Keeping the Faith: Patrick of Ireland

 

The St. Patrick statue pictured above was a gift to St. Matthew's Church in Tucson from Lenci Loring 

Patrick, a runaway slave, left civilization behind and returned to the land of his captors as a missionary bishop. There his crude Latin - an embarrassment in the civilized world - fit those to whom he wrote, notably Coroticus, a British slaver who called himself a Christian. No Christian are you, said Patrick, for you are a tyrant, kidnapping, enslaving, and slaughtering the innocent.. 

Patrick didn’t write much besides his letter to Coroticus but he did write an ‘apologia’ of sorts - an account of his own fitness for ministry and his credibility as a witness to the saints. It was rough and ready, more like something from the letters of Paul of Tarsus than the literary Confessions of Augustine of Hippo.

His feast we celebrate just a few days before the equinox in March. Saint Patrick’s Day has become a drinking holiday, like so many American days, but in an earlier century it was an occasion for Irish immigrants that had newly become American to proclaim their love for and loyalty to their new country. But now it is often an occasion for the wearin’ o’ the green simply to avoid being pinched, or buying the house a round.

And so we are more likely to associate the equinox with another feast of the Christian year, the Annunciation. If we celebrate the Nativity of our Savior on December 25th it is only sensible that we count nine months back to celebrate his expectation. “Here am I” says Mary, the angels let out a long held breath, and the redemption of creation begins anew. 

We nowadays seek to celebrate more than our own survival, our rescue from the pit of sin or despond: we want to mark a day in spring as a reminder of God’s creation of all things, and our place among them. 

Hence, a month after the equinox, Earth Day. This year that day falls just after Easter. And so we have some time between now and then so we can prepare with proper Lenten expectation, repentance, and humility to recall our place in creation.

Let us remind ourselves that among God’s creatures are the least of people, the forgotten, the invaded, the captive: those assaulted in their own homes and drawn away to a foreign land, as the people of Patrick were, and all those who have ached for release from captivity or relief from the oppression of violence, for the healing of wounds, and the balm of the Spirit Mary’s son bears.

From the Iona Community:

A Universal Prayer for Peace 

Lead us from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

Lead us from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

Lead us from hate to love, from war to peace.

Let peace fill our lives, our world, our universe.

Peace, peace, peace.

Amen

https://iona.org.uk/prayers-for-the-people-of-ukraine/

The Rev. Dr. John Leech is ordained in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement and has served as pastor in northern California and western Washington and now in southern Arizona.

JRL+ Mar 4, 2022 

https://confessio.ie/etexts/epistola_english#

A Letter To The Soldiers Of Coroticus

http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/p02.html

A version of this essay was published in the Arizona Daily Star on Sunday March 13th 2022 page E2 under the title "Patrick of Ireland. https://tucson.com/lifestyles/patrick-of-ireland/article_c74b8a6e-9e49-11ec-a843-a7153b926f82.html

Patrick

Patrick, a runaway slave, left civilization behind and returned to the land of his captors as a missionary bishop. There his crude Latin - an embarrassment in the civilized world - fit those to whom he wrote, notably Coroticus, a British slaver who called himself a Christian. No Christian are you, said Patrick, for you kidnap and enslave the innocent. 

Patrick didn’t write much besides his letter to Coroticus but he did write an ‘apologia’ of sorts - an account of his own fitness for ministry and his credibility as a witness to the saints. It was rough and ready, more like something from the letters of Paul of Tarsus than the literary Confessions of Augustine of Hippo.

His feast we celebrate just a few days before the equinox in March. Cultural appropriation is hardly a sufficient label: in an earlier century it was an occasion for Irish immigrants that had newly become American to proclaim their love for and loyalty to their new country. But now it is often an occasion for the wearin’ o’ the green simply to avoid being pinched, or buying the house a round.

And so we are more likely to associate the equinox with another feast of the Christian year, the Annunciation. If we celebrate the Nativity of our Savior on December 25th it is only sensible that we count nine months back to celebrate his expectation. “Here am I” says Mary, the angels let out a long held breath, and the redemption of creation begins anew. 

