If Roman records can be relied upon, St Patrick was sent to Ireland in the year 431. As the journey was hard, we usually suppose that he didn’t arrive until the following year. If the memories of 17th-century friars can be relied upon, these are the source of every other date right up to the Middle Ages. Seven centuries of warring kings and artistic monasticism preceded Ireland’s eventual division into dioceses and parishes like the rest of the Christian world. There was something very different here. For centuries we have apologised and pretended that things were always more or less as they are now. In truth, we know very little about the people Patrick encountered other than by how the Anglo-Normans depicted them.
By all accounts, Patrick had a demanding mission. Yet the rigorous parts were the cold and the tiredness.
The story of Ireland’s acceptance of Christianity has no violence or martyrs in it. Conversion was easy. Maybe the Gaelic Celts already believed in redemptive death or self-sacrifice? The bog-bodies hint that this just might be true.
As the Christian World prepares for Holy Week, the prophet Jeremiah proclaims a time when neighbour will no longer teach the ways of the Lord to neighbour.
It will be a time when we all know the Lord, the least of us no less than the greatest.
He hopes for a time when we can all know goodness without needing a Patrick to tell us, a time of faith when all of us can have the confidence to believe. Crucifying prophets on hilltops or strangling your son in the bog, humanity leans towards a strange belief. The greater the value of the thing you slaughter the better the redemption it will bring.
This is a belief that affects believers and non-believers alike; if I hurt myself something good will have to come out of it. Sometimes it might be true, although not very often.
Apart from the bodies that we found in the bogs we have always suspected that the bonfires had a macabre twist to them too.
Add a tale of Saint Columba burying Saint Odhrán (Otteran) alive so that his chapel would not fall down and the story of Calvary fits into a pattern of common human brutality.
And here lies the genius of Christianity – for a people intent on destruction as a means to a good end, we sacrificed God. The ultimate sacrifice has been done and no suffering you can inflict can trump its magnitude.
Remember that in bread and wine and bring your son home from the bog unstrangled and alive. With such an offer, it is small wonder that the Gael embraced this new faith so effortlessly.
Year on year we go back to these stories. Even though the last sacrifice has been made suffering retains its appeal as a refiner. We believe our ancestors embraced this get-out-of-jail-free card with enthusiasm but their ancestors return to the old ways. There is still a common belief that damaging others can bring a greater good. Collateral damage is not pointless death. There are also many people who sadly believe that harming themselves will similarly make things better.
AD 432 may be a fuzzy date but 2018 is real. Wouldn’t it be good to welcome Patrick’s suggestion that we find less destructive ways of achieving good, as cheerfully as our ancestors did? It would make Jeremiah’s dream come true.