14.03.2023
St Patrick’s Day Service to Bring a Message For Our Times
“St Patrick, A Stranger Bearing Gifts” is the theme for this year’s ecumenical service on St. Patrick’s Day, 6pm in Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. The theme is a reminder that St Patrick was not from these shores, in fact was held here as a slave who had been trafficked into Ireland after a raid on his parents’ home in neighbouring Britain. Having been able to flee, he returned to the land of his captors to foster a new beginning, bringing as a gift his own new–found faith in a loving God.
Patrick’s gift is an encouragement for us today to receive the gifts of those who have come to us in recent times: refugees seeking shelter from situations of immense hardship.
This service brings together the 14 churches from the Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Dissenting traditions who are members of the Dublin Council of Churches. All are welcome to join this celebration in poetry, words of Scripture, song and traditional Irish music. Poet John F Deane and Rev Pr Florian von Issendorff of St Finian’s Lutheran Church, Adelaide Road, Dublin 2 will address the gathering.