, like many other great Irish figures before and since his time, has become fossilised in the folk memory of our land. Trapped by tradition, the commonly held image is of an elderly bearded bishop, dressed in flowing green vestments, complete with shamrock dotted mitre and with snakes writhing around his ankles. He too has fallen victim to the zealous but wildly inaccurate imaginings of mediocre nineteenth-century Italian artists. Their work still decorates the wall of many an Irish kitchen or can be found on little 'holy pictures' which flooded the country before the arrival of the missalette!
It does no justice to the saint who wrote the 'Confessio' and the 'Letter against the Soldiers of Coroticus. The character who wrote that letter was a tough, courageous, passionate man, who called a spade a spade. A community Patrick had been preparing for Baptism had been butchered by the soldiers of Coroticus. Patrick doesn't mince his words of condemnation. His passionate love for his people and his God shines out from the text: "I would not have chosen to speak as harshly as I must,", he says, "but the zeal of God compels me, Christ's truth urges me, for love of the children on whose behalf I gave up my parents and my homeland." The bland popular images of Patrick does less than justice to this man of great courage and rock-like moral strength.
Since his Feastday falls on Sunday, we have today the readings of the Fifth Sunday in Lent. Jeremiah is the reading ordinarily read. The particular extract has uncanny echoes in the experience of St. Patrick. Patrick makes his own the divine assurance to the ancient prophet:
Do not say, 'I am a child.' Go now to those to whom I send you and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to protect you. . .I am putting my words into your mouth.
The young Patrick must have felt like Jeremiah, unsure, apprehensive at the task which lay before him. Yet he came back here, determined, courageous, fearless in his mission of introducing the Christian gospel to a hostile people. The task which confronted him was enormous. In many ways he was a human reflection of the country through which he travelled, which was as Seosamh Mac Grianna wrote, 'fissured by streams and rugged with stones and rocky crags'. I prefer to think of Patrick as this rock-like person, faithful servant of Almighty God. That courage is well captured and expressed in Seamus Murphy's limestone carving of St. Patrick which is depicted in your misalette. The landscape parallels the man.
It seems a pity too that devotion to Patrick happens only once a year. In an Ireland where faith and religious attitudes develop in an increasingly unfriendly climate, where cynicism and bitterness stifle enthusiasm, and where many young adults cannot avoid being infected by creeping apathy, we badly need the reassuring conviction and courage of modern-day Patricks.
Who can say what he would do if he were to revisit Ireland at this time? Of this we can be sure, in his own difficult times it was the word of God that guided his steps. We also must make our own the reassurance of God addressed to Jeremiah: "Do not be afraid; I am with you to protect you." On this day of our National Patron Saint, may we resolve once more to cherish the faith that served our ancestors so well, and that will surely serve as 'a lamp for our steps' too.
Enjoy the day.