The fire that wouldn't go out
Patrick's Paschal fire at Slane
The tradition records it this way: at Easter, the High King Laoghaire is gathered at the royal hill of Tara with his druids for the festival of Beltane. By royal decree, no fire in all of Ireland may be lit until the sacred fire burns on Tara.
On the hill of Slane, across the valley, Patrick lights a Paschal fire.
The druids see it from Tara. They tell the king that if this fire is not extinguished tonight, it will never be extinguished — it will burn throughout all of Ireland forever.
The king sends soldiers to extinguish it and bring Patrick before him.
The accounts of what happens next carry the character of legend — Patrick and his companions are said to appear to the soldiers as deer, walking peacefully through a forest, elusive and unafraid. Patrick appears before the king and debates the druids. His arguments win. Several of the king's household convert, though the king himself does not.
Whether the account is historical in every detail or a later elaboration of something simpler, the symbolic core is true: Patrick came back to Ireland and lit a fire on its highest visible hill at the same moment the old religion was lighting its fire, and declared that the light of Christ would not be extinguished.
The druids were right about one thing. The fire has not gone out.
“I bind to myself today the power of God to guide me, the might of God to uphold me, the wisdom of God to teach me, the eye of God to watch over me, the ear of God to hear me, the word of God to speak for me.”
— Patrick, Breastplate Prayer, c. 5th century
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill can't be hid. Neither do you light a lamp, and put it under a bushel basket, but on a stand; and it shines to all who are in the house.”
Patrick lit his fire in direct, visible, intentional competition with the ritual fire of the religion he was displacing.
This was not accidental. He was making a public claim on the highest visible ground at the most symbolically charged moment of the Celtic calendar. He was saying: there is a different fire now. A different light. And it will not go out.
The church has sometimes been cautious about exactly this kind of public claim — afraid of the confrontation, afraid of the loss, afraid of what it costs to put the light on a stand where everyone can see it.
Patrick was afraid too. He had spent six years on a hillside learning to be afraid of the right things.
What hill are you avoiding? What fire are you keeping under a basket?