Happy St Patrick's Day
I have no Irish heritage and am not a fan of whiskey – note the E – although my husband is a fan of the hard stuff. So I had to research the man named St Patrick for this reflection. First surprise: his name was not originally Patrick, but Maewyn Succat. He was born to Calpurnius and Conchessa, both Roman citizens, in AD 385, in either Scotland or Wales.
As a teenager, Maewyn was kidnapped by pirates and sold, as a slave, to an Irish master. He was a shepherd until he managed to flee back to England where he joined a monastery. He became a Christian, changed his name to Patricius, was ordained a Bishop and returned to Ireland as a missionary.
There are many legends and claims to fame for Patrick but science has disproved at least one of them. Patrick is credited with banishing snakes from Ireland, but no fossils of snakes have ever been found there, so unless he was able to ban retrospectively, this is a myth. Patrick used the shamrock as a metaphor for the Trinity to those he was trying to convert – that three leaves are separate yet joined. This is as good an illustration as steam, water and ice all being H2O.
Patrick is technically not a saint in the Roman Catholic church; he was never canonised. The first St Patrick’s Day parade in the New World was held in New York in 1766. Perhaps the most startling “fact” that is not at all true is that St Patrick did not wear green! He wore blue, as artwork through the centuries will attest. Green was linked with the patron saint of Ireland by the Irish independence movement from about the same time as the New York parade.
Scholars tell us that Ireland was the only Celtic-speaking country that the Romans did not invade; this left them illiterate until Christianity arrived in the fourth century – whether this is all due to Patrick is not known as the earliest surviving written records are from the eighth century. Where does that leave us today?
Jesus our Saviour, we ask that those who have idols, whether from the past or the present, will readjust their focus to you, the embodiment of the living God. Help us all to learn to recognise our need to hero-worship and redress our thoughts to follow your example.
God our Father, we thank you for those who have gone before, especially those who have been in the mission field. We think of those who converted the lands we now live in; we remember those who preached the Gospel to us when we were younger in faith, whether that was many years ago or only yesterday!
Holy Spirit, continue to call those who have the gift to convert hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. Prompt each of us to examine ourselves: are our own hearts beginning to calcify; are we being called to speak out and preach to our friends, family or even strangers?
We ask these prayers in the name of the triune God, however we imagine him/her/them, Amen.
Elaine Kinchin
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