St. Patricks Confessio: 40 - 44

"It is right that we should fish well and diligently, as the Lord directs and teaches when he says: “Follow me, and I will may you fishers of men.”
~ St. Patrick, quoting also from Matthew 4:19

I am not a good fisher.  As I struggle with my own doubts it is hard to share with others.  I struggle even how to put the Gospel into words for my own children, though I am doing better there than elsewhere.  (How can I not teach my own children?  Even my doubts are not strong enough to keep me from that.  A mustard seed of faith is enough there, but somehow it takes more to share with my neighbors.)

So, I am humbled by this passage.

In it he talks about his converts, about how fathers do not like when their daughters become "virgins of Christ  and how they, other men, and slaves who follow Christ suffer.  He also expressed his own longing to go home to see his parents and church brethren, but how he felt he would be guilty before God for doing that, and feared "to lose the work" which he had begun.  I think again of how difficult it must have been to be separated from family, without any easy means to go back and see them again...and I'm sure difficult for the families as well.

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St. Patrick's Confessio

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