The following is Bishop Caggiano’s homily for St. Patrick’s Day.
My dear sisters and brothers,
You could imagine when I was a little boy, in the normal rough and tumble of life. Many a day I found myself running to my mother because of some fall off a bike or whatever else happened, with a wound, a scratch, a bruise, wanting relief. And my mother’s idea of first aid was very simple. We would often go either to the kitchen sink or the bathroom sink, soap and water.
You’re washed up. There’s the bandage. Off you go. Not too sophisticated, but it worked. In fact, the initial pain quickly dissipated, and most of the time, life went back to normal.
See, my mother, in her simple wisdom, understood what you and I also understand that a wound cannot be healed unless it is faced and cleaned. That, my friends, is true of our mortal life. It is even more true in our spiritual life. For when we are wounded or wound ourselves by not just our sinfulness, but the things that may happen to us, those wounds need to be faced and cleaned. For if they are not, they fester and can cause great harm, even death.
I raise this to you, my friends, this morning, on this day when we celebrate the glorious example, model, intercession and protection of Patrick, who is the patron of all of Ireland and one of the great saints of the western church. Patrick understood what I just said, and because he understood it, miracles happened. Why do I say that? Well, you know the story of St. Patrick.
Patrick was the son of a roman official who lived in what is now great Britain, or at least Britain. And at the age of 16, he was kidnapped. And he was sent to Ireland to work as a shepherd, an indentured shepherd. And he was in Ireland for six years. And then he was able to escape.
And once he escaped and had his freedom, he did something remarkable, extraordinary beyond belief. He went back to the scene of the crime. He went back to where he was in slavery. Imagine the saints were not perfect. Nor are we.
Imagine the anger and the resentment and the disappointment and the questions this young man had as he was held in slavery. Imagine all of that in his heart. You and I would have had that and much more. And he had that for six years. And in the moment of freedom, what did Patrick do?
He didn’t turn back on where all of that happened. He didn’t say enough with you and all your people, what did he do? He faced it and he cleansed it with the power of grace. And he went back. And what did he do?
He built a great nation, a nation of martyrs and saints, a nation from which all of Europe received the faith. And just think of our country, you know better than I, church in this country was built by many hands, most of which were irish hands. Many of those who came from Ireland, who came to a country which was overwhelmingly protestant, leaving a country where Protestantism had also sought to enslave them. And they came so that the church could grow. It’s remarkable.
And Patrick, in his life, as you know, my friends, cast out the serpents. There are stories that 33 people rose from the dead because of Patrick’s prayers and presence. And all of that was possible because he didn’t run away from his anger, resentment. He didn’t run away from the wounds that people inflicted on him. But he faced them and sought the grace of Christ to clean it and begin the healing.
And he is revered as a man of great holiness because he had the courage to seek to be healed.
You know, my dear friends, when you look at our world, when you look at our communities, may I say when we look at our own families, how many wounds are there? Perhaps you and I this morning came with them in our own hearts.
When you look at the church in Ireland today, it is in deep crisis in large measure, because many were wounded and those wounds festered in silence and darkness. And only now are those wounds slowly being cleaned. So, too, in our lives and among our families and in our communities and in this very broken world, you and I come here to pray for Patrick’s intercession, not simply to admire him, not simply to seek for our personal intentions, but could I dare say, as your spiritual father, could I dare say that we are all here to follow his example, to ask for the grace to be able to look at whatever wounds we see in our own life, in those around us, and not run away from them, not resent them, not become angry with them, because all that may happen, but to actually ask the grace, through the intercession of our great patron, Patrick, to face them, to ask for the grace to begin to clean them so that we could be healed day by day. And God’s grace and His remarkable power can be unleashed in you and me so that what Patrick did in his time, you and I, 16 centuries later, are ready to do again.
It is not easy to be a daughter or son of St. Patrick, whether you are irish or not. But we are all children of Patrick. And if the world ever needed women and men and young people to follow in his footsteps, the time is now.
One man built a great nation. Could you imagine what you and I can do together here and now?
