St. Patrick, the Father of a Sacred Nation

“And the Lord said to Abram: ‘Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house; and come into the land which I shall show thee. And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be blessed. I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed.’”――GENESIS XII.

Addressing myself this evening to the task, so dear to every priest whose veins are warm with Celtic blood, of paying this annual tribute of praise to St. Patrick and the consecrated land of our fathers, I must, first of all, cast aside the vain hope of being able to say anything new upon a subject which for many generations has engaged the talents of one of the most eloquent races of the modern world. Fortunately, you do not expect or wish to hear anything new on this subject; the perennial charm of the theme, like that of the old, familiar melodies of our fatherland, lies mainly in the hallowed memories which sway your souls as you listen. I have, therefore, determined to follow the well-beaten track; and I have chosen for my text that passage of Holy Writ which the wisdom of my predecessors has oftenest selected as the most appropriate. Indeed, there exists so striking a resemblance between the office and mission of the Irish apostle and his children in the New Dispensation, and the office and mission of the illustrious patriarch and his seed in the old, that this command given by Almighty God to Abraham, and these promises made to him and his descendants, may, without the change of one iota, be transferred to St. Patrick and his people. At a time when ignorance and error were creeping over the earth and involving all the children of Adam in gross darkness, the Lord called Abraham forth from his country and his kindred to make him the father of a sacred nation, of a nation which should remain the dwelling-place of light and truth amidst the universal gloom, and which, in God’s appointed time, should communicate its inherited blessings to all the kindred of the earth.

Now, coming down to the fifth century of the Christian era, we find in the calling of St. Patrick an exact counterpart to the calling of Abraham. True religion appeared to be once more upon the point of disappearing from the earth. The Eastern Churches, torn and debased by endless heresies, dissensions and schisms, were rapidly sinking into that miserable abyss of apostasy from which they have never since permanently arisen. The condition of the Western Church was equally critical; for although, thanks to the transcendent genius of St. Augustine and the divine zeal and authority of the Roman Pontiffs, the pestilential tide of Pelagianism had been forced back to its native Britain, yet storm-clouds were gathering in the depths of the Northern forests and on the Eastern tablelands, which seemed fated to sweep away civilization, law, science and religion from the face of the globe. Already the first tremendous billows of barbarian invasion had rolled over Europe and spent their fury among the sands of Africa. Alaric the Goth had ravaged Italy and sacked Rome; Genseric the Vandal sat enthroned in the ancient city of Carthage. And this was but the beginning of evils; for innumerable hordes were still to come, urged on by love of adventure and lust of conquest, but yet more by their eagerness to escape the advancing shadow of the terrible Huns, those most savage of all barbarians, whose gigantic empire, dreaded alike by Goth and Roman, was stretching itself over hills and valleys, dense forests and lofty mountain peaks, morasses, seas, rivers and trackless deserts, from the wall of China to the banks of the Rhine.

It was at this emergency that God spoke to the heart of the great saint whose memory we are gathered to honor: “Go forth out of thy country and from thy kindred and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall show thee.” And where is this land which the Lord has chosen? Where is the home of those who are to enjoy light whilst darkness enshrouds the earth, and liberty whilst all Europe is trampled under the feet of Goths and Huns and Vandals? Far away in the West there stood an island, moderate in extent, wonderful in fertility, vying with the emerald in beauty, whose rugged cliffs, beetling over the unconquered ocean, marked the extreme limit of the known world. This happy island had been for untold centuries inhabited by a people who, protected by their watery ramparts from Scythian incursions and Roman conquests, and unimbued with the vain subtleties of Grecian philosophy, maintained a sturdy independence, and tenaciously adhered to the laws, the institutions and the religion of their ancestors.

