RITE AND ERASON:This is our time and this is our test and, like generations before us, we will find a way through, writes MARY MCALEESE.
ST PATRICK’S Day will be celebrated with great fun and enthusiasm here in Ireland and all around the globe in happy gatherings of the massive Irish family and its many friends.
On this day we showcase the strength of our culture and the joy we have in life no matter what comes or goes and no matter where we are in the world.
We have seen peace and prosperity come to Ireland in recent years but this year, ours is one of many countries now facing an economic downturn.
We have also had to face the recent, tragic return of violent deaths at the hands of dissident republican paramilitaries. That violence provoked a show of solidarity across all politics and perspectives, evidence of the massive changes that have taken place thanks to the peace process, which alone expresses the overwhelming will of the Irish people.
That same solidarity will help us not only to secure this hard-won peace but it will also help us return to our hard-earned prosperity.
It is now nearly 1,600 years since St Patrick came back to this island on which he had been so miserably enslaved as a boy. He had heard the “Voice of the Irish” calling him for help but he came back very reluctantly.
As he said in his Confession, “... I did not proceed to Ireland on my own accord until I was almost giving up”.
But he didn’t give up – he came, he stayed, he worked and he changed our history forever. We know he endured great spiritual and physical suffering.
He expected to.
It came as no surprise to him but what did surprise him each morning was that he was able to say, as he did in the Deer’s Cry, “I arise today through a mighty strength”.
His legacy was an Ireland that would grow to become a world-renowned centre of Christian values, scholarship, monasticism, spirituality, creativity and intellectual excellence.
We have seen our share of ups and downs since the days of Patrick. War and peace, poverty and plenty, outward migration and inward migration, sectarian division and the politics of partnership. We have been challenged and tested again and again.
Now we are sorely tested by the colossal failure of a global and local culture of short-term gain and quick profiteering.
The unprecedented economic progress and prosperity that we enjoyed for over a decade has given way to the reappearance of harsh realities we hoped we had left behind, the lengthening dole queues, deep financial angst in homes and businesses, and young people leaving once again to find work elsewhere.
Yet this is our time and this is our test and, like generations before us, we will find a way through.
While some were seduced by the quick euro over the past decade, the vast majority of people in this country were sharing what was in their pockets.
They were building up families and communities, filling, with their spontaneous and sustained generosity, gaps through which some people fall at home and abroad.
They fundraised and built sports clubs, community centres, regeneration projects, organisations for the retired, the disabled, the lonely, the mentally ill; they set up homework clubs, creches, youth organisations, self-help groups, choirs, drama groups, charities and hospices and much more besides.
They created and they sustain a strong warp and weft that holds us together as a civic society, rich in community life.
These people did not get us into the mess we are in today but they will get us out of it. Because that is the kind of people they are, dependable, courageous and determined.
They are also rightly proud of Ireland and the remarkable progress and massive human investment our people have made in building both peace and prosperity.
They are not about to let either be rendered valueless by wilful violence or wilful greed.
The human values of decency, generosity and trust which underpin Irish life are the things by which we have always been defined and will insist on being defined.
On this day, when we celebrate our great emigrant saint and our Irish heritage in the company of friends and family from Dublin to Dubai and from Belfast to Beijing, may we, too, find in ourselves and in one another that mighty strength that Patrick found in adversity. With it he changed Ireland’s future for the better and so can we.
I wish a wonderful St Patrick’s Day to Irish people wherever they find themselves to-day.
Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh go léir.
Mary McAleese is President of Ireland