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Fifth Sunday of Lent - March 18, 2018

As I write these words I am looking forward to a wonderful Religious Education Congress in Anaheim. The first Congress took place at the Anaheim Convention Center in 1970, having outgrown facilities used in Los Angeles going back to 1956. That’s over 60 years of adults with a passion for sharing their faith with others gathering together to grow in their own faith and to develop the skills to help others to do likewise. All too often I meet folks who think there’s nothing special or nothing complicated about this “passing on the faith”. Of course, all I need to do with such folks is to invite them to try it out for themselves and see just how “easy” it is. We are grateful here at Lourdes for all those who are involved in what we call today “catechetical ministry”, all those who serve our church community by involving themselves and committing themselves to sharing faith in our school, in our Religious Education programs, in our Bible Studies, in our RCIA team, in our liturgy formation programs, and in so many other opportunities we have, to serve those who serve all of us.

In these days I am particularly mindful of the importance of those who willingly give of themselves in service of others in our formal programs for our faith sharing and faith development. The reason this is so, is because we are celebrating this weekend, the Feast of St. Patrick. I know that culturally, the saints day has been appropriated as a day of and for everything Irish, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all. However, if we take a few moments to consider why and how this day has become known all over the world, we might have a better chance of acknowledging the real roots of the impact and importance of the saint known as the “Apostle of Ireland”. Spoiler alert - it has nothing to do with “green beer”.

Patrick was born in that part of the world we know today as Wales, and as a young teen was kidnapped by raiders who came from Ireland. Sold into slavery in Ireland, he was indentured to a farmer in the north of the country. A number of years passed before he successfully escaped his captors, and fled to France, where he eventually entered the seminary and was ordained. His experience of being a slave and his capacity to rise above the hardships he endured, along with his passion for his faith and his natural intellectual abilities, destined Patrick to be ordained a bishop. When asked to return to Ireland to lead the mission to evangelize the country, he initially refused. He hated the Irish for what had happened to him there. However, as history tells us, he eventually returned to Ireland, and in the course of his mission came to love the people whom he once despised. The opening line of his own “Confessio”, or Confession, reads: “I am Patrick, a sinner…” It was the experience of divine mercy in his own life that called him and empowered him to share that same mercy with others. It’s what allowed him to overcome his experience of being “trafficked” and to become famous for his openness to those who were “other” and who were “different” than he. The man who became the icon of Ireland was a sinner, an immigrant, a slave, a bishop, an apostle and a saint. I read recently a brief description of Patrick in which an Australian Archbishop described him as “the greatest missionary since St. Paul, leaving the ‘oikumene’ (known world) of the Roman Empire to enter the ‘other world’ of Ireland.”

In truth, Patrick’s efforts in life saw a nation uniquely turn to Christianity without a single person being martyred. He established schools and institutions of learning that saw to the education of wave upon wave of missionaries that left Ireland’s shores year after year for more than a millennium and a half. There isn’t a pocket of the globe that hasn’t encountered someone whose ancestral faith was not traceable to Patrick. Those who studied under his tutelage went on to become missionaries and teachers themselves. They in turn educated men and women who in their turn went on to open monasteries, schools and universities throughout Ireland, Scotland, England and across Europe. These schools and universities, functioning for centuries, have shaped the lives and the faith of countless men and women in and for the world, including the literally thousands of priests, religious and sisters who came from Ireland to serve in the US.

And all of this was made possible because a young man, a foreigner to the Irish, was enslaved and trafficked and went on to overcome his personal struggles in the light of his commitment to his faith, becoming the “greatest missionary since St. Paul” and an example of what a person of faith can do in service of building up the Reign of God. If someone so disadvantaged so early in his life can make such a difference for the good of the world, how much more might disciples of this age accomplish as living disciples of Jesus Christ!

 

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