Saint Patrick Quotes

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

Give me liberty or give me death." [From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.]

I pray to God to give me perseverance and to deign that I be a faithful witness to Him to the end of my life for my God.

There is more hope in honest brokenness than in the pretense of false wholeness.

And He watched over me before I knew Him and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil.

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind. Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance or wating for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating-and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake lived in the wide world outside.

Memories aren’t meant to be torments, Brother Patrick,” Brother Connor says in a too-casual voice, the one that means he’s guessed what I’m thinking about. “They are gifts.

I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.

Corned beef and cabbage and leprechaun men. Colorful rainbows hide gold at their end. Shamrocks and clovers with three leaves plus one. Dress up in green—add a top hat for fun. Steal a quick kiss from the lasses in red. A tin whistle tune off the top of my head. Friends, raise a goblet and offer this toast— 'The luck of the Irish and health to our host!'

Each and all shall render account for even our smallest sins before the judgement seat of Christ the Lord.

They gave Saint Patrick his own day and what did he do but run out a bunch of snakes. Why, Thomas Edison lit up the world. If it hadn’t been for him we’d all still be sitting here in the dark, with nothing but a candle,

I knew what Saint Dane was sensing. I knew why he was confused. he thought I was done. He thought we were done. He was wrong, and that's what he was sensing. He felt our presence. I figured I might as well confirm things for him. "Pendragon, don't--," Patrick warned. I stepped out fron behind the pillar into the light. "Man, that suit is just wicked cool!" I called out.

God, my God, omnipotent King, I humbly adore thee. Thou art King of kings, Lord of lords. Thou art the Judge of every age. Thou art the Redeemer of souls. Thou art the Liberator of those who believe. Thou art the Hope of those who toil. Thou art the Comforter of those in sorrow. Thou art the Way to those who wander. Thou art Master to the nations. Thou art the Creator of all creatures. Thou art the Lover of all good. Thou art the Prince of all virtues. Thou art the joy of all Thy saints. Thou art life perpetual. Thou art joy in truth. Thou art the exultation in the eternal fatherland. Thou art the Light of light. Thou art the Fountain of holiness. Thou art the glory of God the Father in the height. Thou art Savior of the world. Thou art the plenitude of the Holy Spirit. Thou sittest at the right hand of God the Father on the throne, reigning for ever.

He had soon so thoroughly smelled out the quarter between Saint-Eustache and the Hôtel de Ville that he could find his way around in it by pitch-dark night. And so he expanded his hunting grounds, first westward to the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, then out along the rue Saint-Antoine to the Bastille, and finally across to the other bank of the river into the quarters of the Sorbonne and the Faubourg Saint-Germain where the rich people lived.

that’s the story of how Saint Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland forever and banished the Devil to England. Some people say that explains why there has always been such trouble between England and Ireland. The Devil stirs it up.

[God] watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?

Shamrocks And roses In an ever green flock Now Up to your noses Turning into a high stock! People nice and seen All around you green! These lucky streams Realizing major dreams. In strives, when in pain Call oh call up my name, Know it isn't in vain...

You see, my son,” continues Kolbe softly, “the saints are not so different than you or me. Their stories reveal them to be very much human. However, this frailty does not weaken their witness or holiness, but rather extends to us the invitation to the same life amid our own frailty.

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind.

Crossing the square at Saint-Sulpice, he split through a stream of nuns, who, as insects interrupted, lost the scent of their paths and spun away in eddies.

Patrick had left behind some writings, and one of his most famous works was something many of us learned in school called “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” a kind of a cross between a hymn and a poem.

There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your field. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand. Today in celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day, we welcome some traditional Irish blessings. May these gentle prayers settle into your soul like a sweet, soft mantra of comfort and serenity.

Good morning, Doctor," cried Jack, appearing behind him. 'I did not know you were in the hotel.' 'Good morning, sir,' said Stephen. 'I was not. I slept with a friend.' 'Oh, I see,' said Jack. He was pleased, in that Stephen's frailty gave countenance and justification to his own, but at the same time he was disappointed, more disappointed than pleased, since a frail Stephen necessarily fell short of the very highest standard of virtue. Jack regarded him not so much as a saint as a being removed from temptations: he was never drunk, nor was he given to dangling after women in far foreign ports, still less did he go to brothels with the other officers, and although he was notoriously lucky at cards he very rarely played; so this commonplace fall, negligible in another man or in Jack Aubrey himself, took on a heinous aspect.

I rise today with the power of God to pilot me, God's strength to sustain me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look ahead for me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to protect me, God's way before me, God's shield to defend me, God's host to deliver me, from snares of devils, from evil temptations, from nature's failings, from all who wish to harm me, far or near, alone and in a crowd.

