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Moses, St. Patrick, and Jesus

This is a summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily delivered at St. Charles on March 14, 2004, 3rd Sunday of Lent

"I will lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey" Exodus 3:8

IN THE ATTIRE of the congregation today the green claims a majority over the Lenten purple. Let me see how we can link Moses, Patrick and Jesus.

Patrick's life, like Moses, was filled with journeying. He was taken captive as a boy from the Mersey side to Antrim, where he tended pigs. Still a teenager, he escaped among a boatload of wolfhounds to England. However, he could not forget Ireland. He was called back in his dreams or nightmares. He studied theology in Europe and returned to share his faith in Christ. All of Ireland bears the mark of his journeys: the hill of Tara where he lit the Easter fire, Down patrick, Armagh where he was laid to rest, Lough Derg, now known as St Patrick's Purgatory, where my father and his friends went to fast and pray, having fortified themselves in advance on the trip north with a day of feasting. Croagh Patrick is the hill in the west that he climbed to pray. In Limerick we find Patrick's Well. There is not trace of a visit to Cork. The legend we received that they stole his donkey in neighboring Kerry may not be the only explanation. I read recently in a reliable history that West Cork, where I happen to come from, had already been Christianized by St Ciaran.

Just as Patrick traveled his followers also caught the wanderlust. St Paul writes, "Our ancestors were all under a cloud and all passed through the sea and all of them were baptized into Moses." Apart from Native Americans, most Americans were originally immigrants who reached this country through a body of water. Today immigrants from the south cross the polluted water of the Rio Grande. Many of our antecedents crossed the Atlantic, that "bowl of tears" in the words of Shaw. The Irish who recall their history this week left a land behind them that was blighted. They escaped the Great Famine when people ate grass and nettles on the sides of the roads. Their ships were known as coffin ships because so many died in the crossing. Survivors of the voyage often succumbed to fever on arrival and were quarantined at Grosse Ile. Others discovered a land where doors carried signs, "No Irish need apply." To this day immigrants from the south and the Caribbean who harbor illusions of "El Norte" as that great land of opportunity, often find a closed door.

The story of Exodus remembers the plight of God's people. Egypt was a place of captivity. There they experienced hard labor, stripped of the dignity of language, culture and religion. They were an oppressed, subjugated race, a "no-people" in the words of scripture. But the Lord said, "I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey." For forty years they followed Moses. To reach freedom they crossed two bodies of water. The Red Sea and the Jordan River. The Red Sea was their salvation. There Pharaoh's chariots were clogged in its marshes. The Jordan River was the final leg in the pilgrimage to freedom.

Our baptism is recalled by the shamrocks that carry the Trinitarian blessing. In the baptismal blessing water is seen not only as cleansing from original sin, but as a reminder of our ancestors' crossing of the red Sea and the River of Jordan. Water means freedom from all that would oppress the human spirit. It was no accident that Jesus' first public action was to walk into the Jordan river to be baptized by John. He would recapture and continue the exodus of his people. His first words were, "I came to proclaim liberty to captives." He would be the new Moses. Last Sunday's transfiguration pictures Jesus at Moses' side. He spent his public ministry reaching out to the leper and the excluded. He denounced the powers of oppression within his church and state: "That brood of vipers". When he came to the last supper he called it his new Passover or exodus. He would free of us from our last captivity, the fear of death itself. We prepare to join him anew at Easter in a renewal of baptismal commitment

This time of festivity for St Patrick and these forty Lenten days we spend in imitation of the forty years in the dessert call us to take upon ourselves the faith of those who have gone before us, the faith of Moses and Jesus and Patrick. Like our ancestors who passed through the sea, we seek a baptism of faith. "Deliver us Lord from every evil" that we may in turn liberate others.

  or  2004 Homilies