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Mar 17 – Tues of 4th Wk of Lent / S Patrick
Description
Sources Used Today:
- "The Bread of Life" — Toward Easter
- "Bishop Schneider: The Episcopal Consecrations of the SSPX Will In No Way Be Schismatic" (FSSPX.news)
- The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
Saint Patrick is remembered as the apostle of Ireland, but the story of his life is far richer and more complex than the familiar legends. He was born around the year 385 in Roman Britain, probably along the western coast where the Roman world met the restless Irish Sea. His family was Christian and somewhat prominent. His father, Calpurnius, served as a deacon and a local civic official, while his grandfather had been a priest. Yet Patrick himself later confessed that in his youth he had little interest in religion.
Everything changed when he was about sixteen. Irish raiders attacked his region, capturing many young people and carrying them across the sea as slaves. Patrick was taken to northern or western Ireland and forced to work as a shepherd. These six years of solitude became the turning point of his life. In the cold hills and long nights of isolation, he turned constantly to prayer. In his own surviving writings, the Confessio, Patrick recalled that he would pray dozens of times a day, even rising during storms or freezing nights to pray in the fields.
Eventually Patrick received what he believed was a divine message in a dream telling him that a ship was waiting to take him home. He escaped his master, traveled hundreds of miles across Ireland, and reached the coast where he found passage back to Britain. Yet years later he experienced another vision, in which he heard the voices of the Irish people calling him back. After years of formation in Gaul, Patrick returned to Ireland as a bishop and missionary. Rather than preaching only in Romanized areas, he deliberately traveled among tribal chieftains, converting leaders and establishing monasteries that became centers of learning and faith.
Patrick’s feast on March 17 has inspired traditions that often preserve faint echoes of Ireland’s ancient past. In parts of rural Ireland, it was once customary to begin the day with Mass before any celebration, remembering Patrick first as a missionary bishop rather than a national symbol. In earlier centuries the day fell during Lent, and the Church in Ireland granted a rare relaxation of Lenten abstinence so families could share a festive meal.
Another old custom involved placing a small shamrock