Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 2nd Sunday in Lent
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities that may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Lent
You bid your faithful people cleanse their hearts, and prepare with joy for the Paschal feast; that, fervent in prayer and in works of mercy, and renewed by your Word and Sacraments, they may come to the fullness of grace which you have prepared for those who love you.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Bishop and Apostle to the Irish
Anglican Commemoration
Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian, carried off as a teenager by Irish raiders, who escaped, returned years later as a missionary bishop, and brought the gospel to his former captors. Two short letters in his own hand survive, somewhat unique among western saints of the period where few primary sources from the actual saints survive. Through them his voice still reaches the church he helped to plant directly. His mission established the Irish church so firmly that within a generation Irish monasticism became one of the most dynamic forces in early-medieval Europe.
Patrick was born around 385 into a Romanized British Christian family — his father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest. At sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and enslaved for six years, tending sheep in conditions of extreme hardship. During his captivity, he turned to God in prayer with an intensity he had never known in his comfortable youth, praying, as he later wrote, 'a hundred prayers by day and almost as many at night.'
After escaping Ireland and returning to Britain, Patrick experienced a vision in which the people of Ireland called to him: 'We beg you, holy youth, come and walk among us once more.' Despite opposition from British church authorities who questioned his education and fitness, he was ordained and eventually consecrated as bishop for the Irish mission.
Patrick's missionary strategy was remarkably effective. He worked with tribal structures rather than against them, converting chieftains whose people then followed. He established monastic communities as centers of learning and worship, ordained native Irish clergy, and built a church structure adapted to Irish society. His Confession reveals a man acutely conscious of his own limitations — his Latin was rough, his education incomplete — yet absolutely certain of God's call and provision.
The Letter to Coroticus, written to a British warlord who had enslaved newly baptized Irish Christians, shows Patrick's fierce pastoral protectiveness and his conviction that baptized believers were full members of Christ's Body regardless of their ethnicity. Patrick died around 461, having laid foundations that would make Ireland a 'land of saints and scholars' whose influence reached across Europe.
Traditionally, Patrick is credited with single-handedly converting all of Ireland, expelling snakes (symbolic of paganism), establishing the episcopal hierarchy, and performing miraculous feats. The 'Lorica' prayer is attributed to him (likely later composition).