March 17, 2003
Dear Friends in Christ,
One of the greatest things God gave to humans, is the ability to remember - a gift we sometimes call nostalgia. And as is often the case with the blessings of God, the gift is a double-edged sword - something we would never wish to be without, but something that is not always easy, or comfortable to bear. For memory, in the flash of an instant, can carry us from joy to sorrow - can carry us across the bright pasture of good times remembered, into the shady valley of those who are gone and missed. Memories can make us smile, and at the same time, bring tears to our eyes.
Our Lord did not reject this gift when He took upon Himself human nature. Surely, as He worked so hard during the last three years of His life, there must have been many times, in the quiet of the evening, or when He went aside, to be alone and to pray, when He thought back with comfort, and yes, even with a little sorrow, on those days of His youth - days spent at the side of Joseph, learning the skills of a carpenter - days spent observing and absorbing the wisdom of Mary, His most excellent, His perfect mother.
But our Lord could also remember, with pain and regret, the bitterness of rejection, the memories of how so many of His people could not, would not see who He was. This memory led Him on occasion, to utter words of sadness, words that reveal to us, just how human our Lord was - as for instance, in the last days of His life, when in the midst of blasting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Scribes, His eyes, His mind, His heart wandered for a moment, and from Him escaped this sad, sad lament:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling!
Those of us who have the blood of Ireland in our veins understand well the immensity of memory Ð of sadness and joy Ð expressed by these words of our Lord. Our own memories are suffused with the light of IrelandÕs glow Ð in the patterns of our speech, which without calculation, so often rise into the strains of poetry - or the expressions and sayings so many who lack them call blarney, but we call charity on the tongue - or the many, many songs we sing, heard first from the lips of our mothers and fathers, and our grandparents, who knew the restorative power of song - its power to soothe the hours of toil and tedium, to transform the conflicts of life, into a beautiful harmony of history, of faith and of family ties. And our memories are keen with the courage of our ancestors, heroic men and women who faced tyranny and death, but who kept to the way of the True Faith, the Catholic Faith, walking with the spirits of the blessed saints, and especially that giant among men we venerate today, St. Patrick. In our words, our songs, our memories, and in how much we strive to hand these down to our children - in keeping these precious memories and heirlooms safe and alive, we pass on a strength that St. Patrick brought Ireland, brought us - the strength given to the Irish by a God who loves His people, who asks that they live, and love, and be happy - and set an example for the rest of the world to follow.
But our memories, the memories of the Irish people, also share the sorrow of Christ - His sorrow, remembering how His People had suffered, and how He longed to draw them into the protecting shelter, the wings of His love. For our people, with sometimes only the firm and persistent wings of the Catholic Faith to shelter them, have suffered much at the hands of tyrants Ð so much so, that in order to live, many made an ultimate, a necessary, but a heart-breaking sacrifice. They gave up their home, the soil of their mothers and fathers, braved the uncertainties of exile, and crossed the sea to find a haven - this land, this nation, the land of our birth. And we, born in the freedom and security of this great nation, given a prosperity they could only dream about, as they spent their lives achieving it for our sake - we must hold dear in our own hearts, the beautiful sadness which was always with them - the sadness for their old home, for their old land, and for the memories, centuries of memories, whose tug still pulls at the tenderness of our own hearts.
This, children of Ireland, is our bitter-sweet inheritance - the joy and sorrow of dreams lost and dreams regained - the pain and the peace of a smile born upon a tear.
Today, we celebrate this inheritance, and call upon the aid of our champion St. Patrick to keep the greatness of Ireland alive - in our hearts, before the world, and especially, upon the memory of those who will come after us. We pray for those who suffered in the past - the warriors, the martyrs, the mothers and fathers of our own family lines; we pray for those who suffer now, in that part of the homeland still beset by the violence and anguish of civil war. But even as we pray, we also thank them, and God, for a joy that transcends all sorrow, all trial, all pain - the joy of keeping the Faith, of holding on to the word of God, and of knowing that the burdens of life, if accepted and shouldered with courage, make life all the more precious, and all the more wonderful to live. We thank them, and God, for the Irish way.
We understand, as they did - as they do - what God requires of the brave - and we close on this special day, by remembering words of the bravest of Ireland's champions, the holy man of God, St. Patrick - words heard, remembered, understood, and claimed, as a rightful legacy, by all the sons and daughters of Erin :
It was not any grace of mine, but of God, who conquers from within me; I came to Ireland to preach the Gospel and to bear insults from unbelievers; I surrender my freedom that others might profit. And if I should be found worthy, I am ready to give even my life for His name's sake, unfalteringly and very gladly, if only our Lord should grant it to me.
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