REFLECTIONS FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 March 1876, Page 10

REFLECTIONS FOR ST. PATRICK'S DAY.

Is it not difficult to picture to ourselves Ireland wanting the Catholic faith ? to do so is to strip her of beauty - } to rob her of softness and warmth, and to leave her, in the mind's eye, heard and barren as the rocks upon her shore, whsre the Atlantic waves are broken. Yet there was a period, and one not altogether devoid of interest and consideration, when Ireland was not Catholic ; she was then prosperous at home, and was known^ abroad as a warlike nation, for her kings led, many times, armies into Gaul, and penetrated even as far as the confines of Italy : Niall fell in battle on the banks of the Loire, and Feredach was killed by lightning at the foot of the Alps. But our green Erin lacked the glory whic'i

flooded her in after days, and the traces of which are now her abiding and most endearing charm. The man must, indeed, be dull of intellect and cold of heart, who, in gazing upon some one of the many lovely scenes which nature presents to the sojourner in Ireland, does not feel the hills, or the steles, the lakes and the woods around him filled with an indefinable presence, which adds, as it were, a spirit to these inanimate things ; for in their midst he is ever sure to see the ivy-clad remnants of some ecclesiastical building ; it may be the broken arch of a doorway, or a mullioned window, which alone marks the spot where once stood a church ; or, perhaps, it is the picturesque and extensive rsmains of a stately abbey, that contains amongst its ruins the tomb of a king belonging to a by-gone dynasty, or the representation in fresco on its crumbling walls of the fate of some prince of the olden time. How easy is it then in imagination to fill the silent air with a sound of the -"mellow pealing bells, that summoned the surrounding neighbourhood to mass or vespers, and to people the deserted hillsides and valleys with the pious rustics of a time long past, all hurrying towards the house of prayer; to picture the busy monks working at their farm, whose superior cultivation has left the area^of ground, immediately around each mouldered pile, of a quality much bettor than that of the soil which lies beyond it ; and to fancy that the fallen roof, once more erect, is sheltering a studious colony engaged in copying manuscripts, and in the various arts, by which the learning of the ancient world has been transmitted to a generation, that is deeply ungrateful to those, through whose beneficent labours so precious a possession has been rescued from destruction. These ruins speak to us of Erin's greatest glory ; of the period when the coldness of her heathen days and their dreariness had melted away before the warm light of the Gospel, when she fondly cherished — as she still does, thank God — and richly honoured, as now, alas ! she can no longer honour, the holy treasure which Rome conferred upon her, at the hands of /St. Patrick — the Catholic faith. For, when God's chosen time was come, Patrick, a youth who had been carried off from his native France by pirates and made a slave in Ireland, now escaped and grown a man, at his own earnest prayer was sent by Pope Celestine to preach the faith in the land of his captivity : and nobly was an answer given to his call. " From the moment," says Ozanam quoted by Montalembert, " that this green Erin, situated at the extremity of the known world, had seen the sun of faith rise upon her, she had vowed herself to it, with au ardent and tender devotion which became her very life." And her devotion was no barren and selfish feeling; it was not enough for her that she herself had learned the way of salvation ; she Avould have others partake the knowledge with her, and for this purpose she sent her sons abroad, over all the nations of Europe that were still in darkness. " They covered the land and seas of the west." (Montalembert is again our authority.) " Unwearied navigators, they landed on the most desert islands ; they overflowed the continent with their successive immigration?. They saw in incessant visions a world, known and unknown, to be conquered for Christ." So valiantly they fought that to this day th^jp marks are to be found. And their spirit seems still to rest upon the race from which they sprang. Everywhere Irish immigrants have been the pioneers of the Church. Collectively they have without fail enacted the part of saintly missionaries. Would, that as much could be said for them individually. "What a beautiful sight it would be, if each, by a line of conduct consistent with the teaching of the blessed creed he holds, and worthy of the nation which drank in with the avidity the teaching of St. Patrick, should consider himself bound to testify to the sanctifying power of the Catholic faith ; or, if this be falsely thought too high an aim, how consoling would it still be, should each, at least, abstain from doing or saying anything that may seem to compromise his religion in the eyes of those who are ignorant of it ; such, it must be admitted, is plainly the duty of all Catholics, and he who neglects it is unworthy of the name of Irishman,'_aud still more of that of a son of St. Patrick.