by CCW | 17 March 2026 20:00
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.
All of the contemporary confusions of our churches – liturgical, political, moral and theological – have really to do with the forgetting of what is signified so profoundly in this poem and hymn. It is a forgetting of all that belongs to the witness of Patrick and to the transformative power of the Christian Faith that gathers together into unity in God the whole of creation. In a way, it highlights the vocation of our humanity: to bind unto ourselves the strong name of the Trinity by virtue of Christ within us in all and every aspect of our lives. Everything comes down to the centrality of the Trinity, to the wonder of the revealed teaching in Christ about the nature of the God in whose image we are made. In the Christian understanding of things, that means the Trinity, God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is simply about the radical understanding of Faith.
The largest part of Augustine’s handbook, the Enchiridion, deals with the theological virtue of Faith without which the virtues of Hope and Love, of which love is the greatest of these three, are incomplete even as they too belong to the full meaning of Faith alive and at work in us. Faith for Augustine and Patrick is about the fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom. All wisdom is of God. “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,” Job says, “and to depart from evil is understanding.” It is about things unseen and things seen but in the light of revelation that does not destroy nor negate what is known through the light of nature but perfects it as Aquinas says. Faith gives meaning to Hope and Love. For without love faith is in vain, Augustine shows. The man who loves aright, on the other hand, no doubt believes and hopes aright. Love perfects and unites faith and hope.
The great insight that belongs to the communion of saints is the unity and fulfillment of all creation as found in the wonder and mystery of God as Trinity revealed in Christ. Faith is Christ alive in us in his love for the Father in the mutual bond of their love in the Holy Spirit. That divine love gathers into itself the whole of creation, a world that vibrates within itself of that divine love which animates and moves all things. It is “the love”, as Dante says, “which moves the sun and the other stars.” For “we begin in faith, and are made perfect by sight” (Augustine). St. Patrick’s Breastplate complements Augustine’s Enchiridion.
The longest part of the treatise deals with Faith by running through the meaning and teaching of the Creed. Hope is considered via the Lord’s Prayer, but Love is the end of everything in God who Himself is Love, the very meaning of the Trinity. “We love God”, he says, “now by faith”, but “then we shall love Him through sight”; and so too with our neighbour whom we love now by faith, but then shall we love and praise our neighbour for the virtue in him that “God himself shall bring to light.”
The light of faith leads us into the light of understanding. And on this day, we give thanks for the life and witness of St. Patrick, the bearer of the light of faith and understanding to Ireland, the light of faith and understanding that gathers all things into unity in God.
Fr. David Curry
St. Patrick, Lent 2026
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