And with the image of Jesus carrying the cross, I hearken back to the statue of Atlas on Fifth Avenue, where there is a poignant contrast. Across the street from Atlas stands the majestic Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. There, facing one another, these monuments pay tribute to the world views of my fathers: Christianity and Objectivism; Faith and Reason. Each is resolute in its position and stands in strength. Yet, they could not be more disparate. Where Atlas carries the world, Jesus carries the cross.

We drive until the sun sets. There are more back roads into and out of these woods than anyone can count, than are probably on any map. You can drive and drive and drive and just see forest and fields, the occasional cow, the occasional elk, the even more occasional moose (the animal Patron Saint of Perpetual Embarrassment; I can relate, though not to being Catholic, which I’ve apparently decided mooses are). The Mountain glows in and out of view, turning pink, then blue, then shadow, as it watches us wander.

You spoke of the saints a moment ago. You spoke of them as though they were men and women of exceptional, inhuman holiness, so far above us mere mortal men that they could only be revered from afar. Never could they be looked to as examples—never role models for us to emulate. I understand your feelings. It pains me to admit that we, the church, have too often failed you by perpetuating this inaccurate image of the saints. In truth, they are very much human, very much like you and me. They lived in the world with the same fears, temptations, and failings that everyone must. So you see, what made them saints was not the absence of fear or failure, but instead their willing surrender to the grace of God, a grace available to all who come to the Cross. Yes, that does mean suffering and perhaps death, but for Jesus Christ they were prepared to suffer still more.

But I will tell you another misery that is not to be denied. In the common, natural course of events physicians, surgeons and apothecaries are faced with enormous demands for sympathy: they may come into immediate contact with half a dozen deeply distressing cases in a single day. Those who are not saints are in danger of running out of funds and becoming bankrupt; a state which deprives them of a great deal of their humanity. If the man is in private practice he is obliged to utter more or less appropriate words to preserve his connexion, his living;and the mere adoption of a compassionate face as you have no doubt observed goes some little way towards producing at least the ghost of pity. But our patients cannot leave us. They have no alternative. We are not required to put on a conciliating expression, for our inhumanity in no way affects our livelihood. We have a monopoly; and I believe that many of us pay a very ugly price for it in the long run. You must already have met a number of callous idle self-important self-indulgent hardhearted pragmatic brutes wherever the patients have no free choice.

Legend tells us that the High King of Tara, who ruled supreme over all the Kings of Ireland, looked out from his castle one day during the festival of Eostre and saw a fire blazing away on a far hillside. Furious with this obvious disregard for the law, for which the penalty was death, he sent out soldiers to arrest the guilty party. When the soldiers arrived at the hillside they found St Patrick, the patron Saint of Ireland, piling wood onto his fire and immediately seized him. Standing before the King he was asked why he disobeyed the law, and he explained that his fire was a sign that Christ had risen from the dead and was the light of the world. The King so admired Patrick’s courage that he forgave him and became a convert to Christianity!

Instead, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes and archers. So, to recap: he never played a sport, was shot with a ton of arrows and then beaten to death with clubs and bats, and the Church made him the patron saint of athletes and archers! Essentially, we made him the patron saint of people who brandish clubs, bats or bows. That means someone trying to shoot something with an arrow or hit something with a bat, may actually pray to Sebastian for help. Why would we do that to him? If I were Sebastian, I would never want to see an arrow, archer or bat again. That’s like making JFK the patron saint of sharpshooters, or Elvis the patron saint of bacon cheeseburgers.

We are coming upon a time when conglomerates push out the idea that Irish are drunks and always fighting. It’s on shirts, mugs, you name it, and it takes place annually in the name of a saint. If you want to get toasted while wearing green, so be it, but do remember it is a sacred day of culture to some. I am not Irish, but I am of Welsh descent, and cannot imagine if St. David’s Day was reserved for mockery and mischief by the dominant culture. I know Irish partake in St Patrick’s Day and it is a communal thing, and that’s fine, but the sale of the culture is what saddens me. Every year the products roll out, and they sell it to our children: teaching it is okay to offend cultures just as long as it’s part of the mainstream.

Can sin unsave the Christian?   One item that I feel I must make clear before answering this question is to make plain that neither I, nor anyone else can tell a man’s heart relationship with God. There is an intrinsic problem in answering this question, as the only basis the Bible gives us for judging one another is the fruit which we do or do not bear. The New Testament writers do assume, for the most part, that the life of faith does bear fruit, but the writers also seem to give much encouragement for saints to stay holy in their calling, and there are not a few instances where saints are scolded for allowing themselves to be pulled back into their former lives. Only God, who sees the hearts and motives of man can judge man; and that is as it should be. 

Before the Irish, no people had ever submitted to the Christian gospel who had not first submitted to Roman rule. The Irish were a fierce people. They had never bowed to the yoke of a foreign ruler. Why, then, did they yield to a bishop? One of the Patrick legends may give a clue. Patrick came upon two brothers whose quarrel over their inheritance had just turned into a swordfight. Moved by “pity of these unpitying men” (a most Patrician sentiment), Patrick froze the two brothers in mid-blow. Thus immobilized, the men had no choice but to listen to the gospel of peace as presented by the saint. Having heard his speech, the quarrelsome brothers “returned unto the mutual kindness of brotherly love,” received Patrick’s blessing, and together decided to build a church where once they had tried to kill one another.

