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.