Wednesday, March 17, 2004

The Feast of St. Patrick, Bishop, Apostle of Ireland
is today. There is information on him here.
"I cannot forget how it was from Rome that the glorious St. Patrick was sent to Ireland, and did a work so great that he could not have a successor in it, the sanctity and learning and zeal and charity which followed on his death being but the result of the one impulse which he gave. I cannot forget how, in no long time, under the fostering breath of the Vicar of Christ, a country of heathen superstitions became the very wonder and asylum of all people,—the wonder by reason of its knowledge, sacred and profane, and the asylum of religion, literature and science, when chased away from the continent by the barbarian invaders. I recollect its hospitality, freely accorded to the pilgrim; its volumes munificently presented to the foreign student; and the prayers, the blessings, the holy rites, the solemn chants, which sanctified the while both giver and receiver."- Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., The Idea of a University


It is also the feast of St. Joseph of Arimathea, who gave the Lord his own tomb, and St. Jan Sarkander, who was martyred for refusing to break the seal of the confessional.

Finally, it is the feast of St. Getrude of Nivelles, who, I am happy to say, is invoked against the fear of rats.

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