St. Patrick's Day pride

We are poised at the beginning of St. Patrick's Day weekend... yes weekend this year, just like all the other great holidays we celebrate. A weekend of Irish pride and more. And why not?

I went to St. Patrick's school as a kid. We proudly wore green every day, shirt and corduroy pants. We knew St. Patrick tamed the heathen in the country he came to call home. He drove out the snakes. He explained the burning issue of how there can be three persons in one God by using the simple illustration of the national flower of Ireland, the shamrock.

There were a few facts in that last paragraph. He did a number on the heathen, and he used a shamrock to teach. The snakes? No.

I think if I were ever captured as a kid, and enslaved as Patrick was, I would have been angry. I may have sought revenge if I ever dared to go back. But Patrick, after having been a slave for several years, did go back to those who enslaved him, not to exact vengeance, Rather he embarked on a mission to change the lives of his former captors. This was not an easy thing to do. When you start talking about freeing all slaves, and letting the women be free to join the nunnery, the chieftains got more than a little upset. Maybe this is where the Irish get their moxie, their chutzpah, their pride. This Patrick, staring the elders in the face, and, to use a modern phrase that comes from old testament times, saying "Let the people go." He wrote a letter to a brigand named Corticus demanding that he free some men whom he had enslaved. Corticus ridiculed Patrick, who would not back down from his demand, and Corticus was excommunicated. Powerful, guy, that Patrick. It is hard to determine the effectiveness of the action, but Patrick stood his ground.

A real cool tidbit about Patrick is his own proud ancestry. His father was a deacon, but his grandfather was a bishop. I wonder what would happen if the men who are bishops and priests today had legitimate sons and daughters. Would there be more men and women like Patrick, ready to stand up for the right things; really on the side of the down trodden and the poor. Would there be a kinder and gentler approach to all people, an appreciation of all that is beautiful and good in everyone.

I think we need more people like Patrick, men and women, straight and gay, of every persuasion. We could use more humility to accompany our pride of being a scion of St. Patrick.