Homily for Solemnity of St. Patrick

Homily for 
the Solemnity of St. Patrick

March 17, 2026
Collect
Matt 28: 16-20
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

(at OL of the Valley
Orange, N.J.)

God chose St. Patrick to preach his glory to the Irish.  We give God glory for that as we pray to share in the divine glory because we’re Christians and, by God’s gift, continue Patrick’s mission of proclaiming God’s wondrous deeds to all (Collect).

Patrick’s story itself is wondrous—how God brought him to Ireland, guided his escape, and brought him back to the Irish; how God used him to win them, bringing more than a year of favor from the Lord (Is 61:2); how God enabled him to forgive both those who’d enslaved him and a false friend who later grievously betrayed him; and how God planted the faith so deeply in Ireland that Patrick’s spiritual offspring have fulfilled Jesus’ command to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19).

All of us are directly or indirectly Patrick’s offspring—some by national heritage, others in virtue of the labors and the wisdom of Irish missionaries, missionaries to Europe in the so-called Dark Ages and missionaries to the farthest reaches of the world in recent centuries—not least to this part of that world, as the necrologies of every diocese in the Northeast bear witness.  In my home diocese of St. Augustine (which covered 90% of Florida at the time), the FBI clergy, foreign-born Irish, outnumbered all others.  My early parish priests were Frs. McLaughlin and Casey, and the bishop was Joseph Patrick Hurley.[1]

Jesus promised his apostles to be with them always (28:20).  The world needs his presence as much now as it did in the Dark Ages or the age of exploration and conquest.  May St. Patrick’s “merits and intercession” recall our troubled world to God’s glory, rather than to MAGA, and the hope for glory that Jesus offers to all who bear his name and observe his commands (28:20).

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[1] Who was the son of Irish immigrants.