St. Patrick the “Missional”
March 18, 2009
This week marks the celebration of the Feast of St. Patrick. He was known as the apostle to the Irish andone of the most important missionaries of Christian history. Thomas Cahill (in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization) claims that if it weren’t for the work of Patrick, and his fellow missionaries and monks, Europe would have had no Christian legacy or memory to withstand the onslaught of Islam which arose only a few centuries later. Patrick’s work was not only soul saving but culture making. (Two enterprises that should never separated.)
Remember that St. Patrick’s day is a good time to recall the way in which God works through the small and despised; through the failed and forgotten; through the Samaritan (Stephen, the woman at the well,) and through the Irish (Patrick, Aidan, Brendan, Columba, Killian, Art Guinness, Brigid and Bono).
Living as God’s people require that his mission become our own. Patrick is one of the best examples of following Christ into the world. He returned to a world that had once abused and enslaved him. Yet, Patrick followed God’s lead and joined Christ in the work he was doing among the most dangerous and despised of the world.
The Irish saints had strong sense of God’s presence and power in their lives. Regardless of where they were, whether adrift at sea like Brendan, engaging the violent pagans in conversation like Patrick, or establishing beachheads of the faith in far away places like Aidan, they each knew that God was with them and that Christ was working through them. This trust in God’s abiding presence is evidenced in the morning canticle from CDP:
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Be in the heart of each to whom I speak;
in the mouth of each who speaks unto me.
This day be within and without me,
lowly and meek, yet all-powerful.
Christ as a light;
Christ as a shield;
Christ beside me
on my left and my right.
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