Readings for the Feast Day of St. Patrick
This sermon was preached in Lewis Hall at Christ Church Eureka in a gathering of the Episcopal Church Women on Wednesday March 13, 2019.
Before England was called England, when it was just an island “at the outermost edge of the known world,” populated by various tribes known as Keltoi and Brigantes and Britons, there lived a teenager named Maewyn. Maewyn grew up in the church, enjoyed playing games, hanging out with his friends and occasionally looking for trouble. When he was 16, however, trouble came looking for him and found him. Pirates from Ireland raided Maewyn’s hometown, kidnapped him, brought him to Ireland and sold him into slavery. A druid priest named Milchu bought Maewyn as his slave and forced him to take care of his animals, alone on Mount Slemish, miles away from his family and friends. The rest of Maewyn’s life looked bleak and miserable and terribly lonely. Yet instead of brooding in hate and anger, he began to do something that transformed his life forever. As he watched his breath in the cold Irish winter, he began to pray to the “One who gives breath to all.” As he looked into the night sky, he began to pray to the “One who appointed the stars to serve the greater lights.” And as he felt the earth beneath his feet and the warmth of the sun on his face, he began to feel the presence of Christ shielding and covering his body, beneath him, above him, inside him, around him. He felt Christ in his own body when he would lie down to sleep, when he woke up from rest, when he walked and when he sat down. He wrote, “When I came to Ireland I spent each day tending sheep and I prayed all throughout the day, growing more and more in the love of God. In a single day I would pray up to one hundred times and in the course of the night I would pray nearly as many times again. I prayed on the mountains and in woods and in the dark before the dawn, in the snow, in the frost and in the rain.” His prayers grounded him in the earthy and dirty reality of each day and helped him to see God everywhere, in the wind, in the water, and in everyday acts like napping and bathing and stretching.
Maewyn continued to pray a hundred times a day until he heard a voice from heaven tell him to escape and travel to the coast, where he discovered a ship that miraculously brought him back home. Back at home in Britain, Maewyn continued to pray and eventually became a priest and then a bishop. In his prayers, Maewyn felt a call to return to Ireland to share the Gospel with the people who enslaved him. Maewyn, who changed his name to Patrick, became responsible for bringing Christianity to Ireland and is celebrated today (specifically this Sunday) as the Apostle and patron saint of Ireland. Because of his earthy and embodied prayers on Mt Slemish, St. Patrick was able to bring the people who kidnapped him to Christ and convert the very land where he worked as a slave. From St. Patrick’s ministry, Celtic Christianity grew and eventually returned to England through the ministry of St. Patrick’s spiritual heirs St. Aidan of Lindisfarne and St. Columba of Iona. And this Celtic Christianity includes some of the most corporeal, fleshy and nature-oriented prayers in all of church history. They have prayers for lighting fires, for washing hair, for enjoying the sun, and for seeing the Trinity in trees and plants, including the shamrock. This Celtic Christianity, which fused with Roman Christianity makes up the spiritual heritage that we inherit as Western Christians, and specifically as Anglican Christians. So as spiritual heirs of this ministry of St. Patrick, I invite us to sense Christ shielding and covering our bodies, beneath us, above us, inside us, and around us, as we pray on the mountains and in the woods and in the dark before the dawn. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 