Celebrating St Patrick's Day

Today is the feast of St Patrick, the great missionary responsible for the conversion of Ireland. His feast is a special day for all Columbans as our Missionary Society was founded in 1918 in Ireland by Edward Galvin and John Blowick. Another great Irish missionary St Columban was chosen to be the patron of the newly founded society. Although St Patrick's origins are shrouded in myth, it is generally thought that he was born somewhere in Britain and was taken as a slave to Ireland. It seems that he later escaped and returned to Britain but he could not forget his experience in Ireland and felt called to return as a missionary, where his work met with great success. Like both St Patrick and St Columban, our society was formed so that its members would leave their own country in order to bring the good news of Jesus to other countries in need of evangelization. A question we are often asked is if we have missionary vocations today. The answer is yes but it shows what changes have taken place since the early days when our seminaries in Ireland, the United States, Australia and New Zealand were full of students. Now we thank God for the 31 seminarians in formation who come from the Philippines, Korea, Fiji and Myanmar. We unite today to celebrate St Patrick and to thank God for the tremendous missionary work that has been carried out all around the world by Irish men and women remembering that it began with the first seeds of faith planted by St Patrick.
 
Don Hornsey
 

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