Letter from the Pastor
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March 15, 2024Happy St. Patrick’s Day! But we don’t celebrate it today, in church. That’s tomorrow! Confused? Don’t be. Since we are in the holy season of Lent, no feast day takes precedence over the Sundays in Lent. Any saint’s day is transferred to the next available date. So, our dear St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland and the Archdiocese of New York is transferred to Monday, March 18th. The very next day, is March 19th, the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, the Patron Saint of the Universal Church. Two solemn feasts in a row, two great saints to model our lives.
In 405 AD, in a small village in modern day England, a group of fierce Irish warriors, with long braided hair, from a land ‘beyond civilization’ as the Romans called Ireland, plundered Britannia and took male slaves. One of the slaves was a 16 year-old boy named Maewyn Succat.
In the year 405 AD Maewyn Succat woke up a free teenager without a care in the world. By the end of that day, he was bound, tied together with as many as twenty women and children, forced onto a boat, and put to sail on the frigid Irish Sea. He was forcefully taken from his family at the age of 16. Can you imagine the anguish of his poor mother when she found out what happened to him? He was violently taken and sold into slavery and made to freeze in the wet, unforgiving land surrounded by nothing but sheep and cruelty. There were no friendly faces, no comfort, and no consolation, only tears. It was in this darkness, that Maewyn found God. He escaped, became a priest, then a bishop, and then he was called to go back to the people who enslaved him. He took the name of Patrick, or Patricius, meaning "well-born" in Latin, only after he became a priest.
It is St. Patrick’s ‘yes’ to God’s call, it is Patrick’s Catholic faith that we are supposed to be celebrating on St. Patrick’s Day. We should never lose sight of why we celebrate the day; it’s not Irish culture or the stereotypes of the Irish, it is the Saint.On Tuesday, March 19th is the feast day of St. Joseph; it is believed to be St. Joseph’s birthday.
The earliest traces of public recognition of the sanctity of St. Joseph are to be found early in the Eastern Church by the Coptic Catholics. A great church was erected at Bethlehem by St. Helena. The first feast was known as "Joseph the Carpenter."
In the Western Church we find in 1129, for the first time, a church dedicated to his honor in Bologna. From the 15th century onward the devotion acquired greater and greater popularity even to the 19th century by adding the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1st, the Communist’s May Day.
St. Joseph is the Patron Saint of the Universal Church; we look to him to protect us as we journey from this land of our exile to heaven. We should pray to him for a happy death. Like St. Joseph, we need not say a word, just live out our faith, which speaks more loudly than any words could ever say.
