This series of posts focuses on the “protection prayer” known as “The Breastplate (or Lorica) of St. Patrick”.
Today’s lines have a strange and challenging clashing combination of words:
“I arise today … through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial”
How can anyone rise through another’s suffering and death?
How can anyone derive strength from crucifixion and burial?
Perhaps the answer is that suffering is part of understanding and part of living truly.
Richard Rohr says that great love and great suffering are the two ways we move towards wisdom and a true, mystical grasp of life. I know in my own life that avoiding facing up to your own personal pain can be damaging – the way forwards is through the pain.
Having experienced and faced pain, and survived, perhaps we can then say:
I arise today through …the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
Flowering Poverello 