St Patrick was a man who could appreciate a paradox. His whole life was one. His first experience of Ireland was as a boy-slave, tending swine on the slopes of Slemish. When he returned it was as a bishop. He was a Briton - of sorts. Yet he is the patron of a people who for most of their recorded history fought against domination by their neighbours from his home-island. Some historians believe that the Patrick we revere may even have been two men - surely the ultimate paradox.
This Patrick also believed in change and in challenge. He lit the Paschal fire on the Hill of Slane in defiance of a royal ordinance. It was the first step in the process of change which displaced the ancient druidic religion of the Gael with Christianity. But he was also a skilled political animal and a gradualist. He grafted the new religion on to the old, fixing Christian feasts close to the important dates of the druidic calendar. He located his churches close to places traditionally considered sacred and special. He was more for building anew and for incorporation than for tearing down the old.
But there have been many aspects of our traditional celebration of St Patrick which failed to reflect the character of the man - or the men - who brought Christianity to this island. The Christian community he founded divided into a number of larger churches and a myriad of sub-groups. Catholics and Protestants have seen St Patrick uniquely as their own and they have staked their rival claims accordingly down the centuries, often in the most bitter, exclusivist terms. It is only in the most recent times that they have begun to recognise that Patrick can be a unifying figure, a symbol of common historical experience, rather than a focus of rivalry. Neither the ecclesiastical nor the secular politics of the island have traditionally reflected the conciliatory, gradualist approach with which Patrick brought the old and the new together.
Set against this background it is remarkable and heartening to see what has become of the feast of St Patrick or the Festival of Patrick - as it has been dubbed in the new-style celebrations. Key members of the political establishment from North and South, nationalist and unionist, converge on Washington to mark March 17th but also to explore common ground, to seek accommodation of their respective traditions and to advance the cause of peace. Against the background of the appalling murder of Rosemary Nelson, it can only be hoped that their deliberations on this occasion will succeed in reaching across the relatively small stretch of political ground which still separates this country from a full and lasting peace.
It is a paradox - a positive one - that the feast which once marked some of the sharpest collision points between the Irish churches and between differing Irish identities should now become the focus of political rapprochement in Washington - even as it develops into a great public celebration, spread over a number of days, at home. Differing strands of the Irish people are coming closer together. In spite of the wickedness and cruelty of the gunmen and the bombers, there is a gradual taking down of barriers and a growing hope that we will face the future in harmony and co-operation. St Patrick - both of him - would surely approve and give his blessing.