That was the end of my adventure in Central America. By the lakeshore in Granada, Nicaragua, I decided to turn for home. I wondered what Cortes would have said if, when he set out in the wake of Columbus, he had foreseen the beach outside Granada. He knew in his bones of the glory to come, would he have known about its eclipse? A Church without the True Cross, unable to protect its buildings from earthquake or idolatry; the gold and silver mines exhausted; the children of the Conquest reduced to beggary, placing their trust in the redundant theories of a Victorian economist; the empire overwhelmed by its own pagan and monstrous child. What a fool time has made of Cortes and his pretensions. He should have turned back to Cuba, to his dice and his saints and his women, and left the Indians with the Gods they honour, against all the odds, to this day.

Let the nations be glad and sing for joy…. —Psalm 67:4 (KJV) My wife was poring over a map of Europe. “Look, Danny. My homeland is a tiny little country. I had no idea it was so small.” “I know, you could put maybe half a dozen Irelands inside the state of Texas.” It may be small, but Ireland has made a huge impression on the world. More than a dozen US presidents and some thirty-four million Americans trace their roots to Ireland, including my own auburn bride. Officially, Saint Patrick’s Day honors the missionary who came to Ireland about 1,600 years ago. There he started hundreds of churches and baptized thousands, thus raising the moral profile of Ireland. But most of his life is a mystery and forgotten. Unofficially, Saint Patrick’s Day is everybody’s opportunity to be Irish for a day, regardless of religion or nationality. By the simple act of wearing green, I can be lucky or bonny or practice a bit of blarney. In short, I can be happy for a day. There are many ways to celebrate the day. Some daring types dye their hair green or wear shamrock tattoos. Others march in parades or attend Irish festivals, where they dance an Irish jig or enjoy an Irish stew. More serious types demonstrate for green causes or go to spiritual retreats, where they pray for missionaries. Yes, I will wear green today, so I don’t get pinched. And I will listen to some fine Irish music, starting with my favorite, “Danny Boy.” I will also pray for some of my former students who are currently missionaries in Ireland. Most of all, I will try to be happy for the day. That’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? And if I can be happy for one day, why not every day? There is much to be happy about, God. Help me find a reason to sing with joy every day. —Daniel Schantz Digging Deeper: Ps 16:9; Is 55:12

He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the Earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France - as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not is his mother's belly. The world could go up in flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune... We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets... Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance nor waiting for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his hearty hardly beating - and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake had lived in the wide world outside.

A Prayer for Grace and Illumination Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You. Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervor. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness. Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will. Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You. Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company. Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You. Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I wish it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love. Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes, death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile! Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You. Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart. Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love. Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but, the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You! Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for. Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more. With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen. —Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

One eye-witness reported that: '...it seems more like the celebration of the orgies of Bacchus, than the memory of a pious saint, from the drunken quarrels and obscenities practised on these occasions. So little is there of devotion, or amendment of life or manners, that these places are frequently chosen for the scenes of pitched battles, fought with cudgels, by parties, not only of parishes, but of counties, set in formal array against each other, to revenge some real or supposed injury, and murders are not an unusual result of these meetings. It is hard to believe that many of those who took part in the fighting had originally gone in a spirit of pilgrimage to a holy well. But very often the two went together, at least in Ireland, and a seriously intended pilgrimage was often followed by boisterous and aggressive behaviour. Dr. Patrick Logan, who has made a modern study of Irish pilgrimages, commented: 'Pilgrims in any age are not noted for their piety, the Canterbury Tales make that clear, but anyone who has ever gone on a pilgrimage knows it is a memorable and enjoyable experience, something which is part of the nature of man. These days pilgrims may be called tourists.

That settles it,” said Mr. Trapwood. “We’re going back to the pension. We’re going to pack. We’re going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hellhole.” Mr. Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the São Gabriel Mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the color of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari River. There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys; there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of Saint Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent. “They’re good men, the Brothers,” a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner’s son. “They take in all sorts of strays--orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner’s lad might be, it’ll be them.” Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray. The Brothers’ mission was on a swampy part of the river and very unhealthy, but the Brothers thought only about God and helping their fellowmen. They welcomed Mr. Trapwood and Mr. Low and said they could look over the leper colony to see if they could find anyone who might turn out to be the boy they were looking for. “They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,” said Father Liam. “People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.” But the crows, turning green, thought there wouldn’t be much point. Even if there was a boy there the right age, Sir Aubrey probably wouldn’t think that a boy who was a leper could manage Westwood. Later a group of pilgrims arrived who had been walking on foot from the Andes and were on their way to a shrine on the Madeira River, and the Brothers knelt and washed their feet. “We know you’ll be proud to share the sleeping hut with our friends here,” they said to Mr. Low and Mr. Trapwood, and the crows spent the night on the floor with twelve snoring, grunting men--and woke to find two large and hungry-looking vultures squatting in the doorway. By the time they returned to Manaus the crows were beaten men. They didn’t care any longer about Taverner’s son or Sir Aubrey, or even the hundred-pound bonus they had lost. All they cared about was getting onto the Bishop and steaming away as fast as it could be done.

