John Doan: Music
Farewell
"After I had arrived in Erie, I found myself pasturing flocks daily, and I prayed a number of times each day. More and more the love and fear of God came to me, and faith grew and my spirit was exercised, until I was praying up to a hundred times every day - and in the night nearly as often. So that I would even remain in the woods and on the mountain in snow, frost, and rain, waking to pray before first light. And I felt no ill effect, nor was I in any way sluggish - because, as I now realize, the Spirit was seething within me." St. Patrick (from his Confession)After climbing to a vista on the windwiped rocks above Killala Bay, County Mayo, I looked out at fields, bogs, and lines of stone that stretched out in the distance below. I wondered if this could be the setting of that gentle surrender a young Patrick made as a boy while withstanding the fierce winds of the spirit. Crisscrossing the countryside throughout the British Isles are the remains of walls and massive strongholds built to hold back invaders from the sea. In the early fifth century, Roman troops abandoned the island of Britain, the farthest outpost of their empire, leaving it vulnerable to raids from the Saxons, Angles (who gave their name to England), and the Celts of Eire. There, in the fortified town of Banna Venta Berniae (probably near Carlisle) lived a young boy Patricius, his father Calpornius, and his grandfather Potitus, a Catholic priest. In the year 401 AD, at the age of sixteen, Patrici us was captured and hauled as slave cargo across the Irish Sea, where he was purchased by a petty Chieftain named Miliucc, ruler of some hills on this western shore in County Mayo. The enslaved boy worked as a shepard for six years in quiet isolation, exposed to the harshness of the natural world, while pondering the one that laid just beyond. During this time, to his family, his youth, and his hope of worldly gain, he bid farewell. The Journey Home "... one night, in my sleep, I heard a voice saying to me: "It is good that you fast, who will go soon to your homeland. And again, after a short space of time I heard this pronouncement: "Look! Your ship is ready." St. Patrick (from his Confessio) After hearing these words in a dream, Patrick hiked away from the rugged hillside pastures where he had tended his owner's sheep for six years and began a new life as visionary and holy man. He "travelled with the aid of God's power" for two hundred miles through unknown lands, undetected as a run-away slave. At a inlet to the sea on the east side of the island somewhere near Wexford, he approached a ship's crew, but angered the captain by refusing to participate in their pagan initiation rite ("I refused, for fear of God, to suck their nipples. Nevertheless I hoped that some of them would come to faith in Jesus Christ.") Patrick turned his back to them and began to pray as he walked away. "Before the prayer was finished, I heard one of them, who shouted loudly after me: 'Come quickly; these men are calling you.'" After several years of wandering and performing miracles, he made his way back to his family i n Britain. He was warmly welcomed, but he soon had a vision in which a man from Eire delivered a letter with the message, "The Voice of the Irish...They cried out, as with one voice, 'We Appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.'" When Patrick realized that this inner voice was guidance from Christ, he willingly returned to Eire to tend the flock of his new Master. And so began the true journey home.