St Patrick’s Day 2026
St Mary’s Cathedral, Dublin
Homily of Archbishop Dermot Farrell
Our Confidence in God—the Ground of Transformative Patience
“Let the weeds and wheat grow together until the harvest…”
The Feast of Saint Patrick is a time to consider who we are in the context of our faith. It brings us to reflect, not just on what it means to be a person of faith in Ireland today, but also how people of faith might contribute to the Ireland, and indeed, the world, of today. Like Christ, his Lord and Master, Patrick came, not to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:28, cf. Confessio 23). Patrick came, not to take, but to give.
The parable the Liturgy puts before us today, like many parables, is open to being read in various ways. It would be easy to cling to its words, and turn them into the battle cry for a crusade about the ills of the world, making of them a justification for a fuga mundi, a flight from the world as it is. But this parable is rooted in God’s perspective on our world: the wheat is growing. Inár measc atá Ríocht Dé, beo and beomhar sa domhain mhóir, pé mar atá sé.[i] Even though hidden, cloaked—in these war-filled days—in the darkness of so much human behaviour, the Lord is in our midst, and the Holy Spirit is at work. It would be a serious misreading of this parable to assert that it endorses any type of passivity in the face of evil, as if the person of faith might be let off the hook by God’s promise to settle accounts at the end of time.
No, the parable is Jesus’ call to action in a world where action can be ambiguous, even misguided. The confidence in God which lies its heart—the confidence that permits the landowner to insist that his workers wait until the right time, is a confidence that is born from the inside of an understanding. The landowner understands both promise and threat, and he understands them first-hand. This is his wheat; this is his field, and this will be his harvest. As we might say today, he’s invested in it. His workers are not in the same place: they perceive the threat, but they don’t have the bigger picture. They see the danger, but they have no real sense of what is really at stake.
What Jesus offers us in this parable is his own first-hand confidence in his Father, the One to whom he teaches us to pray. Jesus’ prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” (see Matt 6:10), is a prayer born out of his own confidence and trust in his Father. This same confidence we find in the landowner: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest…” In his Word made flesh, God came to experience human time, our growth, and our action in history. From the Annunciation onwards, Christ,
is the sign of the patience of God who is patient and constant, faithful to his love for us; he is the true “farmer” of history who [has learned] how to wait.[ii]
In Christ, creation’s confidence in our Creator is given voice. Without this confidence in God, our one Father, we cannot endure in our service of the Kingdom.
How often have people tried to build the world by themselves … The outcome is often marked by the drama of ideologies which, in the end, have shown themselves to be against humanity and the profound dignity of all human beings. Patient perseverance in building history, both at the personal and community levels, is not identified with the traditional virtue of prudence… but is something greater and more complex.[iii]
These words of the late Pope Benedict ring ever more prophetic in our increasingly ideological age. Living out of a trust in God who is always at work in creation, living out of a conviction that the Spirit is constantly at work bringing all things to him, does not let us off the hook. Rather, it empowers us to embrace the world with the compassion of Christ, to have in ourselves “the mind that was in Christ Jesus” (see Phil 2:5).
(i) Embracing the World with the Compassion of Christ—Working for Justice, Inclusion, and Peace
Embracing the world with the compassion of Christ means that we make our own the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor (see Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ §§ 43-52 esp. 49). While the effects of the most recent war in the Middle East—a war both unjust and unjustifiable—are felt by us all, what we feel is nothing compared to what is inflicted on our sisters and brothers whose lives and lands are reduced to rubble by the munitions of the powerful far away. It is the poor, and the vulnerable—let us not forget the children—who pay the real price of war. It is earth itself—scorched and poisoned—God’s gift for every creature, our Common Home, that is gravely wounded.
Must the disciples of Christ not cry out? Otherwise, the words of Jesus to his critics, ‘…if these were silent, the very stones would shout out’ (Luke 19:40), will also apply to us. Christ himself calls us to work for peace in this time of war. Young or old, rich or poor, we can all do something! Christ calls us to extend an authentic welcome in this time when wall-building is more in vogue than bridge-building. In this time of budget restraint and fiscal discipline, “the one who became poor for our sakes” (see 2Cor 8:9) calls us constantly to reach out to the poor. Let not our hearts be hardened! (see Psalm 94[95]:8) And we cannot forget the past failures of our Church: we may not again fail to protect the “little ones.” Yes, while the workers are asked to wait until the harvest, they still must work towards the harvest.
