My great-great grandmother, Catherine Ennis, was born in Country Armagh, Province of Ulster, in Ireland. It was during the Great Famine when the potato crops failed. Over a million men, women and children died of starvation and another million left the country. Catherine and her family left Ireland and moved to Canada.

There are 32 Counties in Ireland. The six counties in the north, including Armagh, are still part of the United Kingdom and the majorities are Protestant, with a sizable minority who are Catholics. The other 26 counties, the south, are 92% Catholic and are part of the independent Republic of Ireland.

This division of the island did not happen without much violence and even today there remains a cautious truce between the two parts of the Emerald Isle.

Ireland is a lovely land with a strong and courageous people. Their strength comes from their deep faith and strong family values. Made stronger by constant struggle. Until recently, Ireland was a great missionary country, sending priests and nuns throughout the world to bring the good news of God’s love to countless millions of people.

When I was growing up in the 1950’s in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Catholic Church was an Irish Church. The seminary I went to study for the priesthood was named St. Patrick’s, my pastor was Patrick J. Galvan and most of my classmates were of Irish descent. The same was true across the United States, including the Diocese of Boise. One of our founding priests here at Bishop Kelly (who himself was Irish) was James Reginald Wilson, an Irishman after whom the “Reg” is named.

22 of our U.S. Presidents have some Irish ancestry, including the current one. Mr. Obama’s great, great, great grandfather, Falmout Kearney left Ireland at age 19. He was from County Tipperary, Province of Munster. He also left during the an Gorta Mor, or Great Famine.

Even though there are many descendants of the Irish, tomorrow on the Feast of St. Patrick, everybody is Irish, if only for a day.

I have it from the highest authority that St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in Ireland slightly differently than in the U.S. For one, people in Ireland really are Irish. It is a national holiday in the Republic and also a holy day of obligation. Catholics go to Mass in the morning, the pubs are opened shortly thereafter, there are parades and people visit family and friends in the late afternoon. They dine on bacon and cabbage, not corned beef and cabbage, they do not turn their rivers green and it would be a sin if they ever drank green beer. That is not to say that a pint or two of Guinness may be consumed here and there.

I want to thank that illustrious son of Ireland Mr. Thomas Shanahan for this information and also give a shout out to his dad whose birthday is tomorrow, and yes, his name is Patrick.

St. Patrick himself was not Irish. He was Roman-British, born in the middle of 5^th Century, near the border between Scotland and England. His name was Patricius Magonus Sucatus. His father Calpinus was a deacon and his grandfather Potitus, a priest. In those days, Catholic priests could get married.

At the age of 16, Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave. For the next 6 years, he kept care of his master’s sheep and other animals. He spent most of his time alone, in the wilderness where he developed an intense, personal relationship with God through prayer.

Eventually, he escaped and returned to his family in England. However, he had a repeated dream wherein the Irish called him back. He studied to be a priest in France, was ordained a bishop and returned to the Island which had once been his prison. He never fully mastered the Irish language, or Galic, but his deep faith impressed the Irish people- well, most of them. There were several attempts to assassinate him. Although some missionaries had arrived before Patrick, by the end of nearly 30 years, he had converted nearly the entire Island to Catholic Christianity.

His principal church was in Country Armagh, which, even though it is today in the Northern 6 counties, is 70% Catholic. It has two cathedrals, each on a hill facing the other and both named St. Patrick’s Cathedral. One is Church of Ireland (or what we call Episcopalian) an the others in Roman Catholic. It is the only city in the world with two cathedrals of the same name.

As I mentioned, the Island of Ireland is divided. Like many other places in the world, the division is painful. North Korea is a divided country, as is the Island of Cyprus, as is Israel and Palestine.

The division of the Holy Land consists of a twenty foot concrete wall, with guard towers every 200 meters. It is a singularly ugly and illegal wall.

As the American poet Robert Frost said, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

Walls don’t work. Consider the Great Wall of China, now a tourist site. Or, the wall of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, built to keep the Scots out of England. It’s now a ruin. And there’s the Berlin Wall that separated Berlin between East and West. It was torn down in 1989. Here is a small portion of that wall. It is not in Berlin, it is in Boise.

As we celebrate the feast of St. Patrick tomorrow, let us pray that all walls, between nations and between families and friends will someday soon fall. We may not all be Irish, but we are all human beings, Children of the same God.

Erin go Bragh– Ireland Forever.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and the sun shine warm upon your face. May the rains fall softly on your fields, may the Lord hold you in the palm of his hand, until we meet again.

Go Back