God's Debtor
Saint Patrick was conscious that God had used him to do great things. In his Confession, he writes: “I am very much God's debtor, who gave me such grace that many people were reborn in God through me and afterwards confirmed, and that clerics were ordained for them everywhere, for a people just coming to the faith, whom the Lord took from the utmost parts of the earth.”
Mercy
By preaching, baptizing, ordaining priests, and consecrating virgins, Saint Patrick changed the face of Ireland. He did not blush to apply to the Irish people the prophecy of Hosea: “I will have mercy on her that was without mercy. And I will say to that which was not my people: Thou art my people. . . . And in the place where it was said: ‘You are not my people’: it shall be said to them: ‘Ye are the sons of the living God'” (Hos 2:23-24; 1:10).
Monks and Virgins of Christ
Conscious of his own weakness, Saint Patrick was in awe of the power of the grace of Christ. “How,” he asks, “did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?”
Monastic Ireland
Irish Christianity was, from the beginning, monastic in temperament and in organization. The Church was barely established when already monasteries sprang into life. Succeeding generations saw a spectacular growth: there came to be monasteries of over three thousand monks, centres of learning, monastic universities of a sort, drawing students from all over the continent. From the sixth to the twelfth centuries, these same monastic centres of learning were seedbeds of missionary work. Irish monks poured into France. Germany, Belgium, and Italy welcomed them. John Paul II’s vision of a Europe infused with the love of Christ, of a “new civilization of love” resonates with the ideals of the Irish missionaries of the so-called Dark Ages. The Irish model is a good one: the missionary is born of the monastery. Prayer, asceticism, and scholarship come to fruition in the implantation of the Gospel and in the renewal of the churches.
Repression and Persecution
The faith received from Saint Patrick came, in time, to be sorely tested. The eighteenth century saw the enactment of repressive laws penalizing Catholics: Catholics were prohibited from voting; were not permitted to purchase land or lease it for more than thirty-one years; it was illegal to teach the Catholic religion to children and adults; it became illegal for Catholic priests to remain in Ireland or enter Ireland from abroad; it became illegal to harbour or otherwise assist Catholic priests.
The Great Hunger
Only in 1829 did the British Parliament grant a decree of Catholic Emancipation, making it possible for the Church to emerge from the underground. But another trial was to follow, The Great Hunger that claimed over a million lives. Those who could escaped the famine; wave after wave of impoverished Irish emigrants found a home in America, bringing with them their greatest possession: the Catholic faith. Out of the horrors of The Great Hunger God brought a great good: were it not for the exodus of the Irish at the time of the famine there would be very few English-speaking Catholics in the world today.
Monastic and Missionary
“Keep thyself therefore, and thy soul carefully. Forget not the words that thy eyes have seen, and let them not go out of thy heart all the days of thy life. Thou shalt teach them to thy children and to thy grandchildren” (Dt 4:9). The transmission of the faith is more urgent today than ever before. Saint Patrick and those who followed in his footsteps teach us that the surest way of holding fast to the faith is by transmitting it. Deep in the heart of every Christian is a monastic impulse and a missionary impulse. Like Saint Patrick, may we rise today to both of them.
His Excellency, Bishop Edward J. Slattery of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma has given
Father Mark a special mandate to live under the Rule of Saint Benedict in adoration before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, offering thanksgiving, intercession, and reparation for all his
brothers in Holy Orders. In this way, Father is preparing the foundation of the new Diocesan Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle. Father Mark is available to the
priests and deacons of the Diocese for spiritual and sacramental support in their pursuit of holiness. He is also charged with the spiritual formation of women who desire to dedicate themselves to spiritual motherhood in favour of priests.
Happy Saint Patrick's day, Father Mark, O.Cist.. A hundred thousand blessings to you!