A Tribute to St. Patrick
In his acclaimed, How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill tells how, at sixteen, the life of Patricius (St. Patrick) became “the life of a shepherd-slave.”
“The work of such shepherds,” Cahill notes, “was bitterly isolated, months at a time spent alone in the hills.” “Deprived of interaction with other humans Patricius must have taken a long time to master the language, and customs of his exile … We know that he did have two constant companions, hunger and nakedness, and that the gnawing in his belly and the chill on his exposed skin, were his worst sufferings, acutely painful presences that could not be shaken off.”
Though, up to this time, Patricius “didn’t really believe in God and found priests foolish,” the destitution and despair of his circumstances moved him to pray. “Tending flocks was my daily work, and I would pray constantly during the daylight hours. The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more – and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again, even while I remained in the woods or on the mountain, I would wake and pray before daybreak – through snow, frost, rain – nor was there any sluggishness in me because then the Spirit within me was ardent.”
Cahill writes that “Patricius endured six years of this woeful isolation, and by the end of it he had grown from a careless boy to something he would sure never otherwise have become – a holy man, indeed a visionary for whom there was no longer any rigid separation between this world and the next. On his last night as Miliucc’s slave he received in sleep his first otherworldly experience. A mysterious voice said to him: ‘Your hungers are rewarded: you are going home.’”
A typical incident, out of the next years of Patricius’ preparation for his return to Ireland, reveals how completely he had learned to rely on “the Lord,” his “God.” Trekking inland on the European “continent,” he, and the seamen he was traveling with, found the land ravaged and without any source of food. Famished the captain taunts his protégé. “How about it, Christian? You say your god is great and all-powerful, so why can’t you pray for us? We’re starving to death, and there’s little chance of our ever seeing a living soul!” “From the bottom of your heart,” Patricius responds, “turn trustingly to the Lord my God for nothing is impossible to him. And today he will send you food for your journey until you are filled for he has an abundance everywhere.” Cahill recounts that “the young man’s sincerity affects the weakened sailors,” and they, “bowing their heads, try a moment of faith. The sound of a stampede attracts their attention; and as they raise their eyes a herd of pigs hoofs it down the road in their direction. Not just food, but the best food of all!”
In time a man Patricius knew in Ireland, “visits him in a vision: Victoricus, holding ‘countless letters,’ one of which he hands to Patricius, who reads its heading, ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ At that moment, he hears the voice of a multitude (beside a forest that Patricius remembers as being ‘near the western sea’) crying: ‘We beg you to come and walk among us once more.’ ‘Stabbed in the heart,’ he is unable to read further – and so wakes up. Try though he might, he cannot put the Irish out of his mind. The visions increase, and Christ begins to speak within him: ‘He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.’ Patricius, the escaped slave is about to be drafted once more as Saint Patrick, apostle to the Irish nation. … At length, he is ordained priest and bishop, virtually the first missionary bishop in history.”
"The step he took," Cahill, a consummate historian, tells us, “was in its way as bold as Columbus’s, and a thousand times more humane. He himself was aware of its radical nature. ‘The Gospel,’ he reminded his accusers late in life, ‘has been preached to the point beyond which there is not one’ – nothing but the ocean. Nor was he blind to his dangers, for even in his last years ‘every day I am ready to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved – whatever may come my way. But I am not afraid of any of these things, because of the promises of heaven; for I have put myself in the hands of God Almighty.’
“Saint Patrick was a gentleman,
And he came from dascent people.
goes a music hall ditty of the nineteenth century. He did indeed. And he was a good and brave man, one of humanity’s natural noblemen. Among simple, straightforward people, who could unreservedly appreciate his core decency, the success of his mission is assured."
Of that mission Cahill writes, “Patrick could put himself – imaginatively – in the position of the Irish. To him, no less than to them, the world is full of magic. One can invoke the elements – the lights of heaven, the waves of the sea, the birds and the animals – and these will come to one’s aid, as in the incantation of the ‘Breastplate.’ (The ‘Breastplate’ is a prayer attributed to St. Patrick and included at the end of this piece.) The difference between Patrick’s magic and the magic of the druids is that in Patrick’s world all beings, and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success. And though that success is of an ultimate kind – and, therefore, does not preclude suffering – all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind’s good, teaching, succoring, and saving.
“Patrick could speak convincingly of these things. He could assure you that all suffering, however dull and desperate, would come to its conclusion and would show itself to have been worthwhile. He could insist that, in the end, you too would hear the words ‘Your hungers are rewarded: you are going home. Look, your ship is ready.’ He could speak believably of the superabundance of a God who in response to humble prayer feeds his lost and wandering people with heavenly manna – and a crew of lost and starving sailors with a herd of very earthly pigs. For Patrick, as for the nineteenth-century mystical poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was also deeply influenced by Celtic sensibility,
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil –
just as do the cunning little birds and charmingly complicated animals of Celtic metalwork.
“The key to Patrick’s confidence – and it is the sort of ringing, rock-solid confidence on which a civilization may be built, an unmuffled confidence not heard since the Golden Ages of Greece and Rome – is in his reliance on ‘the Creator of Creation,’ … Our Father in heaven, having created all things, even things that have since become bent or gone bad, will deliver us, his children, from all evil. But our Father is not only in faraway heaven, but lives among us. For he created everything by his Word, which was with him in the beginning, which became flesh in the human Jesus, and flames out in all his creatures:
I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes.
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing birds
Are but his voice – and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.
“This magical world, though full of adventure and surprise, is no longer full of dread. Rather, Christ has trodden all pathways before us, and at every crossroads and by every tree the Word of God speaks out. We have only to be quiet and listen, as Patrick learned to do during the silence of his ‘novitiate’ as a shepherd on the slopes of Sliab Mis.”
Saint Patrick’s Breastplate
(Thomas Cahill writes this about the Prayer … “Patrick’s great prayer in Irish … sometimes called ‘Saint Patrick’s Breastplate’ because it was thought to protect him from hostile powers, sometimes called ‘The Deer’s Cry’ because it was thought to make him resemble a deer to the eyes of those seeking to do him harm – cannot definitely be ascribed to him. … On the other hand, it is Patrician to its core, the first ringing assertion that the universe itself is the Great Sacrament, magically designed by its loving Creator to bless and succor human beings. … in this cosmic incantation the inarticulate outcast who wept for slaves, aided common men in difficulty, and loved sunrise and sea at last finds his voice … appropriately, it is an Irish voice.)
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me:
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and those
evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my
body and soul
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ
when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,Of the Creator of Creation.
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