Dear Saints,

Just as it has become the norm to sanitize and mythologize the life of Jesus, so too with St. Patrick. As fun as parades and green bagels are, we risk losing a friend and role model if we don’t also take some time to know the real him.

Among other virtues, Patrick was very brave. He took the Gospel into a foreign culture that worshipped foreign gods. The dangers of doing so were not lost on him, as his own correspondence reveals. He knew he was risking his life on a daily basis, yet he persevered. Are we that brave? Do we have what it takes to fulfill our mission no matter the cost?

That begs a preliminary question: what does it take? What fueled St. Patrick’s boldness? In his own words: zeal. One definition of zeal is “intense energy compelling action.” Having fallen in love with God and been called by him to Ireland, he had to go. But Patrick’s zeal wasn’t just wild, untamed emotion; rather, it was carefully contoured by and channeled into love of his Irish neighbors.

It’s not exactly like they’d earned his good opinion. As a general matter, this was a “culture on the edge of culture,” with a reputation of being barely civilized. More specifically, the Irish had kidnapped and imprisoned Patrick. He had every reason to dislike them. But that’s the thing about true love: it flows towards the unworthy with as much passion as towards the worthy.

How good - for us and those around us - if we could allow the kind of zeal that inflamed and animated Patrick to flourish within our own hearts. May we too experience the intense energy that led him to change the world so definitively, we’re still celebrating it centuries later.

Christ’s Peace,

Father Daniel

δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ

PS Our beyond-the-tithe challenge for this Lent is Several Sources, a well-known local charity that saves babies’ lives and shelters their young mothers. Our goal is to raise at least $20,000 for this great work.