St.Patrick Rituals

Peter O'Malley, my great, great, grandfather was born in Louisburgh, Mayo Co, Ireland and died March 17, 1923 on St. Patrick's day.  Without St. Patrick's work bringing Ireland into connection with the Church of the Roman Empire and universal Christendom, it would be virtually impossible to find any information about Peter's life and family in Ireland.   I am grateful for my Irish Catholic heritage!  I want to find Peter listed in a parish baptismal record or parish marriage record of James and Winifred to extend my O'Malley genealogical line.  I believe Catholic church records for these important rituals may be key in unlocking my family history.  I can thank the patron saint of Ireland for that!

 St. Patrick was not only instrumental in regards to church records, but also influential regarding the Senchus Mor- one of the most important early legal text with reference to Brehon law.  St. Patrick also set up a network of Christian monasteries ultimately producing other important early writing preserving Western culture through it's scribal tradition.  

St. Patrick "converted kingdoms which were still pagan, especially in the more barren and craggy west of Ireland".  That perfectly describes the "Wild Atlantic Way" area in Ireland surrounding the birthplace of Peter O'Malley in Louisburgh.  As part of my exploration, I'm preparing to hike Crough Patrick. I could also venture out to Lacken Strand and Fog Hill in Mayo Co, with amazing ties to St. Patrick.

While watching a documentary on St. Patrick, I was touched as the film closed with both Catholic and Protestants together hiking Crough Patrick as a more fitting way to celebrate this holiday together. They had begun it with the traditional beer drinking, leprechaun loving, green display parades of national Irish pride for St. Patrick's day.  It is those rituals that migrated over to the states.  Growing up, St. Patrick's day meant I wore green so I wouldn't get pinched,  enjoyed seeing my name "Erin Go Braugh" in printed decorations and felt a sense of pride being an O'Malley.  My dad did all the ritual beer drinking. 

I didn't make the Roman Catholic connection, ignoring the prefix "Saint" to the Patrick or that it was a sacred feast day.  St. Patrick engaged in many ritualistic practices with great meaning for himself and ultimately for others.    It is these rituals I want to focus on for the rest of this entry. 

First was St. Patricks ritual of constant prayer.  He needed it!  Talk about hard.  St. Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates (probably my relatives) from his home in Britain as a 16 year old.  Forced into slavery,  he served as a shepherd boy with ample time to think about his situation. It was through adversity, that he found God in prayer and ultimately found himself.  He reports in his confession document:

"6. But after I came to Ireland-every day I had to tend sheep, and many times a day I prayed-the love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened.  And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountains'  and I used to get up for prayer before daylight through snow, through frost, through rain, and I felt no harm, and there was no sloth in me-as I now see, because the spirit was within me was then fervent."

He reminds me of the young shepherd boy David, the psalmist, as he declares, "This I do know with full certainty, that before I was afflicted I was like a stone which lies in the deep mire; and he that is mighty came, and in his mercy lifted me up, and set me on the top of the wall."  Once lost, he is now found.

Ritual #2:  Receiving Personal Revelation.  His answers to prayer came in form of visions, voices, and impressions.  He had a vision about his escape from his captors and acted upon it, traveling 200 miles across Ireland and getting on a ship back to Britain   He had another vision, instructing him to return to Ireland as a missionary to the people who had once enslaved him.  He acted upon building upon the existing cultural beliefs and helping them embrace truth centered on Christ.  He records his vision:

 "I read the beginning of the letter, which was entitled, "The Voice of the Irish;" and while I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voice of those that lived beside the Wood of Focluth, which is near the western sea. And thus they cried out, as if from one mouth, "We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk among us yet again."

I don't know if I would have wanted to open that missionary call!  But he did and the world was never the same.

Ritual #3:  Fasting

St. Patrick fasted throughout his life, enabling him to receive divine help and instruction.  Crough Patrick is connected to a legendary fast of 40 days. It was here where he banished all snakes from Ireland chasing them into the sea, was harassed by a flock of demonic birds he banished, was tormented by a demonic female serpent named Corra or tempted by Satan depending on the early written account you may want to believe. Patrick ended his fast when God gave him the right to judge all the Irish at the Last Judgement and agreed to spare the land from the final desolation.  Now that's an apostolic duty-judging a whole nation!  Wow.  Regardless, of what happened on Crough Patrick, he faced some type of challenge and received strength to deal with it through his fasting.

Ritual #4:  Testimony.  

I loved reading the "Confession" of St. Patrick.  It was like reading scripture from someone who had really come to know the Savior and had a great desire to serve him with all his heart, mind, and strength.  Though it was written to defend his  character, motives and methods during his ministry in Ireland, it really is a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He writes: 

"4. For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name."

Ritual #4:  Sacrifice

There aren't any Christian martyrs in Ireland but Patrick was willing to die for the cause.  He was wiling to live for the cause like the early apostles.  He was willing to dedicate his entire life serving Jesus Christ as a living sacrifice.   He explains:  

"34. Thus I give untiring thanks to God who kept me faithful in the day of my temptation, so that today I may confidently offer my soul as a living sacrifice for Christ my Lord; who am I, Lord? or, rather, what is my calling? that you appeared to me in so great a divine quality, so that today among the barbarians I might constantly exalt and magnify your name in whatever place I should be, and not only in good fortune, but even in affliction? So that whatever befalls me, be it good or bad, I should accept it equally, and give thanks always to God who revealed to me that I might trust in him, implicitly and forever, and who will encourage me so that, ignorant, and in the last days, I may dare to undertake so devout and so wonderful a work; so that I might imitate one of those whom, once, long ago, the Lord already pre-ordained to be heralds of his Gospel to witness to all peoples to the ends of the earth. So are we seeing, and so it is fulfilled; behold, we are witnesses because the Gospel has been preached as far as the places beyond which no man lives."

Patrick felt the love of the Lord for the people he served.  He counted himself one of them.  Even though he was not born in Ireland, he wanted to die there and he did.  Listen to his ardent plea and testimony of the resurrection:

"59. And if I ever accomplished aught in the cause of my God whom I love, I beseech him to grant me that I may shed my blood with those strangers and captives for his name's sake, even though I should lack burial itself, even though the dogs and the wild beasts most wretchedly should rend my corpse limb by limb or the fowls of the air should devour it. With perfect certitude, I think, if it should be my fate, I have gained a soul as profit with my body. For beyond all doubt we shall rise on that day in the crystal brightness of the sun; that is, in the Glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as sons of the living God and joint-heirs with Christ, conformed to his image which is to be. For of him and through him and in him we shall reign."

Prayer, revelation, fasting, testimony and sacrifice are important rituals to me as well in my daily walk.  By engaging in these ritualistic behaviors, I am able to understand my true identity and truly unlock my own family history. I am much more than my innate sense of being Irish. In tracing my genealogical line back through the ages, I ultimately come to Adam and Eve...who were the son and daughter of God.  St. Patrick knew it.  And so do I.