By Heather Melton, (she/her) UTO Staff Officer
For those of you who have been around a long time with UTO, you won’t be surprised to see that it is March, and I am once again returning to the text of the Breastplate of St. Patrick. This is a prayer I’ve been thinking about since the year began, not only in anticipation of St. Patrick’s Feast Day, but as a meaningful way to pray and hold in tension the news of the world around us. I know that many church musicians cringe at having to sing the Breastplate of St. Patrick due to that tempo change in the middle, but never has it felt more necessary to think about prayer as a way of preparing for being the world today, so I hope it will be sung at every Episcopal parish this year. Many people believe that this prayer is quite old (it was translated in 1889 into English but some date it back to the fifth century) and scholars connect it to a Christian version of a druidic incantation that would have been said for protection on a journey. Prayers of protection are quite common in many cultures, and the Irish have many of them.
As my kiddos headed back to middle school for the spring semester, I began to think about prayers of protection again, of the superstitions I have (and notice that they have) to ensure a good day ahead and what prayer would I make of all these threads that tie us together. Each morning, I make sure to tell my husband (who teaches school) and my children how much I love them because none of us are guaranteed safety in the world. As February unfolded around us, I found that I was ready to move from Valentine’s Day to St. Patrick’s Day, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was some yearning to pray with St. Patrick: I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity: By invocation of the same, the Three in One and One in Three. I spent a week just praying these words and then wanted to pick another verse to focus on. I opened my trusty BCP/Hymnal that I used as a parish priest to go back to the hymn text ,thinking the tune would help me remember the words. It’s the fifth verse, one with an asterisk telling us we can skip it, that I decided was important to pray (or sing) these days:
I bind unto myself today the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay, his ear to hearken, to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach, his hand to guide, his shield to ward,
the word of God to give me speech, his heavenly host to be my guard.
Ultimately, the prayers of protection are about remembering that God loves us very much and has not abandoned us. God is with us through every lockdown drill held at a school; God is hearing our prayers when we are afraid; God is calling us to be wise and is guiding us to do good, giving us the words to speak when it feels that there isn’t anything we can say to help. Or maybe it is the final verse that sums it all up:
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
I am not sure what wisdom I have to offer for the world these days beyond my own deep sense that we need to pray, we need to show up for one another, and we need to love and give thanks. What I do have to offer is faith, the faith that assures me that Jesus was with us before we knew we needed him, and that he’ll stick around long after the crisis has ended. God is in the midst of this, both the quiet and the danger. We can never forget that we are living in a broken and hurting world, but that doesn’t mean God has abandoned us. Christ shows up in the mouth of friends and strangers. Christ shows up in you; Christ shows up in me. For all the ways that Christ is showing up, that God is protecting us, that the Spirit is guiding us, I give thanks this day and always.