La le Padraig

Feast of St. Patrick

3/17/2016

In recent years a writer, Eric Cross, wrote a book, now a classic, entitled The Tailor and
Ansty. It celebrated the folk wisdom of an elderly attractive couple who lived in the
1940s and 50s in Gaugaun Barra in County Cork where St. Finbarr had his hermitage.
The tailor was a Seanchai, a storyteller with the gift of humor. Local people and people
from afar would gather around the fire at his cottage to hear him speak. He was a
natural-born philosopher who spoke as if his words came from the biblical book of
Proverbs. One of his lines was, Life is only a blue bag. Knock a squeeze out of it when
you can. A blue bag was a humble, ordinary thing in every home. It was a little piece of
chalk-like powder in a pouch, which, when dipped in water, turned blue. It was used to
heal insect bites, bruises, and to wash clothes, among its many other domestic uses.

So, good morning, everyone, as we take a day off from serious business to knock a
squeeze out of life in celebrating The Wearing of the Green.

Let me begin this address by referring to a familiar Irish song of times past called, The
Wearing of the Green.
Oh Paddy dear and did ye hear the news thats goin round?
The Shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patricks day well keep, his color cant be seen,
For theres a cruel law agin the Wearin o the Green.
I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand.
He said, Hows poor old Ireland and how does she stand?
Shes the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For theyre hangin men and women for the Wearin o the Green.

Those Isis-like times have changed. That Ireland is dead and gone. Its with OLeary in
the grave. Im glad theres no law against the wearing of the green here in Savannah
this morning or wed all be in the slammer. I believe the Gardai Siochana (a contingent
of Irish police from County Cork) are well-represented in the parade. Were wellprotected!

For St. Patricks feast day Mass, the readings are from the Book of Genesis, The Call of
Abraham. The Lord said to Abraham: Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk, and from
your fathers house to a land that I will show you. (Genesis 12:1) And, Jesus words
from the Gospel of Matthew - Go, teach all nations. (Matthew 28:19-20) These are the
scriptures for us this morning. So let me speak on the missionary thrust of these
scriptures.

In preparation for the priesthood, I went to All Hallows College in Dublin, Ireland, which,
like some others during the famine years or The Great Starvation (when one million
starved and another million escaped through emigration) was founded in 1846 to send
Irish missionary priests into different countries to follow Irish emigrants to keep their faith
alive. Over the main building on campus were the words of Jesus, Matthew 28, Go,
teach all nations engraved in stone and on our young minds. We were all, 250 of us, in
our early 20s, full of energy, idealism, and a devotion to football! Soccer, rugby, hurling,
Gaelic football, tennis, basketball, golf, any kind of sport. We were young and strong, in
mind and in body. What a great pleasure it was to pound another into the ground without
any guilt and without being arrested!

As the course of studies began in preparation for priesthood, Father Kevin Condon, our
brilliant scripture scholar professor with international recognition said to our uninitiated
minds, Ah, gentlemen, when you get involved in studying sacred scripture, youll forget
all about your football. We all chuckled with laughter. We had never heard anything so
hilarious, yet he was right.

For, we did, many of us, get hooked on sacred scripture. We rejoiced in its ideas and
their meaning expressed in the majesty of words becoming sentences becoming
paragraphs becoming books of the Old and New Testament. In response to Jesus
words Go, teach all nations, armed with this beauty, we brought the Gospel of Jesus to
Greater Ireland, to South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, England, Scotland, Wales,
and to the U.S. and Georgia. Why this missionary impulse? Answer. The memory of St.
Patrick and the personal realization, as you are given, you must give back. You cannot
take your faith for granted. As St. Patrick left his people to come to the Irish to speak of
Christ, so now it was our turn to go out.

In my last year of studies, a lay extern speaker, a Celtic scholar from Dublin, gave us a
talk on Irish heritage. I forget the details, even his name, but I can still picture his face as
he spoke his last words to us, about to leave Ireland. He said with quiet force, and
subdued sadness, as if his advice would go unheeded. He said, In bringing the gospel
with you, dont forget the other gift, the other treasure that is yours. Remember your Irish
heritage, love of learning, poetry and music that has kept us alive through the centuries.
Dont forget what made you.

