Saint Patrick's Day In Canada
Canada's Drew Marshall Show rang. Would I be a Celtic Voice on their Saint Patrick's Day show? You bet! Why am I so enthusiastic?
Patrick was a teenage Brit, captured by Irish pirates and sold as a slave farm worker in Ireland. He turned to God with all his heart until he glowed in the snow at night. He escaped on a boat to France where he trained to be a priest. He looked set to have a cushy parish back home near his parents. But he dreamed that he received a letter. It was not from the bishop. It was from all the people of Ireland, begging him to walk among them once again. He obeyed the vision. He sailed up Strangford Loch with a team. You see this as your plane descends at Belfast airport. They became bosom friends and stayed there a whole season. The farmer's family and workers followed Jesus and churches were planted all along the valley. Patrick tells us about his work in his auto-biography - the first in Europe. So many followed Jesus that he had to ordain hundreds of clergy and plant many faith communities for men and women.
In his book How the Irish Saved Civilisation Thomas Cahill says Patrick 'swam his way into the Irish imagination'. He did this because their former foreign slave loved them and became their adopted son, and because he made dramatic actions. At the Spring Solstice, when Ireland's High King lit a bonfire on top of the pagan Hill of Tara to invoke blessing from the sun god, Patrick lit a fire on the hill opposite to celebrate the rising from death of Jesus, the Creator of the sun, whom he titled the Uncreated Sun. The High King's Druid said 'If you do not put out the fire of this new religion this day it will burn for ever in this land'. The king sent warriors to arrest Patrick, who recited psalms and prayers of protection, but all they saw through the mist were deer. Ever after the unforgettable prayer called Saint Patrick's Breastplate has also been known as The Deer's Cry.
Patrick fell in love with the Three Loves in the heart of God, the eternal Communion from which all the world comes. He illustrated the Trinity with the Irish shamrock.
'Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of