Bingo Junio-Julio-Agosto  Lord Voldemort (un libro que trate sobre la muerte): Un mosntruo viene a verme de Patrick Ness. Conor tiene que lidiar con el temor constante de que su madre muera a causa del cancer y es ahí cuando aparece el monstruo que le hace ver la realidad  Regulus Black (libro que el protagonista tenga un familia rara/malvada/numerosa): La tempestad de Shakespeare. Prospero es traicionado por su hermano y es mandando a una isla en el medio de la nada; Prospero jura venganza mediante sus poderes mágicos.  Barty Crouch Jr (libro que el/la protagonista participe en una secta o investigue sobre las mismas): Las chicas de Emma Cline. Evie se ve envuelta en una secta cuando es abandonada por su mejor amiga y su unica amiga en el mundo.  Fenrir Breyback (libro que tenga licántropos): Luna Nueva de Stephenie Meyer. Bella es abandonada por Edward, se acerca mas a jacob y descubre que el es un hombre lobo  Bellatrix Lestrange (libro en el que el romance tóxico sea lo principal) La selección de Kiera Cass. America Singer se ve envuelta en un triangulo amoroso entre el principe de Íllea, Maxon, y su amor de la ciudad, Aspen.  Draco Malfoy (libro que el/la protagonista sea desertor): Tres espejos; espada de Sebastián Vargas. Jian era un campesino que perdió al amor de su vida y se convierte en un pirata perseguido por el pueblo por ser desertor y huir de luchar en la guerra.  Lucius Malfoy (libro con puterio de ricos) Mansfield Park de Jane Auste. Fanny es adoptada por sus tios ricos y la llevan a vivir a Mansfield Park, ella se ve envuelta en todos los lios, complicaciones y preocupaciones de los ricos, donde cada acción tiene que ser friamente calculada  Petter Pettigrew (libro con animales como protagonistas): El principito de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. El principito, un hombrecito de traje azul y pelo rubio se hace amigo de un zorro que lo aconseja sobre la vida.  Marietta (libro en que el/la protagonista tenga una doble vida/vida oculta): Heartsong de T.J Klune. Robbie se encuentra en otra manada, con sueño recurrente sobre unos lobos corriendo... Con el paso del tiempo, descubre que la vida que esta viviendo no era su vida.

Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit, The Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton, and the incomparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offering superb insight into solitude, both its horror and its beauty, include The Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with further understanding of how solitude affects people include Social by Matthew D. Lieberman, Loneliness by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Cain, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offering astute ideas about aloneness are Cave in the Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, The Life of Saint Anthony by Saint Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), the verse of William Wordsworth, and the poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from the C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. The Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an invaluable resource—I spent weeks immersed in the site, though I did not qualify to become a member of the hermit-only chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fascinated by the stories of Japanese soldiers who continued fighting World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fascinating account.

Doctrine should come from the Bible and it should never be that we prove our doctrine from the Bible, but rather that the Bible compels us to adopt our beliefs. Our measure of whether we are doing this or not? Probably, as teachers of the saints, you might check to see where you are doing most of your reading. Is it in the latest book of the favorite creed? Or are you doing enough Bible reading to show it is the center of all your doctrine?

The sheer joy in the life of one saint during this festival is utterly inconceivable, but multiplying the millions of saints who will be sharing the same joy with each other, and perfectly, in ways we do not understand, through the Spirit, both sending and receiving our joy to our Groom, the Lord and Savior, must be the absolute expression of the divine. I have no doubt but that all of history will look back to this time, even as every generation of his faithful ones have longed for, and looked forward to this great event. History will meet prophecy, and will become one on that glorious day!

Wrong and injustice to the poor he resented as an injury to God.  His vehement love for the poor is illustrated by his “Epistle to Coroticus,” reproaching him with his cruelty, as well as by his denunciations of slavery, which piracy had introduced into parts of Ireland. 

Who wins when the saint stops growing? Who wins when the saint stops his fellowship? Who wins by keeping up to 40% of the church out of being active? Paul tells us that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices, but I think the evidence is clear, that sometimes we are ignorant. We think the battle is all about church, and it is not, it is all about you, and leading a victorious life in Christ. There is no other way given, except to be in regular community with believing brothers and sisters.