We nowadays seek to celebrate more than our own survival, our rescue from the pit of sin or despond: we want to mark a day in spring as a reminder of God’s creation of all things, and our place among them. 

Yet why not, this year as any other, remind ourselves that among God’s creatures are the least of people, the forgotten, the invaded, the captive: those assaulted in their own homes and drawn away to a foreign land, as the people of Patrick were, and all those who have ached for the release from captivity, the healing of wounds, and the balm of the Spirit Mary’s son bears.

Patrick

Ellen Sasahara sent me a copy of a book she had designed: St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster, 2005). Together with the sermon by Herbert O'Driscoll given at Saint Alban's Church, Edmonds, Washington, January 31, 2010, it was the primary resource for this day's preaching. I did not stick to my notes. These are the notes I walked away from:
 

When the world came to an end, it was the summer of the year 410. Rome fell – civilization was erased. A century and more before, Roman officials had executed a Christian martyr in Britannia, one Alban. Then Constantine took legions to the continent and won the imperial throne. But now a century after these events Rome crumbled before the onslaught of a Visigoth horde.

Arthur held together some promise of hope in Britannia. He called it Logres – kingdom of the Grail. And Ninian set sail for the north, Galloway in Caledonia. On the shores looking west and north to Hibernia, however, Irish pirates came across the water and they brought chains. They came for slaves.

One son of a patrician house, now we call him Patrick, was too near the shore, and he was taken. He found himself far across on the other side of a strange island and it was not until he was a teenager (and more) that he left the sheep he’d been set to herd – and walked away, across the island and back across the sea – but to a new future.

He fetched up in a monastery started by Martin of Tours, and he learned a new depth of Christian hope and practice. He was going to be a priest.

Strangely enough it was, then, that this trafficked human, enslaved by the Irish, saw in a dream his calling: to serve those who’d enslaved him, to free his captors. “Come here and walk among us!”

So to Ireland Patrick sailed. He even sought reconciliation with his old master. And he became a champion, confronting the evil of the slave trade, human trafficking.  When in turn Irish Christians, ones he himself had baptized, were captured by British Christian slavers, he wrote an excoriating letter, naming and rebuking one Corocticus, making a plea (a strongly worded one) that the slave-master set his fellow Christians free.

Patrick and other mission bishops brought the gospel to fertile soil in Ireland. They were a people ready to receive the word, and it quickly grew, in part because of the form, or lack of it, he used to carry it.

The world had come to an end, the Roman world, and there was little left to hold onto, few elements of the sacred, clad lightly in poverty – not wealth.

But he embraces that poverty, poverty of worldly means, as he taught people to embrace the only things that mattered, that remained (and as long as we have these, Herbert O’Driscoll taught us, we’ll be all right).

These are just a few things – look at the postcard – six words to define the church – and here are six: story, water, oil, bread, wine, people.

We are the water oil bread wine story people.

We have the gospel – the story of God’s love for humankind, the Spirit’s restless seeking for our souls.

We have the baptismal waters and the oil of Chrism (“you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever”).

We have bread, the bread we need, and wine – sustenance and reminder of the Godly provision of Christ our Savior.

And we are the people imbued by the Spirit, called and gifted to tell the story, immerse and bless, share the Table’s abundance, and – gather others in. For these gifts are not ours to keep to ourselves – they take us, break us, transform us, and make us ambassadors for Christ.

And we love to tell the story, and spread the news. He whom Mary wept over and anointed and served is the One who shed more than tears for us, who died indeed and rose to new life, that he might take us with him, and with us others, that all may be reconciled to God, all be freed.

Working for the simple physical liberation from slavery of trafficking victims, we work also for the liberation of souls – even of those who enslave.

May we live into this costly freedom, heed God’s call, and follow the dream of our own calling, that we may come over and bring Jesus even to those once separated from us by far more than a sea. May we be one in Christ, reconciled to one another God through the power of the Spirit, and the work of our Savior, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent

Herbert O’Driscoll – 10:30 Service January 31, 2010

JRL+

Jesus is lifted up for our salvation

In the name of God, source of all being, incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our family car was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, turquoise and cream. We boys rode in the back seat. My parents rode in the front. Looking over the driver’s shoulder I could see out through the windshield to the front hood of the car. There in the middle of it was a hood ornament, or as I called it, “the aimer”. I figured when you drove you steered the car using the aimer as kind of a front sight, like the one on the front of a rifle. With it you could steer your way down the road to where you were going.

