The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-03-21
FIRST EASTER
ST. PATRICK kINDLED THE PAS
CHAL FIRE ON THE HILL OF
SLANE AND DEDICATED IRE
LAND TO CATHOLICISM FOR
EVER.

One of the fixed and beautiful scenes
from old time is the kindling of the
Paschal fire by ST. Patrick, when with
his clergy before him he first kept
Easter in sight of Tara, the High
King Laeghaire and his wild men of
war ranged over against the little
band of missionaries, writes William
Canon Barry, D. D. That company in
their white raiment, chanting the Allie
lula beneath clear sky, at the en-
trance to the royal forts, spring all
round them in the fair pastures of
Meath, was bringing to chieftain and
druid, to the clans and the nation OF
Ireland, Faith which they made their
own, henceforth forever. 1t became a
vision hanging over hill and rath, upon
the cleaning waters Of the lakes, in
strange, lovely, or bleak solitudes,
wherever the recluse prayed or the
people gathered, like a second sky,
which was Gods home, the true Fairy
land, the country of everlasting youth.
Such an enchantment did st. Patrick's
hallowed fire evoke, while it quenched
the heather balefires and announced
the Resurrection.
No wonder that we see those chant
ing clerics, and note the tinkling of
their Easter bells, and listen devoutly
as the great Apostle lifts his voice,
calling on the Trinity Eat Tara today,
in this solemn hour" folding himself
and all Erin with him in the arms of
Christ. The dedication prayer was
heard; Ireland will be Catholic until
the Judgment is set. Patrick, Bride,
Columbkille, Columbanus-what heroic
names! The missionary and the mar
tyr people-how they have spread over
the world, from the Scottish Isles to
Australia, from the shrine of Saint
Cataldus in Southern Italy to San
Francisco, to Vancouver, and back
again through Canada to the Atlantic.
They build churches wherever they go,
and fill them. Priests and Bishops,
monks and nuns and schoolmasters,
with Irish names, are found in all the
new colonies that Europe sends out.
Tara was the birthplace, Easter-tide
the hour when Catholic people after
Gods own heart sprang from the
waters of baptism, signed with it's en-
blem of the Trinity, to live through a
romantic, tragic story, as the Chill
dren of the West. Ireland, the foster
mother of them, was to be the Isle of
Saints; Tara, "the fort of poets and
learned men," welcomed without blood
shed these angels of peace; but this
ancient country of the Gaels did not
give up it's language, laws, legends,
songs, or freedom to the Roman en-
pire. 1t lay outside the tramplings of
the Barbarians. 1t became the sane
tuary to which learning fed when a
deluge from the North poured down
upon Gaul and Italy. And as it never
would submit to Pagan Rome; as it
flung the Dane off its neck at Clontarf,
so now, at the end of seven hundred
and forty years, it is cutting itself
loose from unbelieving or Protestant
England.
our irish BreaStpIaCe.
The grand old Tara hymn of ST..
Patrick is yet our sacred coat of mail,
wrapped about our hearts. We will
be Catholic in faith, classic in culture,
alive to every breath of the spirit that
brings wisdom. But we refuse to for
get our fairy lore, to be ground in the
~,oi11 10 %or,I, olovorv IN loco orr fool.
ing for the past, to talk the poor
downfallen language of commercial
age that never had any youth. No one
is likely to say of us that we do not
understand what is meant by wit, or
humor, or sarcasm, or the realities of
things. Our wit, perhaps, not less than
our faith, kept us from utter destruc-
ton when the EliZabethan tempest
broke over us, when James I planted
his settlers in Ulster upon the graves
Of multitudes, when Cromwell, and
William Of Orange and century of
Penal Laws would have made an end
of us. Surely the iron entered into
our soul; but we turned its edge with
a laugh.
We have even touched with some
radiance from our own joy the too
melancholy English temper; we gave
our sullen masters Goldsmith and
Sheridan and Tom Moore; nay, if you
will, Swift and Congreve learned their
pleasanter ways in the land where
they grew up. If, then, we still cling
~ n
change it for hard mercenary prose,
and to barter the Catholic religion for
an unbelief as dull as it is arrogant,
let critical persons beware of charg-
ing upon a vein of sentimental dream
ing the Irish conviction that faith in
God is everlastingly true, and the
philosophy which disowns or doubts
of heaven a lie, be it never so plausi-
bly, tricked out in sophisms. The Irish
Catholic has proved by three centuries
Of oppression vanquished that he
knows how to live where unbelievers
would die He wears, say again, st.
Patrick's enchanted armor. He has
overcome the English Protestant as
the Spaniard, his far-away kinsman,
overcame the Moor.
Faith and Freedom.
And it is the day of his Resurrec-
ton. Providence watching through
the many dolorous ages, now says to
him in the hearing of all nations,
Thou shalt live and not die" Live at
home and abroad, a people with its
~aaaa..-. rrnun aa+l,n fort nf r,nntS and