When I opened my email inbox the other day, there, among the flotsam, was an ad from Amazon. Usually I zap spam the moment I see it, but this item had a title that pressed a button: “Get Ready for St. Patrick’s Day for Your Home.” I had to see more. The ad showed trays and dishes, both bearing a four-leaf-clover design; green dishtowels, body towels, and shower curtains; and a table runner also in a clover motif. Even a metal sign reading “Irish Parking Only” was featured. Obviously Amazon and other retailers think the whole public, not just the Irish, wants to bask in Irish pride, if only for a little while each year.
When I was a kid, I had to wear something green every March 17th. Otherwise, I was harassed. Now no one comments about the absence of green, but I still have a mild paranoia about it. Everyone’s looking for green and wondering why I won’t join in the fun!
What other ethnic groups do we indulge this way? Do we make sure to eat a burrito on Cinco de Mayo? We predominately speak English, and the foundation of our laws is English law, but does anyone know the feast day of St. George is April 23rd? We owe our freedom from England to France, but who can recite a single fact about St. Denis? Is Columbus Day celebrated as Italian Pride Day? Well, maybe by some Italians, but the rest of us think of it differently.
The odd thing about St. Patrick is that he wasn’t even Irish! He was born in Roman Britain, in what is now Wales. While on a sea voyage, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates. He escaped his captors but unaccountably developed a fondness for Ireland. Then he had a religious awakening and returned to Ireland to convert as many as he could to Christianity. I doubt he drove the snakes out of Ireland. It seems probable to me that he drove the devil out of his converts, so to speak, and we know the devil is a serpent. (In a way, so was the dragon that St. George supposedly slew.)
What about St. Patrick the man? Was there something in him that was “great-souled,” as there was in Mahatma Gandhi? No, he was just very good at turning pagans into Christians. Of course, this counts for a lot among Irish Catholics, because he was, in effect, their path to salvation. As an atheist, it isn’t a talent I hold in high regard.
However, this doesn’t mean I’m unimpressed by all the Christian saints. Several capture my imagination. Foremost, there’s St. Francis, who revered all life. To him, life was sacred in its own right. He sought to comfort people of every station. He was born into a wealthy family yet chose a life of poverty, I suppose to be more accessible to the poor and wretched. It was the life that Christ had chosen.
I’m also fond of St. Jude, also called Thaddeus. His original name was Judas, which posed an obvious problem. In no way did he want to be associated with Judas Iscariot. Nevertheless, as he spread the gospel, he was sometimes mistaken for Christ’s betrayer. He wanted to prove his usefulness so deeply that he would intervene under the most desperate circumstances. This may be why he’s thought of as the patron saint of lost causes. We all suffer from lost causes, or what I think of as broken dreams. There is a nobility in people who can empathize and comfort when they hear of a dream that will never be fulfilled.
The legend of St. Christopher, the “Christ bearer,” is also appealing. In typical depictions, we see him fording a stream, a staff in his right hand, the child Jesus perched on this left shoulder. His head is turned in loving concern toward Jesus as he grips him securely with his left arm. He’s the patron saint of travelers. In an effort to keep up to date, the Catholic Church has listed automobile drivers among those he protects! (I wonder if passengers on trains and planes are now included.)
But the Church has somehow missed what I like most about St. Christopher: his priorities. He knows that nothing is more precious or more worthy of protection than children. They are our legacy, our commitment to better days ahead. As I look at dozens of artists’ depictions, I repeatedly see it in his face.
Perhaps your cup of tea is someone who was your contemporary. That would be Mother Teresa, who died 18 years ago. She’ll be canonized later this year, probably as St. Teresa of Calcutta. In 1946, while on a train trip to a convent in Darjeeling, she got the call: Leave the convent; live among the poor; comfort them. She sounds like a latter-day St. Francis, only she spent months in Patna getting basic medical training. Then she went to Calcutta and began caring for the ill, the starving, and the destitute. The rest, as they say, is history.
On March 17th, if you come across a one-day Irish wannabe wearing a silly, green party hat and a shamrock pin on his shirt, just recall the words of Mr. T: “I pity the fool!”
The Scratching Post 