Sermon for the Feast of St. Patrick
“The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light”
A figure of the late 4th and mid 5th centuries, Patrick belongs to the story of Celtic Christianity. He is the bearer of the great light of Christ to the Irish, the Apostle and Patron Saint of Ireland, having lit the paschal fire on Tara’s hill to drive away the pagan darkness of the Druids, perhaps just a few years after the death of Augustine (430AD). That light of faith has a powerful and transforming power, then and always, beyond the tales, myths, and legends of shamrocks, shillelaghs and snakes.
Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilisation, juxtaposes the image of a silver cauldron and a silver chalice to capture the transformation of Ireland’s conversion to Christianity; the one, beautifully carved and deliberately broken, symbolic of the culture of pagan human sacrifice; the other beautifully engraved and whole, inscribed with the names of the Apostolic Fellowship. The one, dated a century or two before Christ, is known as the Gundestrop Cauldron and depicts animal and human sacrifice; the other, late seventh or early eighth century is known as the Ardagh Chalice and is symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice and our participation in his sacrifice sacramentally. The juxtaposition of cauldron and chalice captures the transformation of a culture.
No celebration of The Feast of St. Patrick can overlook the wonderful hymn attributed to him, the poem known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”(Hymn # 812). The hymn offers a wonderful collection of images dealing with the power and grace of God in relation to us through nature and scripture, through spirituality and theology, and even psychologically, we might say. Yet all these images are contained within the Trinitarian understanding that embraces and frames the entire hymn. It begins and ends with the invocation of the doctrine, the teaching about God as Trinity. The doctrine is at the heart of our devotion and worship of God.
I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.