LES ERREURS DE TRADUCTION ONT LA VIE DURE ! Nombre de textes religieux ont fait l’objet de multiples traductions et sont donc soumis à autant de risques d’erreurs d’interprétation. Le récit de Genèse 2 avance que la femme fut créée de la côte du premier homme. Mais cette interprétation du texte découle de la traduction de l’hébreu tsêla qui ne signifie pas côte mais “côté” (comme dans “à côté”). Le mal sera fait, puisque beaucoup ont tendance à croire vrai tout ce qui est répété… Il en est de même pour l’épisode relatant le péché originel : Ève persuade Adam de goûter au fruit interdit de l’arbre de la connaissance du bien et du mal. Ce fruit n’est pas une pomme, comme les textes successifs l’avancent. Mais à force d’être répétée, cette erreur de traduction finira de convaincre que l’arbre planté dans le jardin de la Création est un pommier. L’erreur de saint Jérôme, traducteur des textes bibliques au Ve siècle, est d’avoir confondu le terme latin malum “pomme” avec le terme malus “mal”. En fait le pommier en question était sans doute un figuier.

This is what constitutes an “heroic age”: that a people subsisting stably on pasture and tillage, with a simple system of customary law and an already established social hierarchy, is provided with an opportunity to prey on a rich, highly organized and prestigious civilization.

The seven-plus centuries of organized torment originated in a letter from Pope Adrian IV in 1155, which empowered King Henry II to conquer Ireland and its “rude and savage people.” It was decreed that the rogue Irish Catholic Church, a mutt’s mash of Celtic, Druidic, Viking and Gaelic influences, had strayed too far from clerical authority, at a time when English monarchs still obeyed Rome. Legend alone was not enough to save it—that is, the legend of Patrick, a Roman citizen who came to Ireland in a fifth-century slave ship and then convinced many a Celt to worship a Jewish carpenter’s son. Patrick traveled with his own brewer; the saint’s ale may have been a more persuasive selling point for Christianity than the trinity symbol of the shamrock. There followed centuries of relative peace, the island a hive of learned monks, masterly stonemasons and tillers of the soil, while Europe fell to Teutonic plunder. The Vikings, after much pillaging, forced interbreeding, tower-toppling and occasional acts of civic improvement (they founded Dublin on the south bank of the Liffey), eventually succumbed to the island’s religion as well. They produced children who were red-haired and freckled, the Norse-Celts. But by the twelfth century, Ireland was out of line. Does it matter that this Adrian IV, the former Nicholas Breakspear, was history’s only English pope? Or that the language of the original papal bull, with all its authoritative aspersions on the character of the Irish, has never been authenticated? It did for 752 years.

The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground.

The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground. A spring of water bubbles forth, the baptism goes forward, and the blind priest receives sight when he washes his face with the water. What’s more, the priest discovers that he is literate at his first sight of letters: he reads the words of the baptismal service.

It seems the only sin Patrick could be talking about is homicide. Perhaps in a moment of rage or carelessness, the young Patrick impulsively killed one of the slaves who worked the family’s lands. He could get away with it: after all, he was the son of the lord of the manor. But as time went on—and he found himself in the position of slave, his heart changed by the love of God—the gravity of his crime dawned on him.

The druids, the priests of Ireland’s pre-Christian tradition, figure hugely in the Patrick legends, but we don’t know a great deal about them. It seems that an important role of the druid was to serve as a repository of the culture ’s lore and history. According to Caesar, they were also arbiters of justice. Their training, wrote Pomponius Mela, lasted up to twenty years and consisted of memorizing huge amounts of secret lore. They wrote none of their learning down, but passed it orally from druid to druid.9 According to Pliny the Elder, the word druid means “oak-knower,” but this was a false etymology. Still, it does seem likely that the religion of the druids was animistic and included some communication with and through the phenomena of the natural world. Classical writers, including Caesar, described human sacrifice as being part of the druids’ priestly duties. The classical writers aren’t always reliable on the subject of Celtic culture, but there is ample archaeological evidence of human sacrifice in the pre-Christian rituals of the British Isles.

Eugene Peterson speaks of the “God-dominated imagination” that developed in David as he spent his days and nights watching sheep on the Judean hillsides.19 It appears that something similar happened in Patrick. In the lush, green hills of western Ireland, in the towering clouds that rolled across the big sky, even in the most inclement of weather, Patrick sensed the presence of a Creator who hadn’t seemed very real or relevant or necessary in his earlier life of ease. For all its disadvantages, the shepherd’s life leaves plenty of time to think and pray, and Patrick used his time to great advantage. Far from wallowing in self-pity, Patrick celebrated his enslavement, the very shock he needed to bring him to his senses. Throughout his Confession, Patrick’s language is shot through with the confidence that, whatever his circumstances, God was doing good things in his life. He viewed his kidnapping and slavery as God’s direct work; this work, however, was not merely punitive but remedial, not evidence that God had forsaken him, but that God wished to draw Patrick to himself. So rather than growing bitter, Patrick allowed God’s chastisement to do its work in him. His enslavement, he believed, was a hard mercy, but a mercy nonetheless. From the very beginning of the Confession, we get a glimpse of Patrick’s indomitable joy. His tone echoed that of Paul, who wrote from prison,

59. And if at any time I managed anything of good for the sake of my God whom I love, I beg of him that he grant it to me to shed my blood for his name with proselytes and captives, even should I be left unburied, or even were my wretched body to be torn limb from limb by dogs or savage beasts, or were it to be devoured by the birds of the air, I think, most surely, were this to have happened to me, I had saved both my soul and my body. For beyond any doubt on that day we shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him and for him and in him.

