An excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Words We Pray: Discovering the Richness of Traditional Catholic Prayers (Fall 2004 from Loyola Press)

(Excerpt from manuscript submitted to publisher, which is currently being eviscerated and probably vastly improved by editors. I get that back in a week or so. Joy.)

Now we don’t know if St. Patrick actually wrote this prayer. Some scholars say he definitely did not, but others say that we can’t be so sure. We do have two pieces of writing that can be definitely traced to St. Patrick – his Confessions – for one, so it’s not unimaginable that this could have survived, although the earliest manuscripts we have containing it come from the seventh century, two hundred years after St. Patrick lived and died.

But whatever the exact origins, there’s no doubt that for fifteen hundred years – wait, pause to consider that – fifteen hundred years. All right, let’s move on – for all of that time, St. Patrick’s Breastplate has been prayed and sung as a truthful expression of the profoundly Catholic spirituality that Patrick brought to Ireland and an apt reflection of what we know about the faith that energized him. This prayer is suffused with a knowing confidence – knowledgeable and realistic about what awaits us in the world, and confidence in God’s desire and ability to protect us.

Patrick could not be anything but realistic. He was born, son of a deacon and grandson of a priest, somewhere in BRITAIN, some say Scotland, some say the western part of the Island. What we do know is that as a teenager, Patrick was kidnapped and taken to Ireland, where he lived as a slave for six years. He escaped to France, where he studied in a monastery and was eventually ordained. He ministered there for many years, but the call to return across the channel was always quite strong, and the call was not to the relative safety of Britain, but to the very spot where he had been enslaved: Ireland.

Eventually, of course, he did return, commissioned by the pope to evangelize Ireland, where Christianity had been planted, but never really taken root, and where paganism still reigned among the Celts. So Patrick returned to this land where he had endured such suffering, to the people who had kidnapped him and killed other members of his family. He returned because he was called – in a vision, it is said, a vision in which voices cried out “come back and walk once more among us.”

And so Patrick returned to preach the Good News to a walk among a people he knew full well would be hostile, and it was. He was imprisoned twelve times, did battle with Druid priests and kings and fought widespread superstition. But just as deeply as he knew the danger, he knew the need. Who would know better a people’s deep need for Christ than one who’d been kept as a slave among them?

St. Patrick’s Breastplate, the legend says, has its roots in one of these conflicts. A certain king named Laoghaire had invited Patrick to come and see him, planning, of course, to dispense of him along the way. He had soldiers stationed along the road ready to strike, but as he approached with his band, Patrick began to pray these words. As he prayed, darkness fell, and what the soldiers saw passing was no group of men, but a line of deer, and all they could hear was a strange, music-like cry of the deer as they passed.

Called forth by Patrick’s prayer, God’s protection descended in the dark, like a lorica, the Celts said. A lorica was both a piece of armor and a powerfully protective charm. The protection enveloped them and let them be seen as deer – an animal sacred to the Celts, a symbol of power and life, the deer who, the Psalmist tell us, longs for running water, as we yearn for God. (Ps. 62)