大象传媒

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Jonathan Rea

SCRIPT

Good morning and happy St Patrick鈥檚 Day.

Just for today, the whole world is invited to be honorary Irish. So don your leprechaun hat, grab a green drink. and I鈥檒l tell you a thing or two about Patrick.

The truth is, he was probably born in England. He wasn鈥檛 the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland. There were no snakes in Ireland for him to drive away. He didn鈥檛 teach theology using a shamrock and he wasn鈥檛 canonised as a saint.

But he lived in the 5th century, and as a teenager, he was abducted and sold as a slave to an Irish Chieftain. While in Ireland, he had a life-changing spiritual experience, so much so that after escaping to go back home, he felt called by God to return and share the Gospel with the Irish.

From his writings I imagine that he would have been horrified by the idea of a day in his honour. We treat Patrick as though his identity is synonymous with Ireland.
But he wanted his identity to be synonymous with Christ.

We tend to identify ourselves by age, ethnicity, sexuality, wealth, politics, job or nationality.
But Patrick taught us to go after a different kind of identity where we invite the full power of Christ to live in us, so that when people look at us, they think of Christ in every facet of our being.

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 everyone 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.

Amen

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