Saint Malachy: Our Patron Saint – Homily

“Well, today is the feast day of our patron saint, Saint Malachy. Saint Malachy is our patron saint, and he’s got an interesting history to begin with. Let’s go back to the Emerald Isle: Ireland.

Saint Patrick went there in the three hundreds and had some great success for a lot of people with Christianity. The faith grew and it prospered. And there are many churches and monasteries and schools and art and music that flourished. For centuries it was the center of culture in Western Europe. The barbarians that are all throughout Western Europe set civilization down, basically.

And so the Irish rectory sent missionaries back to France, Spain and Germany to re-Christianized the continent. Things were amazing in Ireland until the Vikings came. And I’m not talking about the Minnesota Vikings. They’re not that tough. I’m talking about the real Vikings. Who arrived at the shore of Ireland, and destroyed everything in their path.

They looted and burned the monasteries, convents, and churches, and civilization collapsed in Ireland. Over time, the Vikings do accept Christianity and actually found the town of Dublin. And this is about the time where Malachy comes about. He’s a young man at this time, and he wants to become a priest. He goes to Rome, is trained and ordained, and is sent back to Ireland as the papal delegate with the authority to reestablish the dioceses; rebuild the churches and the confidence in the monasteries and schools.

And so he does.

He has a very long life. He lived to be 96, which is amazing. Today, that’s just remarkable. Back then, the average person lived to be about 45. He was very active throughout his entire life and literally rebuilt the church in Ireland. There’s also a miracle attributed to him. When the King of Scotland heard about this bishop, he asked him to cross the Irish Sea to Scotland.

He had a very ill, son, and Malachy sailed across, prayed over the King of Scotland and his son, and the son was cured! They said it was a miracle! Well, Malachy was an amazing saint, a builder and a promoter of the faith. There’s a side note about him that you should know about. If you Google Saint Malachy, inevitably, it is going to pop up with the Prophecies of Saint Malachy.

These are prophecies about all the future popes that are going to be and who’s going to be the last pope, and so on and so forth. It was written around the year 1600 or so. They attributed to Malachy, but Malachy had nothing to do with it at all. 

Language is always changing. You know, read the Gettysburg Address, read Shakespeare. Language is constantly evolving, and Latin evolved into French and Spanish and Portuguese and Italian. But Latin also evolved. And they know that the syntax and the grammar and things used in that prophecy was not at all what was being used at the time of Malachy.

So they knew it wasn’t really Malachy who prophesied all these things. Who wrote it? Nobody knows. But it wasn’t him. Nevertheless, our patron saint, a founder, a builder and expander of the church. He is a great role model to have for us as a parish community and for our own personal lives.”

~Fr. Joseph Gembala