17 March 1989
Egypt

My dear Sisters,

Some months ago when preparing for this visit with you, I noticed that today is the Feast of St. Patrick. As you know, St. Patrick is the national Patron of Ireland, and he is also honored as a great missionary. Perhaps I would surprise you by saying that St. Patrick was not an Irishman. Possibly he came from France or from Wales. He was taken as a hostage by some Irish terrorists (we have some still in Ireland today) and passed some years as a slave in Ireland. Then he ran away, back to his own country, but in a dream he heard the voices of the Irish inviting him to come back again and walk once more among them. He came back as Bishop and began a program of evangelization which was blessed with success. He died probably about the year four hundred sixty.

What manner of man he was, we can learn from a short autobiography which he wrote at the end of his life. He was not a scholar and he knew it. In fact, he describes himself "like a stone which was lying in the mud and which God took up and used for the building which He wished to make." In his very short autobiography he shows himself to be familiar with the pages of the New Testament. He expresses a very personal pain, but without bitterness, because of some people who broke confidences which he had given to them and which had made life difficult for him. From his autobiography one can see that he was saturated by the thought of Christ. In the Irish language there is a rather beautiful hymn called St. Patrick's Shield:

St. Patrick was first and foremost a man of intense, prolonged and genuine prayer. He could honestly confess that he prayed daily and "...as often as a hundred times and at night almost as frequently, even while in the woods and on the mountains. Before daybreak I used to be awakened to prayer in snow and frost and hail...and there was no sloth in me, as I now perceive, because the spirit was then fervent in me."

Whenever I read the very short autobiography which the aged St. Patrick left us, I am always struck by that last phrase. "There was no sloth in me, as I now perceive, because the spirit was then fervent in me." Those of us who have been many years in the religious life feel age creeping up on us, taking a toll from our bodies. But what of our spiritual energy? Is a decline in spiritual energy inevitable with the passing of years? I do not think so. St. Paul tells us what his experience was: "Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day." (2 Cor 4:16).

It is certain that there will be dark days in our lives, when we will seem to have no relish for spiritual things, for our apostolates, for our Community. At such times we can only do as St. Vincent did in his period of darkness and trial--hold fast to the Credo and keep contemplating the experience of Christ on the cross. We can also find strength in that assurance of St. Paul that "our nature is being renewed every day." (Ibid.). Yes, it is every day that we feed on the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. It is every day, even in old age, that we are being nourished and renewed by the Bread of eternal life. It is from our daily participation in the Holy Eucharist that we will receive the strength to remain fervent to the end. Nor should we overlook the continuing presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament as a source of strength and energy, at every stage and at every crisis in our lives, to enable us to continue to show forth, by our words and, above all, by our example, the love of Christ to others, first to the members of our own Communities and then to the poor to whom we are sent. St. Leo the Great reminds us in the office of Readings for Thursday in the fourth week of Lent that "Jesus Christ performed and suffered everything necessary for our salvation, so that the power which was in the head might also be found in the body."

Let me end by quoting some words of St. Vincent with which St. Patrick would easily identify: "Our vocation is, then, to go, not into one parish nor into one diocese, but to go throughout the world. And to do what? to set fire to the hearts of men, to do what the Son of God did, He Who came to cast fire on the earth in order to inflame it with His love. What must we wish for, if not that it burn and consume everything? My dear brothers, please let us reflect on that. It is true, I have been sent, not only to love God, but to make Him loved. It is not sufficient to love God if my neighbor does not love Him. I must love my neighbor as the image of God and the object of His love." (Coste XII, Fr. ed. pp. 202-203).