It acted as a sign, pointing the way. I never mistook it for the road or for our destination. In fact, I knew where we were going: our cousins’ house, for a family visit and a vacation. “Are we there yet?”

The people of Israel, it seems, sometimes mistook the sign for the thing it was pointing to – or looked another way entirely. They had lost their way in the wilderness, at least morally. Moses and the Lord had led them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt. They were ‘under the cloud’ – the pillar of cloud that guided them by day – and they were being led by Moses, and the Lord, through the desert. They complained a lot, though.

They murmured. In fact today’s lesson records Murmur Number Five. And this time they complained, not only about Moses, but also about the Lord – and that was not going to work.

“We have NO FOOD and NO WATER and we detest THIS MISERABLE FOOD!”

They had water from the rock – and manna, food from Heaven. But – no thanks. 

And so – something happened. They were afflicted – and they were convicted.

With snakes they were afflicted; of sin they were convicted.

Since everything comes from God, the good and the bad, they must have reasoned, God sent even the snakes – even the punishment that came to them. And that is how they took it, as an affliction that recalled them to their senses. They repented. “We have sinned against you and against God,” they said to Moses. Now save us already!

And then a strange thing happened. God told Moses to make an image of the very thing that had been killing them – the engine of their affliction – and put it up where everybody could see it, and everyone who was bitten who turned and looked at it would be saved.

Look to the snake on the pole and you will be saved. A strange sign, indeed: but what does it point to?

It points to – we discover – something stranger yet: the innocent person who took upon himself the sins of us all, who was lifted up on a cross – the most excruciating of devices for punitive humiliation and tortuous death, and thereby – by that very means – became the source of our salvation.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

The wanderers in the desert had received their freedom. They had water from the rock. They had bread from heaven. And they had healing of this strange affliction.

We, who were wandering in the wilderness of sin, have been given our freedom – we have been released from our own captivity to the follies and destructive behaviors that kept us from God. God has sustained us; everything we have, all we need to live, is a gift of God. And we have received salvation – healing from more than sickness of the body, we have received healing and wholeness of our souls, our inward life.

God has given us eternal life. It is life in its fullness. It is life in right relationship to God, to nature, to each other, and to our selves. It is life that comes to completion in Christ; that finds its fulfillment in the presence of the Lord.

Jesus, whom everyone knew was innocent, nevertheless gave himself up – gave his life over – as a testimony and a witness to the truth – the truth of God’s love for humankind.

And so he was lifted up – raised up, onto the cross at Calvary, and raised up, into the new life in the resurrection – and in this dying and in this rising was the saving of the world.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

This good news came to the people of Ireland in a strange way – a godly way.

A young patrician, a teenager from a prosperous family of Roman Britons, was spending his time by the seaside, at a waterfront property of his family, convenient to the coast – and convenient for pirates. Irish rovers came across the sea and stole him away, kidnapped him, and made him a slave. They sold him on, to a farmer in Ireland.

Young Patrick, as he came to be called, found himself tending cattle on the backside of beyond, way over on the west coast of this distant and foreign island.

And that is how he spent his teenage years. They were teenage years – formative years – but not his only formation for adulthood, for he found his way to freedom, and to a spiritual re-formation.

Patrick first found his way to physical freedom. He walked out, somehow, away from his master, and escaped across Ireland and the sea. He journeyed far, into France, and there he found a spiritual freedom. He encountered a spiritual master, Martin of Tours, founder of a monastery and a movement. Martin took him in and taught him the Christian way – the way of the Cross.

Patrick learned from Martin – and gained a blessing that he was meant to share. For Patrick had a dream – not a daydream, but a vision: he was being called back, across the sea, to bring the good news of the freedom of the spirit, the gospel of God, to the very people who had enslaved his body. And he answered the call.

Rough-hewn and mystical, Patrick was the perfect apostle to bring the good news to the Celtic peoples. He returned to Ireland. And he did something there that was much more significant than any legendary miracle.

