St Patrick's Day

Today is 17 March, but it is NOT St Patrick's Day! Today is Monday in Holy Week. No feast or saints' days which fall during Holy Week or during Easter week may be celebrated. Major feasts must be 'transferred' to a day beyond Easter week. If they are small commemorations of saints they are simply dropped that year. In most countries, liturgically St Patrick's Day is one of those small commemorations. However, in Ireland it is not only a major feast, but also a public (bank) holiday, so this caused some problems. The public holiday could not be moved and the Church had to transfer the feast of St Patrick to a day at least two weeks after its date of March 17th. The Church decided instead to move it forward to the 15th, moving it as close as possible to the civic holiday. England also has had a similar shift. This is the first year that in many schools the Easter holidays really are spring holidays and do not coincide with Holy Week and Easter Week. Of course, schools are off on Good Friday and Easter Monday (both are bank holidays), but the actual break is in the middle of April.

What we are witnessing is a divorce of a 'marriage' forged in the Middle Ages. What we are witnessing is the divorce of the civic calendar from the ecclesiastical one. For over one thousand years, the ecclesiastical calendar was the civic calendar, and civic events informed the church's year. They were inseparable; and now they are separating.  No doubt, vestiges of the union will remain always marking the civic calendar, not unlike the months of July and August hearkening back to long dead emperors the connection to which few people now remember; but for the most part the divide between them will widen. To all of this I say a resounding 'Hurrah!' It is only one more sign that we are beginning to live in a post-Christian age.  

Again, 'Hurrah', I say; not because a post-Christian age will mark the end of Christianity, but because it just may begin the dawn of a Christianity that brings with it no social boons or perks - not even 'calendrical' priority.  It may begin the dawn of a  Christianity which is not at the heart of power, control, or privilege; in fact, a Christianity so 'powerless' that for evangelism and mission it must resort to simply living the gospel. Ironically enough, it would be a Christianity far more familiar to St Patrick!