In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul told us to put on the armor of God (6:10-20). Saint Patrick, whose feast we celebrate today, sublimated beneath the celebration of Passion Week (on the old Roman rite calendar), gave us a beautiful prayer called his Lorica, the Latin word for breastplate. His prayer is indeed a fitting spiritual breastplate, for it is putting on the power of God. There is no greater power than Christ. Let us place Him today then upon us, praying with Saint Patrick through an invocation of the Holy Trinity.
Seven years ago, I shared a bit of that prayer through the version in my hymnal and reflected upon how this prayer was written in imitation of the invocations of the druids: In Honor of Saint Patrick. Today I want to share with you all the verses to the best of my ability, sung for you as a prayer for His protection upon you.
Perhaps on this feast day of Saint Patrick who converted the pagans in Ireland it is fitting to talk about the paganism in our own hearts. We tend to think of paganism as a thing of the past, but often we incorporate it subtly into our spiritual lives without realizing it.
To speak in general terms, the pagans saw the gods as beings to appease. They spoke of submitting to the will of the gods when circumstances turned against them. They gave the gods what was demanded of them and begged for only what they absolutely needed, making sacrifices to obtain it. They tried not to make the gods angry at them. They had their favorite gods and their favorite rituals. Yet even when they kept statues of household gods and burned incense to them, they never really wanted the gods to be part of their daily lives.
Don't we often act the same way with God? We try to appease Him. We speak of accepting His will when things don't go our way. We try to fulfill His demands and not to ask Him for too much and try to bribe Him to say yes. We try not to make Him angry at us. We have our favorite prayers and devotions. Yet we don't really want Him to be part of our daily lives and ask us to change our lives and convert our hearts.
We don't speak to God heart to heart as to our dearest friend. We scarcely even know how to talk to Him at all.
One of the great examples of prayer is Abraham. Think of him beseeching the Lord not to destroy Sodom. He started by asking Him to spare the city from destruction if there were only fifty righteous men. When the Lord agreed, Abraham talked Him down to forty-five and then forty and then thirty and then twenty. Finally, he asked for the city to be spared even if there were only ten righteous men within its walls.
Yet in the end his prayer was in vain. There were not even ten righteous men and Sodom was destroyed.
So what do we learn?
God's will was done as it would have been if Abraham had said nothing. So do we just say: "Stupid Abraham, you should have just accepted God's will in the beginning because He always knows what He is doing?"
No. Of course not.
We respect Abraham's dialogue with God if for no other reason than that God Himself respected it. He could have told Abraham it was futile to bargain for He knew already that there were not enough righteous men to warrant saving the city. Yet instead He allowed Abraham to continue asking. By doing so, He confirmed Abraham in his prayer—a prayer that came from a heart moved with love for others and a heart that loved his Lord and would accept His will however it came.
Do we have that same courage? Don't we rather shy away from asking God too intensely for what we want lest it not be His will?
Let us not be afraid to enter into that dialogue with Him, to ask Him for whatever we need, trusting that He will provide according to His far-seeing wisdom. For if we avoid that conversation with our Beloved Lord, on whom do we rely? Merely upon our own strength? And is not that precisely what the pagans did?
As we journey through the desert of Lent, let us dare ask Him to break our pagan hearts and to give us hearts soft and docile to His voice and leading.
At Mass yesterday, Father mentioned that the most important part of the reading about Jacob's son Joseph and his brothers had been left out. That part, he said, was about how Joseph got lost going out to his brothers and a man in a field directed him. According to tradition, the "man" who directed him was the archangel Gabriel.
He used that story to illustrate how God sometimes directs us to suffering. After all, Joseph was stripped of his wonderful coat, thrown in the cistern, and then sold to Egyptian traders; he must have been wondering what God was doing to him. Saint Patrick suffered similarly. Yet think of all the good that came from that God-directed suffering. Joseph was able to save his family from dying of famine. Saint Patrick converted Ireland. In our own lives, we look for ways to avoid suffering. It is part of our culture. Hence it is nearly inescapable that we should imbibe that perspective even without consciously giving in to it, especially since this view seems to be inherently rooted in our fallen human nature. So when it comes to the spiritual life, we approach it in the same way. We expect God to send us messengers pointing us to glory and good things, even in this life. Sometimes God sends messengers who lead us to suffering instead. This experience may cause us to doubt our faith, or to doubt the goodness of God, but if we look to the example of Joseph and of Saint Patrick it may help us to remember that God sees all and has a greater plan in allowing us to experience that suffering. In essence, we must united ourselves with the Divine Will, as Father said: we must abandon ourselves to Divine Providence. The more ways we have of helping our intellect to understand the ways of Divine Providence, the more I think we will find ourselves able to make the surrender of the heart that it requires. Even though ultimately our minds may stand in our way of making that leap of faith, hopefully our knowledge shall rather aid us in preparing to make that absolute surrender of ourselves, recklessly abandoning ourselves to the God who knows all things.
The words are beautiful enough they need no pondering attached to them, but I will say simply that he knew the power of heaven and earth. Written in the style of the druid's incantations for protection, the song he wrote binds the power of Christ, the power that Christ has given to us. Here it is in full:
I bind unto myself today The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same The Three in One and One in Three.
I bind this today to me forever By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation; His baptism in Jordan river, His death on Cross for my salvation; His bursting from the spicèd tomb, His riding up the heavenly way, His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.
I bind unto myself the power Of the great love of cherubim; The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour, The service of the seraphim, Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word, The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls, All good deeds done unto the Lord And purity of virgin souls.
I bind unto myself today The virtues of the star lit heaven, The glorious sun’s life giving ray, The whiteness of the moon at even, The flashing of the lightning free, The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks, The stable earth, the deep salt sea Around the old eternal rocks.
I bind unto myself today The power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward; The word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.
Against the demon snares of sin, The vice that gives temptation force, The natural lusts that war within, The hostile men that mar my course; Or few or many, far or nigh, In every place and in all hours, Against their fierce hostility I bind to me these holy powers.
Against all Satan’s spells and wiles, Against false words of heresy, Against the knowledge that defiles, Against the heart’s idolatry, Against the wizard’s evil craft, Against the death wound and the burning, The choking wave, the poisoned shaft, Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I bind unto myself the Name, The strong Name of the Trinity, By invocation of the same, The Three in One and One in Three. By Whom all nature hath creation, Eternal Father, Spirit, Word: Praise to the Lord of my salvation, Salvation is of Christ the Lord.