Legends like driving all the snakes from Ireland. (There were not snakes in Ireland to begin with.) The point is not what he drove out; the point is what he brought in.

He brought into Ireland and to its people the good news that in Christ was to be found their completion, their wholeness, and their salvation. He brought the gospel to a people that had been enslaved by greed, ignorance and sin, a people lost in darkness. He brought to them the light of Christ.

And they in turn became a light to the world. From the Celtic lands, from the people he taught the gospel, came in time a series of monastic missionaries, adventurers on the seas of the world, who sought holiness and brought salvation to the people they encountered, all across the continent of Europe.

The learned monks of Ireland, in the centuries following Patrick’s mission, studied and shared the great gifts of civilization – and beyond civilization they brought the saving news of Jesus Christ.

Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland. What he drove out, under the Master’s guidance, was the fear and the ignorance that kept the Irish people in bondage to sin.

What the Lord did in Ireland through Patrick and all the Irish saints to follow was to establish an outpost of courage, hope, generosity, and freedom; a beacon that shone across Europe with the light of Christ.

What God brings to us to day is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom. We carry with us into our world, our place and time, to those around us, those we know already and those we must seek out, the message of hope and the means of salvation, the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

O God, who made the world and made it good, and who redeemed the world you made when we had fallen into sin and wandered far from your purpose for our lives, you who redeemed Patrick from bondage, sending him on a mission as your apostle of freedom, compassion, and grace, so bless your servants here with courage and hospitality, generosity and faith, that your spirit may abide in the hearts of this congregation and that this church may be to your world a beacon of hope and a light of your salvation. Amen.

BLent4, Fourth Sunday in Lent, Numbers 21:4-9, Ephesians 2:1-10,
John 3:14-21, Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22.

JRL+

Look to Jesus for salvation

In the name of God, source of all being, incarnate Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our family car was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon, turquoise and cream. We boys rode in the back seat. My parents rode in the front. Looking over the driver’s shoulder I could see out through the windshield to the front hood of the car. There in the middle of it was a hood ornament, or as I called it, “the aimer”. 

I figured when you drove you steered the car using the aimer as kind of a front sight, like the one on the front of a rifle. With it you could steer your way down the road to where you were going.

It acted as a sign, pointing the way. I never mistook it for the road or for our destination. In fact, I knew where we were going: our cousins’ house, for a family visit and a vacation. “Are we there yet?”

The people of Israel, it seems, sometimes mistook the sign for the thing it was pointing to – or looked another way entirely. They had lost their way in the wilderness, at least morally. Moses and the Lord had led them out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt. They were ‘under the cloud’ – the pillar of cloud that guided them by day – and they were being led by Moses, and the Lord, through the desert. They complained a lot, though.

They murmured. In fact today’s lesson records Murmur Number Five. And this time they complained, not only about Moses, but also about the Lord – and that was not going to work.

“We have NO FOOD and NO WATER and we detest THIS MISERABLE FOOD!”

They had water from the rock – and manna, food from Heaven. But – no thanks. 

And so – something happened. They were afflicted – and they were convicted.

With snakes they were afflicted; of sin they were convicted.

Since everything comes from God, the good and the bad, they must have reasoned, God sent even the snakes – even the punishment that came to them. And that is how they took it, as an affliction that recalled them to their senses. They repented. “We have sinned against you and against God,” they said to Moses. Now save us already!

And then a strange thing happened. God told Moses to make an image of the very thing that had been killing them – the engine of their affliction – and put it up where everybody could see it, and everyone who was bitten who turned and looked at it would be saved.

Look to the snake on the pole and you will be saved. A strange sign, indeed: but what does it point to?

It points to – we discover – something stranger yet: the innocent person who took upon himself the sins of us all, who was lifted up on a cross – the most excruciating of devices for punitive humiliation and tortuous death, and thereby – by that very means – became the source of our salvation.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

The wanderers in the desert had received their freedom. They had water from the rock. They had bread from heaven. And they had healing of this strange affliction.