Today we celebrate that gift. Colloquially, we are not forgetting. With faith and
thanksgiving, we show our pride in the wearing of the green. The big names of our Irish
heritage come to mind immediately. James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett,
George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, John Banville, John McGahern, Patrick Kavanagh,
and the latest Nobel prize winner, Seamus Heaney. And the politicians - John Hume,
the Nobel peace prize winner and northern Ireland politician who spent his life
reconciling Catholics and Protestants, likewise Nobel prize winner and peace activist
Mairead Corrigan; lets not forget Sean McBride, co-founder of Amnesty International,
which proclaims, We will not let the innocent political prisoners rot in jail. We
remember, too, the American Irish who have made such a contribution to America and
have done so well here, such as Scott Fitzgerald, John OHara, the writers; politicians,
John F. Kennedy; actors such as Liam Neeson, Daniel Day Lewis, latest arrival Saoirse
Ronan; musicians such as Bono; businessmen such as Lynch, as in Merrill Lynch.
Think of all of the Irish priests and nuns/religious who have made an impact on your life,
not great scholars, perhaps, and not important people, but who have quietly and
competently taken care of you in good times and in bad.

Why all this goodness and where did it come from? Where did the Celts come from?
Answer, no one is quite sure. Perhaps from Outer Mongolia (a long traipse to Ireland) or
Asia Minor. Some say St. Pauls Letter to the Galatians could well be addressed Letter
to the Celts!

Thomas Cahill, in his recent work, How the Irish Saved Civilization, made this
observation. After the Greeks and the Romans, the Celts were the most significant
European culture of the early Middle Ages. Next to Latin, Irish is the only European

language with the largest, best-documented development. Only in Ireland, did there
survive a language and literature which could claim to come from the ancient Celts.

Faith of our fathers is living still in Ireland, but not as energetically, not as loyally, not as
creatively or thankfully as in ages past. Whats happening? Some say purgation is good
for the soul, like the summer fires of the Okefenokee Swamp which burn away all
imperfections and rubbish. We hope that is all it is. We pray that the Irish today are not
experiencing a sclerosis of the spirit, a hardening of living arteries. For if the sons and
daughters of St. Patrick lose their faith, there seems no way forward. Financial success,
the Celtic tiger, is a poor second, however strong its roar. An English Oxford professor ,
Terry Eagleton, in his book The Truth About the Irish, said, The good news is, the Irish
are a good-humored, vivacious, hospitable people with a magnificent culture and one of
the most beautiful countries in the world.

The leprechauns, the fairies, wont hold the Irish together. It takes a lot of confidence to
play a true note on a dead, slack string, as poet Patrick Kavanagh would say (Self
Portrait). It takes faith, the challenge of the gospel of Christ, to enable human living.
The Irish have traditionally been characterized as idealistic dreamers, given to, and
haunted by, the supernatural, pulled toward the life of the spirit, the best that humans
have to offer. We, as followers of Christ, are called to be generous, courageous, accept
life, warts and all, recognize the value of suffering and the redemptive power of the
Cross. How good it is to be carriers of good news, to encourage the young, take time
out for friendship, look after ones parents and those who have borne the heat of the
day, have a tolerance for human frailty, to be grateful for being alive, and as the tailor

said, knock a squeeze out of it when you can. On this marching day, to put a spring in
our step, well let St. Patrick have the last word.

The Breastplate of St. Patrick

Christ be within me, Christ be before me, Christ be behind me.
Christ be in me, Christ be beneath me, Christ be above me.
Christ at my right hand, Christ at my left.
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise.
Christ in the heart of every man, who thinks of me,
Christ in the mind of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in everyone that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today,
through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity
Through belief in the threeness
Through confession of the Oneness
of the Creator of creation.
Go neiri an bothar libh.
Blessings of Patrick and Brigid and Finbarr and Columcille and all of Gods holy ones be
on you this day of the Wearing of the Green.
I an t-ainm an Athar, agus an Mhic, agus an Spiorad Naomh. Amen.