We have two very different emotions to carry in our hearts this morning. One of celebration and one could say, one of desolation. It is our national Feast day – Lá le Phadraig, St Patrick’s day. We are one of the few countries in the world, where our National Feast day, celebrates our Christian Faith, our belief in God, more that it celebrates our success in war or political upheaval or revolution. France has it’s Bastille Day, the United States, their 4th of July, Australia has Australia Day marking the date when the first settlers arrived from England. All of these days mark a turning point, when something new happened, and the story of the nation took a new twist. Like all history, it wasn’t all for the best but it is what happened. But our National Feast day has a deeper calling, it is traditionally the date on which St Patrick died in the year 461. It marked the end of the first part of a quiet revolution which saw many Irish men and women turn towards Christianity and to the Christian story that unfolded with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I mentioned celebration at the start but I also mentioned desolation. We know that we life in a very fractured and broken world and we wonder today if St Patrick has something to say to us. The story of missiles, drones and the technology of modern warfare has become part of our everyday language and conversation. It can be easy to dismiss the atrocities we see as the doings of an evil person or in this case a number of evil people. But we might need to ask ourselves the question, is the anger and divisiveness seen there also visible in our own lives and relationships and our view of the world.
The first step that all warmakers do is to say that those people over there are not like us. This othering makes it easier than to destroy them with missiles or bombs or even to destroy their children in their schools. The killers – and I would call them killers, not soldiers,- see the children of the other side as being different to their own. It takes long hatred, built up over many years to hide the humanity in the enemy, in the other nation or religion or tribe. Sometimes it is called being radicalised
The young St Patrick could have been radicalised by his early experience in Ireland. He was enslaved and mistreated and he found himself among people who were very different to him. He would have called us native Irish savages, as he came from Roman Britian where there was a high level of civilisation. Not to trivialise it but they would have had indoor toilets for goodness sake! What prevented Patrick from turning into a hate filled young man, anxious for revenge? Well from his writings, it becomes clear that the young Patrick was not just a Christian in name but in his heart. In the depths of his slavery and misery, he turned to his familiar God in prayer. And he was radicalised – not in the journey of hatred but in the journey of love. The proof – when he finally escaped and was ordained a priest, he turned his face towards the country and people who had mistreated him and not to bring them hatred but to bring them love.
Patrick came to Ireland, radicalised by the faith in 432. In six years time , we will be celebrating sixteen hundred years of the Christian faith in our country. No doubt there will be many kinds of commemorations but the underlying question to be answered is “Did it make a difference” And there will be opinions on both sides on that question, but for us as people of faith, the question that needs to be answered is “Did it make a difference to me” and more importantly, “Did Patrick’s message give me hope when the world is trying to take hope away from me”
And that journey of hope begins with forgiveness, with seeing every human being as my sister or brother and recognising that every one of us, from our Baptism has a mission which is entrusted to no one else, ever, in the whole history of the human race.