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Religion |
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| Celebrating St. Patrick : The revered saint invites us to pray as well as party |
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| By Diane Reynolds, Times Staff Writer |
Wednesday, March 21, 2007 |
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Today, St. Patrick's Day, thousands of Christians will take a break from the austerity of Lent to party in the name of one of the greatest saints.
Yet the revels have less to do with faith than with frolic, according to Tom Abbott, lay spiritual director of St. Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Church in Manchester.
St. Patrick's Day in the United States is largely secular, he said, more a celebration of Irish heritage than of Catholicism.
Yet the life of St. Patrick, who brought Christianity to Ireland, has much to teach about faith.
"St. Patrick did what all of us are called to do," Abbott said. "He spread the gospel in a very hostile environment. He was a man of great courage."
While he's one of the greatest saints, Abbott said, Catholics sometimes don't take him seriously because of his association with leprechauns and legends.
Even his famous prayer is not read at liturgy, Abbott said, in part because it's not certain that St. Patrick wrote it.
The prayer is called St. Patrick's Breastplate or the Lorica. A lorica was a piece of armor Roman soldiers wore to protect both their chests and backs.
In legend, the prayer protected St. Patrick and his followers from a Druid ambush as they traveled to see an Irish king. According to one tale, God turned St. Patrick into a doe and his followers into fawns so that the Druids would not recognize them, giving rise to one name for the prayer: The Deer's Cry.
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Most Catholics take this story as fabrication, but the prayer still is an important statement of trusting in Christ for protection, Abbott said.
"It's a prayer of protection from the devil," he said. "You draw your strength from Christ."
While the prayer might not have been written by St. Patrick, it functioned, like stained-glass windows, as a way to teach illiterate people about what the saint believed, Abbott said.
"It's a beautiful, ancient prayer," he said.
The Eastern Orthodox churches also venerate St. Patrick as a saint, said the Rev. Elias Yelovich, pastor of St. James the Apostle Orthodox Christian Mission in Westminster.
Any saint who lived before the year 1054, when the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox split, is a saint in both traditions, he said.
While the Orthodox will not celebrate St. Patrick's Day unless it falls on a Sunday, the church does relax the Lenten rules for his feast day.
"It is a relaxation of that fast because he is such a great saint," Yelovich said.
Still relevant
The prayer of St. Patrick offers guidance for the present, said Nancy Dean, celebration director for Church Women United of Carroll County.
"Look at how long ago this thing was written and yet what he prayed for is still pertinent today," said Dean, a member of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Westminster.
For example, she said, the prayer focuses wholly on God and draws the person praying away from idols such as money or status.
"We focus too hard on trying to get ahead," she said. "I think that's why church attendance is down."
For St. John's pastor, the Rev. Marton (cq) Roberson (cq), though not directly celebrated by the Lutheran church, St. Patrick offers an example to people everywhere in his denunciation of slavery and human exploitation.
St. Patrick was a slave himself, and this, Roberson said, probably gave him an insight into the institution's cruelties.
"Oftentimes, our experiences help us to be advocates," he said.
After reading about his life, Dean said she was impressed with at how much time St. Patrick spent praying.
"Do we pray as often as we should?" she asked.
For Gail Buss, nee McKernan, of Westminster, a devout Irish Catholic, St. Patrick blends her faith and her heritage.
She became a Catholic, she said, because long ago St. Patrick came to Ireland and converted her ancestors, for which she is grateful.
Her father spent his early life in Ireland, she said, where children would get the day off from school on St. Patrick's Day to attend Mass.
Buss herself got engaged on St. Patrick's Day.
And now she always makes the traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner, along with boiled potatoes and soda bread.
"It's a wonderful holiday," she said.
Reach staff writer Diane Reynolds at 410-857-7873 or reynoldsd@lcniofmd.com.
Box 2:
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
- Famous verse from St. Patrick's Breastplate prayer
Sidebar: Life of St. Patrick
St. Patrick was born in Britain around the year 385. As a teenager, he was captured and sold into slavery in Ireland. After six years, he escaped to France, where he became a Christian monk. Around 432, he returned to Ireland as a missionary and converted many people to Christianity. He died around 461.
In folklore, he chased all the snakes from Ireland. He is also credited with using the three-leafed shamrock to teach about the Trinity. But many also believe this story to be folklore.
Source: www.answers.com
St. Patrick's Day
This saint invites us to pray as well as to party
Box 1: "After I came to Ireland - every day I had to tend sheep and many times a day I prayed, the love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was so moved that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many at night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountain. And I would rise for prayer before daylight, through snow, through frost, through rain, and I felt no harm."
- St. Patrick
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