For example, Patrick did not run the snakes out of Ireland. Writing two hundred years before Patrick’s time, the Greek geographer Solinus remarked that Ireland was free of snakes. There is no record of Patrick using the shamrock to teach the Irish about the Trinity. Neither did he have any dealings with leprechauns

A remarkable number of the Patrick legends are comic, portraying the saint as a man you would enjoy being around. Consider, by contrast, Patrick’s contemporary, Saint Augustine, with his towering intellect and moral and theological precision. You can’t help respecting the man, but you wouldn’t necessarily want him at your Christmas party.

It seems that Palladius had already made a name for himself as a culture warrior, taking a stand against the spread of the Pelagian heresy in Britain. Pelagius, for whom the heresy was named, was himself of British birth, though he had left for Rome by AD 390. He denied Original Sin and taught that human beings were perfectible, and his heresy was a very hot topic in Patrick’s era. In 429 Palladius, then a deacon, convinced Pope Celestine to send the bishop Germanus of Auxerre (the same Germanus who, according to tradition, trained Patrick) to put Britain back on the straight and narrow. According to Prosper, Germanus “routed the heretics and directed the Britons to the Catholic faith.

He was correct in saying that his academic shortcomings could be proven by the flavor of his writing. Latin experts point out errors and infelicities throughout Patrick’s writings, and even in translation there are places where it is clear that Patrick’s writing is a little clumsy.

R. P. C. Hanson speaks of Patrick as “acutely, perpetually, embarrassingly conscious of his lack of education.”12 It becomes almost equally embarrassing for the reader as Patrick continues: “So, consequently, today I feel ashamed and am mightily afraid to expose my ignorance, because, [not] eloquent, with a small vocabulary, I am unable to explain as the spirit is eager to do and as the soul and the mind indicate.”13 Now, at last, toward the end of that quotation, Patrick seems to have gotten his rhetorical legs. This was not only a matter of pride or class-consciousness. Patrick felt the frustration of a stutterer. He had so much going on inside—so much desire, so much heart—but his language just couldn’t keep up. That is where Patrick’s weakness became his strength. He testified to the works of God not because he was eloquent (and therefore worthy of praise), but because he couldn’t help it. He was “an epistle of Christ,” bringing salvation “to the ends of the earth,” and written on the hearts of his hearers, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.”14 The apostle Paul wrote similarly that God had sent him to preach the gospel— but “not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17). When he was not wallowing in self-loathing, Patrick realized that his very in-eloquence was what made his message compelling, for it made it clear that God had something to say. That is the meaning of his dream of the “learned words.

the saint told her that more tears were shed over prayers that were granted than ever were shed over prayers that were refused.

Patrick Jephson As the first and only private secretary to Diana during her life, Patrick Jephson was one of the closest people to the Princess throughout her international charity and diplomatic career. He is also a notable broadcaster and journalist and has contributed to many major British newspapers, including the Times, the Observer, and the Daily Mail. His writing credits include Shadows of a Princess and Portraits of a Princess: Travels with Diana, and several of his books have been international bestsellers. As time passes, she will join the likes of the Queen Mother, far above the reach of tabloid tittle-tattle and secure in her hard-won reputation for good works. But equally, let’s not artificially overpromote her saintly qualities or radiant beauty. She would be the first to scoff at the idea that she was more virtuous than any other fallible human being…and she was always quick to complain about the size of her nose or the clumsiness of her feet.

Oisin had been carried away to the Land of Youth, under the western ocean. Both of them return to their mortal existence, and to Ireland, when Patrick is in the land, winning it from Crom Cruach to Christ. Patrick meets and converts each of them. They attach themselves to his company, and travel Ireland with him. When the Saint is wearied from much travelling and work, or, as often happens, from the perversity of the people he has to deal with, Oisin or Caoilte refresh and beguile him with many a sweet tale of the Fian — all of which, says the tradition, the pleased Patrick had his scribe Breogan write down and preserve for posterity. These tales make the Agallam na Seanorach. The

He told himself that he was a clown clean through. Every time a fly ball had been hit to him with men on the bases, he'd muffed it. Hoping for one thing, then another, and when he did get his chances -- foul ball. Girls, too. He'd never held one. Twice Lucy had given him the cold shoulder. That girl he'd knelt next to at Christmas Mass in Saint Patrick's once -- cold shoulder. Never got beyond wishing with her. Now Catherine. Football. He'd wanted to be a star high-school quarterback and he'd not had the guts to stay in school. Fighting. His kid brother had even cleaned him up. In the war when he'd tried to enlist, a leather-necked sergeant had laughed at him. He was just an all-around no soap guy.