We, who were wandering in the wilderness of sin, have been given our freedom – we have been released from our own captivity to the follies and destructive behaviors that kept us from God. God has sustained us; everything we have, all we need to live, is a gift of God. And we have received salvation – healing from more than sickness of the body, we have received healing and wholeness of our souls, our inward life.

God has given us eternal life. It is life in its fullness. It is life in right relationship to God, to nature, to each other, and to our selves. It is life that comes to completion in Christ; that finds its fulfillment in the presence of the Lord.

Jesus, whom everyone knew was innocent, nevertheless gave himself up – gave his life over – as a testimony and a witness to the truth – the truth of God’s love for humankind.

And so he was lifted up – raised up, onto the cross at Calvary, and raised up, into the new life in the resurrection – and in this dying and in this rising was the saving of the world.

If we look to Christ – if we trust him, believe in him, put our faith in him – we find our way to life.

What God brings to us to day is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom, the message of hope. 

May we carry with us into our world, our place and time, 
to those far away and to those around us, 
those we know already and those we must seek out, 
the message of hope and the means of salvation, 
the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

   
JRL+

Patrick

The good news came to the people of Ireland in a strange way – a godly way.

A young patrician, a teenager from a prosperous family of Roman Britons, was spending his time by the seaside, at a waterfront property of his family, convenient to the coast – and convenient for pirates. Irish rovers came across the sea and stole him away, kidnapped him, and made him a slave. They sold him on, to a farmer in Ireland.

Young Patrick, as he came to be called, found himself tending cattle on the backside of beyond, way over on the west coast of this distant and foreign island.

And that is how he spent his teenage years. They were teenage years – formative years – but not his only formation for adulthood, for he found his way to freedom, and to a spiritual re-formation.

Patrick first found his way to physical freedom. He walked out, somehow, away from his master, and escaped across Ireland and the sea. He journeyed far, into France, and there he found a spiritual freedom. He encountered a spiritual master, Martin of Tours, founder of a monastery and a movement. Martin took him in and taught him the Christian way – the way of the Cross.

Patrick learned from Martin – and gained a blessing that he was meant to share. For Patrick had a dream – not a daydream, but a vision: he was being called back, across the sea, to bring the good news of the freedom of the spirit, the gospel of God, to the very people who had enslaved his body. And he answered the call.

Rough-hewn and mystical, Patrick was the perfect apostle to bring the good news to the Celtic peoples. He returned to Ireland. And he did something there that was much more significant than any legendary miracle.

Legends like driving all the snakes from Ireland. (There were not snakes in Ireland to begin with.) The point is not what he drove out; the point is what he brought in.

He brought into Ireland and to its people the good news that in Christ was to be found their completion, their wholeness, and their salvation. He brought the gospel to a people that had been enslaved by greed, ignorance and sin, a people lost in darkness. He brought to them the light of Christ.

And they in turn became a light to the world. From the Celtic lands, from the people he taught the gospel, came in time a series of monastic missionaries, adventurers on the seas of the world, who sought holiness and brought salvation to the people they encountered, all across the continent of Europe.

The learned monks of Ireland, in the centuries following Patrick’s mission, studied and shared the great gifts of civilization – and beyond civilization they brought the saving news of Jesus Christ.

Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland. What he drove out, under the Master’s guidance, was the fear and the ignorance that kept the Irish people in bondage to sin.

What the Lord did in Ireland through Patrick and all the Irish saints to follow was to establish an outpost of courage, hope, generosity, and freedom; a beacon that shone across Europe with the light of Christ.

What God brings to us today is the good news of salvation: we look to the Cross – for salvation, for Jesus was lifted up so that we, and all people, may receive the gift of life.

And what calls us today is the mission of the kingdom. We carry with us into our world, our place and time, to those around us, those we know already and those we must seek out, the message of hope and the means of salvation, the abundant grace that is found in the Cross of Christ.

O God, who made the world and made it good, and who redeemed the world you made when we had fallen into sin and wandered far from your purpose for our lives, you who redeemed Patrick from bondage, sending him on a mission as your apostle of freedom, compassion, and grace, so bless your servants here with courage and hospitality, generosity and faith, that your spirit may abide in the hearts of this congregation and that this church may be to your world a beacon of hope and a light of your salvation. Amen.

JRL+