(ii) Embracing the World with the Compassion of Christ—Enduring in the Face of Failure
Following the way of Christ, preparing for the harvest, is no guarantee of success. With so much at stake, any real engagement with the powers of this world will involve frustration, risk and failure. Christ himself knew this first-hand. On the threshold of Holy Week, let us remember that the road to Easter goes by the way the cross. It is only in this way that we will endure. Only in light of the cross is the true light of the Kingdom is seen. It was not for nothing that the Lúireach Phádraig[iv] prays, “Christ behind me, Christ before me ….”
(iii) Embracing the World with the Compassion of Christ—Giving the World its Dignity in God our Father
The Cross—the failure of Christ’s mission when viewed only from this life—brings home to us that God’s work in the world is more than what we can see. God’s work in creation is more than our stewardship of creation.
Níl aon ganntanas oibre ann: is obair í do phobal uilig na tíre seo, dóibh-san le creideamh agus dóibh nach bhfuil an dearcadh sin acu sa saol. Ach, tá dualgas orainn uile, obair ar san na síochána.[v] The work of peace is work for everyone. Christ did not say, “Blessed are the peacemakers who believe in me!” The blessing of God is on all peacemakers (see Matthew 5:9). The blessing of God is on all who work for justice—“in season and out of season” (see 2 Tim 4:2). The blessing of God is on all who offer dignity and welcome and shelter (see Matt 25:34–40).
Authentic Christian faith is not some outworking of Christ’s call, as if following Christ happens in a world parallel to the so-called “secular world,” as if the Kingdom of God miraculously transforms the ordinary world of everyday life. That is a very dangerous illusion. The living Church does not exist in a world tangential to the real world. A church that turns away from the complexity and drama of the world, is a church that has lost its sense of mission, its sense of “what God did—and continues to do—in Christ” (see 2Cor 5:19). It has lost its way; it has lost sight of its Lord who is always with us (see Matt 1:23, cf. Matt 28:30) making us alive, giving us life to the full (see John 10:10). There is only one creation, from one God, who is in all, and Lord of all (see Eph 4:6). We come to know the living God in the authentic encounter with the world: an encounter that is Christ-like, born out of service of all our neighbours, and one that is characterised by welcome, care, a desire for inclusion, and for the dignity of the whole of creation. This is the horizon of Christ. Christ looks to the future. The Risen One is not enthralled by the past: he goes before us (see Matt 28:7; cf. Luke 24:5) into the world as it is.[vi] There, in us, he lives out his Heavenly Father’s embrace of the poor; there, in us, he hears the groans of the oppressed and the exploited (see Exodus 2:23–25); there his healing touch restores our scorched Earth.
The Horizon of Saint Patrick
Patrick’s horizon was not the horizon of his captors—Patrick’s was, and remained, the horizon of Christ. His captors’ treatment of him did not determine his treatment of them. He turns the other cheek (see Matt 5:39); with his captors, he walks the second, and the third, and the hundredth mile (see Matt 5:41). This is the deep witness of his Confession. May Patrick’s faith—his trust and confidence in the Lord of the Harvest (see Matt 9:37–38), inspire us to walk the way of Christ, our life and our shield.[vii]
A Mhuire na nGrást, a Mháthair Mhic Dé, guí orainn.
Pádraig Naofa, Aspal mór na hÉireann, guí orainn.
[i] Inár measc atá Ríocht Dé …. The Kingdom of God is present and active in the world as it is.
[ii] Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at Vespers with the University Students of Rome, December 15th, 2011.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] The Lúireach Phádraig is often known by its title in English: St Patrick’s Breastplate.
[v] Níl aon ganntanas oibre ann …. There is no shortage of work: it is work for everyone in this land, for people of faith, and for people who do not, or cannot see their lives in that way. But the work for peace is work for all.
[vi] “In his prayer, [the prophet] Simeon had learned that God does not come in extraordinary events, but works amid the apparent monotony of our daily life, in the frequently dull rhythm of our activities, in the little things that, working with tenacity and humility, we achieve in our efforts to do his will.” Pope Francis, Homily at Mass to celebrate the World Day for Consecrated Life, St Peter’s Basilica. February 2nd, 2021.
[vii] See note 4 above.
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