When I started doing community organizing in Boston's neighborhoods, working on all the issues that had affected my family - violence, poverty, guns - I realized that the sooner the Irish of Southie came to better understand their history as an "inferior race" by English standards and learned what it meant to be Irish beyond the happy-go-lucky tunes and bloody fistfights of Saint Patrick's Day, the sooner they would acknowledge Southie's poverty and its manipulation by gangsters and politicians. And maybe even work with black people in neighboring Roxbury on common issues, like the fact that both neighborhoods had been declared "death zones" by sociologists. I also became obsessed with the connection between the work I was doing and personal recovery from trauma, as I got close to a number of mothers whose kids had been murdered in the city.

The universal Church touched every corner of western Europe and practically all aspects of life from politics to market behavior, but it was not a monolithic institution. Very much the opposite: Because it channeled and encompassed practically all spiritual life, the Church, by necessity, had to be a big tent. It contained multitudes: poor, illiterate priests in isolated rural parishes with secret wives and broods of children, who rarely saw their uninterested parishioners; charismatic Dominican preachers capable of attracting crowds of thousands in towns and cities; places like the brand-new castle church of Wittenberg, built in Renaissance style and packed with holy relics in expensive gilded cases; towering Gothic cathedrals, already centuries old, dominating the skylines of the continent’s prosperous urban centers and serving as headquarters for rich, powerful bishops who pulled political strings from London to Leipzig; leaky-roofed monasteries, housed by a few elderly monks in threadbare robes begging for donations to fix a tumbledown refectory; university theologians steeped in the brutally dense works of Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham who spent their time teaching students and arguing about scholastic philosophy; devout laywomen, reading books of hours in the privacy of their prosperous homes; sword-swinging Hospitaller Knights, soldier-monks in armor and black habits, beheading Muslim sailors on the decks of galleys under a blue Mediterranean sky. The Church was all of these things: corrupt and saintly, worldly and mystical, impossibly wealthy and desperately impoverished.

Gifts, Brother Patrick,” he says again. “Because of what they can teach us.

Surely man has free will, and there are famous stories of humans persisting in and strengthening their faith all alone. Saint Patrick was a slave left alone in a field with sheep in pagan Ireland as a boy, and he prayed without ceasing until he could escape—eventually returning as a bishop and a missionary. So we shouldn’t deny people individual agency by saying their environment determined their outcome. Yet we know that environment helps determine our outcomes. That’s why parents work hard to find the right school and community in which to raise their children. If people thought environment didn’t help determine outcomes, they wouldn’t expend so much time and money to obtain a great environment—family, school, neighborhood—for their children. They’d just say, 'Hey, kid, make good decisions.

Armando prepared like they were going to war, armed with corned beef and Guinness stew. He barked out orders to the kitchen staff as they sweated and chopped. The whole restaurant smelled of coriander and cloves and oranges as Armando made his signature orange whiskey glaze for the top of the corned beef. It was the perfect sweetness to balance out the salty meat. Once you had Armando's corned beef, you didn't want it any other way.

They reached the bottom and the instant Yuri’s boots hit the floor, he heard a baby cry out from the darkness. His skin prickled. “What the fuck was that?

I climbed out of the car, and before I turned back, I waited for it to disappear over by Port-Royal. Truth be told, I didn’t actually live in Val-de-Grâce, but a bit farther down in a building at 85, boulevard Saint-Michel, where I had miraculously found a room when I first arrived in Paris. From the window, I could see the dark façade of my school. That night, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that monumental façade or from the great stone stairs of the entrance. What would they think if they found out I took those steps almost every day and was a student at the École Supérieure des Mines?

Unruly Scots were also packed off to Barbados in the early days, and the numbers of the original Redlegs or, as they are alternately styled, the Mean Whites, were steadily augmented by the deportation of convicts from England to the West Indies, who lived here in the same loathsome circumstances as the slaves, and when their sentences had expired, often settled here. It is significant of the gulf that yawns between them and the other white islanders that even in this colony where a white complexion is considered to be of inestimable and intrinsic merit, they seldom rise in the world, or play, as the Negroes do, a rôle in island politics. These pale, Nordic people, standing barefoot in the dust with loads of sugar-cane on their heads and gazing listlessly as the trim limousines go bowling past, are pathetic and moving figures, and their aspect has none of the cheerfulness of the inhabitants of the Saints or of the pleasant solidity of the whites of the Guadeloupean hinterland. They look like poor devils and nothing else.

