At this 2023 St. Patrick celebration we can think of important anniversaries we are marking this year. It’s a hundred years since Ireland joined the League of Nations, thereby taking becoming an active member of the international community, and going on, with a care for the world, to contribute to peace building and advocating justice across the globe. It’s the fiftieth anniversary of Ireland joining the then EEC, itself established to prevent future wars in Europe. And 25 years ago, in Belfast, the Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998, ushering in a peace that, albeit fragile, and although for some in the North it wasn’t all good news, marked the end of decades of violence.

These anniversaries remind us of wonderful achievements gained. We who have known the ravages of a war of independence, a civil war and years of “Troubles”, are a people who seek to promote peace and development. We are proud to be a country that is known for its peace-building. Indeed, we are the sixth largest EU troop contributor to the United Nations. We think today of the Irish Defence Forces personnel serving overseas on UN peacekeeping missions. Our thoughts also go to the 24 year old Private Seán Rooney killed on peacekeeping duties in Lebanon shortly before Christmas.

Fifty years after our accession to the EEC we rightly have a pride in the achievements of our country. We are not afraid today to actively promote Ireland as a great place to live, visit, work, invest in, trade with, and study. We can be thankful for all of that. We have made huge strides even if series social challenges remain, not least here in Limerick.

But St. Patrick’s Day each year provides us with an opportunity to recall the rock from which we are hewn. We are a country with a deep spiritual heritage. In a way, we can say God addressed to us the words found in the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”. We see signs of the light of our Christian heritage all over the country – High Crosses, ruins of monasteries and abbeys, Holy wells and amazing manuscripts. We know we brought Christian faith all over the world. A deep vein of spirituality runs throughout our people’s history expressed in image and word.

We’ll probably see today many images of St. Patrick, some funny, some strange, and that might bring us a smile, but it is important, and that’s what we do here this morning at this Mass, to recognise and value of the deep Christian world view that has stamped us as a people since the arrival of St. Patrick. The spiritual heartbeat of the Irish has been sustained by its sense of God’s closeness to us in Jesus Christ who pours the Spirit of love, life and truth into our hearts.

Not to be attentive to the spiritual is dangerous. A contemporary American writer Thomas Moore is often quoted as saying, ‘The great malady of the twentieth (twenty-first) century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is loss of soul. When soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning’. We cannot deny that in Ireland today we see these symptoms.

So, today is an invitation to rediscover the “soul” dimension of Irish society. Unfortunately, because of the scandals that have emerged in the Church, there’s a risk we neglect spiritual sources that have nourished the soul over generations – Scripture, sacraments, the wisdom of the mystics and saints, the example of Christian life, love and prayer. Of course, the arts and music are vehicles for transmitting a spiritual feeling, but it is important we drink from the sources of an authentic and sustaining spiritual life. That’s what gives us resilience and the ability to keep starting again in doing our part, socially or politically, in working for the common good. It was good to read last week of how the proposed new primacy curriculum framework respects the holistic nature of education in providing for the development of the whole human person: spiritual, intellectual, moral, physical and social. The spiritual is so important.

As we approach the anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, we can think of what John Hume, a great Irish peace-builder said: “I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.” His Christian faith inspired him in this attitude of service. He also said: “I want to see Ireland as an example to men and women everywhere of what can be achieved by living for ideals, rather than fighting for them, and by viewing each and every person as worthy of respect and honour.”

Faith sustained John Hume in hope and in the resilience to keep going working for the common good. Faith in Christ motivated him to live out the words of his fellow Irish Nobel laureate and fellow student of St. Columb’s College, Derry, Séamus Heaney, who once wrote: “Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained…Even if the last move did not succeed, the inner command says move again.”

On this St. Patrick’s Day, let’s renew our own response to the gift of faith prompting us to respond to that inner command to move again, to go out to do our part, to give our contribution to this country that has so much to offer the world. We can make our own again the beautiful prayer sometimes call the Deer’s Cry or St. Patrick’s Breastplate celebrating the God who lives with us, guiding us, sheltering us, strengthening us.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me…