Fr. Fintan Lyons: Many years ago in a north Co. Dublin fairly rural parish, the attendance at Mass one St Patrick’s Day was noticeably reduced, and was commented on by parishioners – in a village anything different tended to be noticed. We realised soon enough that it was because some had gone off early to the parade in Dublin city, with consequences for our local observance of a religious feast – a low mass in Latin with some Patrician hymns in Irish, and little else to honour our Patron Saint. As one with pastoral responsibility, I wondered what effects this development could have on parish life; the new black and white televised parade was opening a wider world to us, one where the religious ethos would have to find its place.
It seemed a bit sudden, but the fact was that early 1960s Ireland was struggling to build up its economy, so a parade with colourful floats and an emphasis on industry had become prominent – compared certainly with the Free State’s observance of the day less than three decades earlier – a military parade, bands playing Patrician hymns, and ending with Mass in Latin, attended by government ministers.
Change the scene to today’s Ireland and the Saint Patrick’s Day Festival now shaped by the mid-nineties government official plan ‘to project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal.’
How do faithful members of the little flock – no longer the great people, honour our patron saint in a mixed Christian and secular society, where for many the word Saint may not have meaning, traditional moral norms are disregarded and the state scrambles to deal with ever-multiplying social problems? A country of diverse ethnicities, a prominent consumer culture, social media influencers affecting attitudes and behaviours? And a society where icons are esteemed and imitated.
We can learn this, at least, from the way society functions: the importance of icons. Champions in so many sports, big names in music and films, in endurance feats, are hero-worshipped, inspiring, and imitated by, the young and young adults, and rightly so.
Today, St Patrick, so many centuries after his time, could be an icon, as he actually became, several centuries after his death, when so much was written about him and devotion spread in Ireland and western Europe.
He had been called by God to build up the church in Ireland; we can call on him to re-build the church in our day. It’s just that he needs to become known accurately as the hero he was, a person worthy of being an icon for today’s generation, whether Gen Z or Alpha or whatever people are.
Authenticity has an appeal for a generation aware that some who seemed icons have turned out to be very flawed, a generation that has learned not to be naïve, and values authenticity. And authenticity is what is found in Patrick’s honest, humble account of himself in his autobiographical Confession, self-deprecating, yet a revealing account of a spiritual champion.
It’s a short work, the length of one chapter of a typical modern novel. Part of its charm for those who believe is the great number of allusions rather than direct quotations from Scripture that have a pleasing resonance for anyone reasonably familiar with Scripture. For others, at least quite an amazing story. For someone reared in the West of Ireland, one of the comparisons or similes he uses has a particular and deeply spiritual resonance.
I have a clear childhood memory of fields with stones lying on the muddy ground from cattle crowding against loose-stone walls. One sentence in paragraph 12 of the Confession sums up Patrick’s humility, his calling and his spiritual greatness:
‘I know for certain, that I was like a stone lying … in the mire. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall.’
He continues with a sentence that could sum up his entire story:
‘That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure.’
For people today, and especially the young, who find faith and a commitment to be followers of Christ, a step too far, knowing the story of Patrick can make him their icon. May it be so. He says early in his story that as a youth he ignored God and his commandments. But in the hardship, the loneliness, of captivity he came to himself and began to look to God for help. ‘There I sought him, and there I found him’. There can be a lot of loneliness, a lack of meaning in a way of life of the young today that does not satisfy.
Patrick went through all that and found that God came to his rescue. Towards the end of his life, he prayed that some would come across his writing and learn from him,’ a sinner and unlearned’, how great God’s gift to him had been. Those who come across his story today can also learn how great God’s gift can be to those who are open to receive it.