From the Eminent Blog:

This year St. Patrick’s Day falls during Holy Week, and we are not allowed to have the liturgical celebration of during that week. An option would have been to move the feast; however, the official calendar of the Church has already moved St. Joseph’s Day to Saturday, and I was loath to move St. Patrick’s Day to a Friday in Lent.

So, what we are going to do in the archdiocese is have a Mass on Monday, March 17, the civil holiday. We will celebrate the liturgical Mass, with its readings and prayers, of the Monday of Holy Week, but at the Mass we will reflect on the life and ministry of St. Patrick. As usual, we will bless and distribute the shamrocks, which St. Patrick used so effectively — as a symbol of the cross and as a symbol for the Trinity.

In Massachusetts, where we have the largest percentage of Irish-Americans of any state in the country, St. Patrick’s Day is always a very important celebration — both religiously and civically. As a matter of fact, we are probably the only place in the United States where St. Patrick’s Day is a civil holiday. Of course, this is done by a certain subterfuge. They call it Evacuation Day, but they were looking for an excuse to have St. Patrick’s Day as a civil holiday.

Just like every year, we hope to have a nice group of priests and laity joining with us as we honor St. Patrick. We expect people to come to the cathedral wearing green in honor of the patron saint of the archdiocese. And I always remind people that they should celebrate his feast day whether they are Irish or not. After all, St. Patrick was not Irish.

We want to remember St. Patrick as a great missionary. Unfortunately, for the secular world the celebration and the drinking are what people associate with the feast, but we who are believers and are Catholics, need to be reminded of the missionary nature of the Church.

Boston has contributed much to the Mission Ad Gentes, and not just through the 300 priests who have gone to South America with the Missionary Society of St. James. There have been a countless number of men and women religious who have served all over the world, and right now many are still serving all over the world. Even the founders of Maryknoll came out of Boston. We have in our midst a retired Maryknoll bishop from Korea, Bishop William McNaughton. His presence in the archdiocese is just another reminder of this great connection.

Additionally, at one of our recent Presbyteral Council meetings our new head of the Propagation of the Faith, Father Thomas Kopp, announced that Boston is one of the dioceses that give the most to the propagation in the world. He said that we give more than the entire country of England. So I said to him as an Irishman who lives in Boston, “I hope you were not surprised by that.” Also, the archdiocese is one of the largest contributors to the Latin American collection the U.S. Bishops organize every year.

I know that Father Kopp is anxious to promote the materials from the Holy Childhood Association for elementary school children. When I was growing up, we would get little mite boxes during Lent to “buy pagan babies with.” We laugh about it now, but the money was used to save orphans. Now the Holy Childhood’s efforts are much more sophisticated and put children in touch with children in the third world. This helps our children to be aware of the situation, the needs and the gifts of those children in mission countries. Just as that was part of my generation’s mission formation, I would like to see the Holy Childhood be more of a force in the religious formation of our Catholic children today.

The emphasis that Cardinal Richard Cushing gave to the Mission Ad Gentes and the mission appeals that are done, by many of our St. James Society men and others has kept people’s mission conscience very much alive.

Sometimes we can become parochial in our pew, but our mission is part of the universal Church, and St. Patrick was the great missionary. We joyfully and gratefully honor his memory and invoke his blessing and intercession for the Archdiocese of Boston as we celebrate our 200th anniversary here as a local church.

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