Monthly Spiritual Message, March 2008
By Fr Carl Schafer OFM
March 17: St Patrick
We’re reminded today of a saint very dear to Irish-born Catholics among us and to many Australians (and New Zealanders) whose parents at some stage came from Ireland.
Surely, this is the most colourful saint’s day of the year, celebrated with sports carnivals, concerts and balls, patronised by countless O’Apostrophes festooned with green ribbons and clover leaves in lieu of shamrocks.
Of course, there are many other Australian Catholics whose parents come from almost any country that you care to name, and from every continent, but the apostles of other nations aren’t given anything like the recognition that the Australian Church accords to St Patrick.
The Dutch in Australia celebrate their St Willibrord, the Germans their St Boniface, the Slavs their two Saints Cyril and Methodius. The Italians celebrate St Francis and the Maltese St Paul. But the Australian Catholic Church doesn’t mark any of these days with the same degree of celebration, much less drink green beer for the occasion.
I would be the last person to deprive our St Patrick’s Day of its Irish colour. But why does the Australian Church celebrate the feast of St Patrick with special solemnity? Why is he the Patron Saint of the archdioceses of Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart and Auckland, and of hundreds of parish churches and schools?
The prayer of St Patrick’s Mass gives us the clue. It refers to St Patrick not as the apostle of Ireland (which he certainly was) but as the man who “preached God’s glory to the nations”.
This is precisely why he is so much venerated in Australia. It was in the person of Irish immigrants, whether in priest’s biretta or nun’s veil, in top hat or soft cap, or in convict chains, that St Patrick preached God’s glory to our nation. St Patrick’s day is essentially a festival of Australia’s Catholic faith.
The truth of it is obvious. Predominantly Irish people brought the Catholic faith to this apparently God-forsaken land. In spite of successive waves of immigration of Catholic people from many other countries, the Australian Church has always been deeply influenced by Irish Catholicism. Our faith was stamped with Irish qualities, and still is, although the influence has waned considerably.
Outstanding among the fine qualities of the Faith in this country in earlier days was the people’s tenacious hold of the Catholic faith as best they knew and loved it, in the face of extreme hardships:
– their loyalty to the pope as head of the universal Church, to their local bishop and to their priests, when many of their fellow immigrants esteemed Roman clerics as a very low form of life; (compare SFO Rule Art. 6, Gen.Const. Art. 99)
– their fidelity to the Mass – they had an unerring Christian sense that it was the Mass that mattered; (compare Rule 8, Gen.Const. 14)
– their courageous and often heroic support of Christian education for their Australian children, as opposed to the government’s free, compulsory and secular education; (compare G.C. 25)
– their personal piety which is essentially belief put into practice. Practices of piety can become obsolete, but piety itself is never out of date. (compare Rule 7, Gen.Const. 17)
These are some of the qualities of Irish faith that flourished on Australian soil, and that laid the foundations of the Australian Church. This is why we celebrate the Feast of St Patrick.
But do we merely celebrate glories of the past, the accomplishments of the faith of our Australian pioneers? If that’s all we’re doing, we have put away our Catholic faith like a museum piece – to be admired but not to be touched, let alone put into effect in grappling with modern life.
Consider just one of the fine qualities of Australian faith derived from the Irish – their fidelity to the Mass. It was the Mass in Latin, of course, and most of the people said their rosary while Father performed the Holy Sacrifice with his back to them, in mysterious isolation.
It was a big shock to the system when a pope introduced the people’s hand missals in 1900, and encouraged priests to spread this way of taking part in the Mass. What was Father doing, encouraging people to read a book at Mass? How can we say the rosary and juggle a book at the same time?
Then it was an almighty shock when another pope in 1969 introduced the Mass in English. English! It’s a profane language. How can we use that in the Holy Sacrifice? And why couldn’t they have left us in peace with our lovely Key of Heaven manual?
But the principle behind these changes is always the unerring Catholic and Irish one: “It’s the Mass that matters.” The SFO Rule, Article 8, and the General Constitutions, Article 14, say the same: “the Eucharist is the centre of the life of the Church… Therefore, the Eucharist should be the centre of the life of the fraternity.”
Carl Schafer OFM
National Spiritual Assistant SFO – Oceania