Meditation PRAYER OF SAINT PATRICK I arise today Through the strength of heaven; Light of the sun, Splendor of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of the wind, Depth of the sea, Stability of the earth, Firmness of the rock. I arise today Through God’s strength to pilot me; God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, I arise today Through the mighty strength Of the Lord of creation.1

Spanish word sendereando, for hiking, is compact and pretty (sendero is path), but the wisest phrase for this activity is the Latin solvitur ambulando (“it is solved by walking”), attributed to Saint Augustine. The phrase was mentioned by the long-distance walker Patrick Leigh-Fermor to Bruce Chatwin. “Hearing it, immediately Bruce whipped out his notebook,” Chatwin’s biographer wrote. Walking to ease the mind is also an objective of the pilgrim. There is a spiritual dimension too: the walk itself is part of a process of purification. Walking is the age-old form of travel, the most fundamental, perhaps the most revealing.

I ask some of you here today . . . you have prestige, you have money; but you haven't found inward peace and happiness and security in your own life-why? You have everything to make a person happy, according to the textbooks, but you haven't found the inward peace you are looking for. Why? Because you have forgotten one thing: you have forgotten you are also a soul created in the image of Almighty God, and that soul, as Saint Augustine said long ago, is restless until it rests in God.

The Irish loved their cabbage. The Germans pickled their cabbage and the Italians made spaghetti sauce and listed to the opera.

Chicago honors a saint: Patrick. But unlike the San Giovanni Festival honoring John the Baptist, St. Patrick’s Day is less about the saint, and more about dyeing everything green--hair, beer, the Chicago River--watching the parade take over the city, and getting wasted. You even get physically assaulted if you don’t wear something green the entire day. You’re supposed to just get pinched, but some of the guys at school take it a little too far. And if you forget to wear green, you can’t get by with the excuse that your underwear is green, because they’re not shy about asking for proof.

My “boyfriend” at the time (let’s call him Mike) was an emotionally withholding, conventionally attractive jock whose sole metric for expressing affection was the number of hours he spent sitting platonically next to me in coffee shops and bars without ever, ever touching me. To be fair, by that metric he liked me a lot. Despite having nearly nothing in common (his top interests included cross-country running, fantasy cross-country running [he invented it], New England the place, New England the idea, and going outside on Saint Patrick’s Day; mine were candy, naps, hugging, and wizards), we spent a staggering amount of time together—I suppose because we were both lonely and smart, and, on my part, because he was the first human I’d ever met who was interested in touching my butt without keeping me sequestered in a moldy basement, and I was going to hold this relationship together if it killed me. Mike had only been in “official” relationships with thin women, but all his friends teased him for perpetually hooking up with fat chicks. Every few months he would get wasted and hold my hand, or tell me I was beautiful, and the first time I tried to leave him, he followed me home and said he loved me, weeping, on my doorstep. The next day, I told him I loved him, too, and it was true for both of us, probably, but it was a shallow, watery love—born of repetition and resignation. It condensed on us like dew, only because we waited long enough. But “I have grown accustomed to you because I have no one else” is not the same as “Please tell me more about your thoughts on the upcoming NESCAC cross-country season, my king.

aureole of Saint Patrick banishing snakes,

There is evidence to support claims that 962 years prior to Columbus setting foot in the Bahamas, Saint Brendan, an Irish monastic priest known as “Saint Brendan the Navigator,” looked for the “Isle of the Blessed.” What island he found has been lost to history and is still unknown; however, legend names it “Saint Brendan’s Island.” Many believe that in his journeys across the Atlantic Ocean he actually landed in America in 1150, or 342 years prior to Columbus’ discovery.” Note: Saint Patrick ’s Day was the day of my parent’s anniversary.

There’s no distinction here between what a saint would describe and a Patrick who discovers love for the first time. He and Fran didn’t last as a couple beyond a year. Like everyone who has passed through the stage of infatuation, they had ego needs that weren’t the same. Settling down to love while negotiating the demands of “I, me, and mine” poses its own challenges. But Patrick learned the most valuable lesson of his life, that he was lovable and, along with this, that he could love.

Latter-day Saints must find a way not simply to coexist with but to truly embrace the diversity that already exists within the family of God. To that end, believing Mormons must come to understand that disbelief is possible. People can have genuine reasons for opting out of the church without being dissolute sinners (at least, not any worse than the rest of us). Disbelievers can be good, solid people who love their spouse and children and live ethical, productive, meaningful lives. At the same time, disbelievers must understand that educated, informed, and sincere people can believe in the reality of Joseph Smith's revelations, the truth of the Book of Mormon, and the divine inspiration behind the church. They are not covering up secret doubts nor are they victims of false consciousness when they bear testimony. There are informed people who genuinely believe in and belong to the church. I am one of them.

On Saint Patrick's Day, it is customary to wear shamrocks, green clothing or green accessories. Saint Patrick is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish.[34][35] This story first appears in writing in 1726, though it may be older. In pagan Ireland, three was a significant number and the Irish had many triple deities, which may have aided St Patrick in his evangelisation efforts.[36][37] Roger Homan writes, "We can perhaps see St Patrick drawing upon the visual concept of the triskele when he uses the shamrock to explain the Trinity