So far as the natural character is concerned, the Irishman from his very first appearance on the stage of history has preserved, almost unaltered, his well-known characteristic traits. He has ever been generous in his impulses, quick-witted, impressionable and hospitable. The spirit which pervaded the legislation of our primitive ancestors was rather that of modern than of ancient civilization. Three things the Irish people have consistently detested down from the days of Milesius――despotism, the so-called “right of primogeniture” and landlordism――three evils, whose baneful dominion in the island has been founded on the ruins of the nation’s independence. By their ancient law of tanistry, all dignitaries in the land, from the chief monarch down to the humblest canfinny, were chosen by the free suffrages of their countrymen. “The law of tanistry,” says an unfriendly English historian (Lingard II, 86), “regulated the succession of all dignities from the highest to the lowest. It carefully excluded the sons from inheriting, as of right, the authority of their father; and the tanist, or heir-apparent, was elected by the suffrages of the sept during the lifetime of the ruling chieftain. The eldest of the name and family had, indeed, the best title to this distinction; but his capacity and deserts were previously submitted to examination, and the charge of crime, or cowardice or deformity might be urged as an insuperable objection to his appointment.” So jealous were our forefathers of their political liberties! Nor did it agree with their notions of equity that the firstborn son should enjoy an exclusive or preponderating right of inheriting his father’s wealth. Their law of gavelkind prescribed that a man’s movable property should descend to all his sons equally, without any consideration to primogeniture. And what about the land? Why, a landlord has always been an odious character in Ireland. The primitive Irish preferred pasturage to agriculture, and I believe that preference is again become quite fashionable among the landlords over there. A man in the olden times possessed his land only so long as no death occurred in his sept. But, to quote Lingard, “at the death of each possessor the landed property of the sept was thrown into one common mass; a new division was made by the equity or caprice of the canfinny, and their respective portions were assigned to the different heads of families in the order of seniority.” This regulation, whilst it impresses us favorably as evincing the national love of fair play, must still be admitted to have been a crude and primitive arrangement. But it is amusing to observe that what modern socialists vaunt as a novel invention of the nineteenth century was fairly tried and wisely discarded centuries ago by the common sense of the Irish people. Their criminal code bore the impress of the national gentleness; for it is agreed that they always shrank from the actual infliction of capital punishment. Their religion consisted in the worship of all those great objects in nature which are most apt to excite the veneration of a race highly imaginative and poetical――the sun and moon, the consuming flame and the running stream, the mighty tempest, the awful mountain, and, above all, the mysterious shade of their oaken groves. And thus they continued for ages unmolested to sing to their wild harps the praises of their gods and the renown of their ancient heroes.

This is the nation which the Lord has chosen for His peculiar inheritance; this the land upon whose fair horizon the Sun of Justice is about to rise, never more to set. Ireland, hitherto thou hast borne no yoke. Thy hills have never echoed the shouts of invading legions; no captive Irish Chieftain has ever graced the triumph of a Roman General. But that which Cæsar could not do, Christ will do. Pagan Rome dared not attack thee; but Christian Rome has already given the signal for the assault. Behold, hastening over mountain and sea, armed with a staff received from Jesus, strengthened with ample jurisdiction from the Supreme Pontiff, fearless, undaunted, Patrick advances, a host in himself. No novice in the apostolic warfare is this new champion of Christianity. Inured to toil, as well by the hardships of bondage as by long years of extraordinary penances, instructed in the science of God by the most distinguished masters of his age, having served under two great commanders in a brilliant campaign against heresy in Britain, he brings to the task allotted him by Providence ability, skill, experience and the prestige of past success. He lands upon the coast of Erin, uplifts the standard of the Cross and takes possession of the island in the name of Christ and of His Vicar. The peaceful glories of his conquest it is needless to recount, for they are indelibly engraven upon the hearts of a grateful race. The Christian world viewed with astonishment the unprecedented spectacle of a nation gained to the faith without bloodshed, without persecution, almost without resistance. Never did the arrows of the Divine word fly with such swift and telling effect as when shot from the lips of St. Patrick. That Gospel which had fallen powerless upon the proud ears of Epicureans and Stoics in the Areopagus, although preached with all the inspired energy of St. Paul, fell with a crushing weight upon the artless idolatry of Tara. Before the triumphant march of the Irish apostle idols fall and vanish forever; warlike chieftains bow their heads to baptism; princely youths and maidens put on the monastic garb; the Druids are changed into priests and bishops, and every harp within the land is attuned to sing that Patrick’s God is become the God of Erin. Thus has the obedience of the new patriarch, the Christian Abraham, been amply rewarded. He is in possession of the land which the Lord had shown him. He is become the father of a great nation, which, to the end of time, will enshrine his blessed name in their heart of hearts with religious enthusiasm. Generations shall come and go, but the memory of St. Patrick will never fade. Happy Ireland! which welcomed so great an apostle; and happy apostle! whose lot was cast among so affectionate a people.

But now his work is done, and the time has arrived when the saint is destined to receive a second call from Almighty God――a call, this time, not to labor, but to repose, not to go forth again upon a lifelong pilgrimage, but to enter into his eternal home. From his episcopal throne in Armagh the aged conqueror beholds the entire nation subject to his spiritual authority, and through him subject to Rome, and through Rome subject to Christ. Religion flourishes throughout the land with the simplicity of infancy combined with the full vigor of manhood. How changed is Erin now from what she was that day when Patrick in his early youth was cast upon her shore a despised and downcast slave. And oh! if we were worthy, my friends, to enter into the sanctuary of our venerable father’s meditations, as he recalls one by one the events of his long and checkered career. It is only now, when the drama of his life is hastening to its close, that he can fully appreciate the beautiful unity of design which has reigned throughout it, and can perceive how all the occurrences of his life, even the most painful and the most mysterious, were by the hand of God woven skillfully into the great mission for which he had been chosen. But thy trials are now past, thy day’s work is finished; “go forth,” faithful servant of the Lord; thy Master’s arms are extended to embrace thee.