St Patrick's Day 2006 finds Ireland still on the cusp of unprecedented prosperity, open as never before to the wider world and yet with an uncertain sense of its spiritual and human identity. The national holiday is a time for celebration, jollity and play, and these will be expressed all around the country and in many other lands today and over the weekend.
Their sheer variety across public parades, religious events, sporting fixtures and cultural exuberance is impressive indeed. Their international resonance might be envied by larger states lacking Ireland's global outreach - a piece of branding eminently appropriate for an age of globalisation.
But there are also growing worries about excessive drinking, cultural vacuity and spiritual impoverishment in this outpouring of national identity. These are persistent themes of commentary and debate about Ireland's current state of being and should be taken seriously on a day devoted to its self-expression. Advertisements in this newspaper and other media advise us to drink alcohol sensibly and not to spoil a happy day. But accumulating evidence over recent years of public drunkenness and random violence in the later stages of the national holiday are linked up in Dublin on this occasion with a fear that the rioting and looting seen in the capital three weeks ago might be repeated.
Cultural standards are a subjective affair and it is silly to expect the celebrations to reach a consistent level above and beyond the commercial and playful reality they are pitched at. But the relevant themes of modernity and diversity set out over the last decade could do with another renewal. The point applies all the more within a much more multicultural Ireland. Beyond it, some 70 million people around the world identify directly or indirectly with us, and many more millions are made aware of our presence among them. Unless contact is kept up with them, and continually renewed, they will wither. This is sufficient reason to welcome official Ireland's dispersal around the world this week. These contacts are repaid throughout the rest of the year. The various efforts made to reinforce relations with Irish communities abroad this week are welcome and necessary.
Spiritual impoverishment is also a matter of subjective judgment - and is not confined to the religious domain. Formal religious observance is in decline in Ireland compared to its previous oppressively high levels. But the picture is varied and open to renewal - including in the new immigrant communities now living among us. St Patrick's enduring and universal appeal has a broad scope and a deep historical experience to draw upon. Coming from late Roman Britain to Ireland as a boy-slave to tend swine on the slopes of Slemish, he returned later as a bishop who showed a masterful ability to marry older Celtic and druidic religious practices with the new Christianity. That theme of renewal and re-examination is worth remembering this weekend in a completely different Ireland.