Heavenly condition may not be too evident, but it’s still attainable

WITH St Patrick’s Day just behind us and Easter fast approaching, it’s worth considering how we celebrate these festivals and what that says about the state we are in.

That most controversial of commentators, St Paul, claimed the three things that really matter to Christians are faith, hope and love.

Love is the greatest, he says in chapter 13 of his letter to the people at Corinth, a passage often used in wedding liturgies and famously read by Tony Blair at Princess Diana's funeral: "I may speak with every tongue that men and angels use: yet, if I lack charity, I am no better than echoing bronze, or the clash of cymbals

"I may have powers of prophecy, no secret hidden from me, no knowledge too deep for me; I may have utter faith, so that I can move mountains; yet if I lack charity, I count for nothing."

Paul wrote his letter because some of the Christians in Corinth thought they were great. They were outdoing each other by speaking in tongues and making prophecies. But the apostle wanted to tell them that love mattered most, and nothing they did would have any meaning without it.

He didn't explain why love was the most important, but it certainly outlives the other two virtues. You wouldn't have any need for faith and hope in eternity since your questions would be answered.

But love what the spiritual writer Ronald Knox calls "this bond of fellowship which unites us to God and unites us to our fellow creatures" goes on eternally. "It is the atmosphere and condition of heaven," Knox says.

There wasn't much of this 'heavenly condition' to be felt on St Patrick's Day, or over the weekend that followed. In fact, it's hard to blame the politicians for leaving our shores in droves when there is something so powerfully empty about the way we now commemorate our national saint.

In the past, St Patrick's Day recalled the coming of Christian faith to Ireland.

That was a happy event, we believed, because of the spiritual consequences of our conversion. So, even if our floats were drab, our celebration was heartfelt.

Now it is the other way around. The parades are sophisticated and glamorous, and this year's theme of 'mischief, mayhem and madness', a carefully-chosen expression of neo-Celtic identity.

But all for what? Like many others I wandered down to Dublin's quayside to watch the fireworks on Saturday evening, and came away with the impression that, without drink on board, it made for a fairly meaningless spectacle. The fog didn't help either.

Life in Ireland has changed dramatically from the days of abundant faith, high levels of religious practice and widespread acceptance of Church teaching. Of course, some of that was a sham loyalty to the Church had sometimes more to do with conforming socially than with transforming spiritually.

External faith was not always matched by inner hope. And the Church sometimes promoted its ideas in an authoritarian way, with a lot of emphasis on blind faith and adherence and considerably less stress on the persuasive power of love.

Not surprisingly, once the 1960s came and the rumour went out that all you needed was love, it was a message that was irresistible to many ears. People came to see faith as inappropriate to modern, rational minds. Hope was all about our aspirations for this world and lost its supernatural dimension.

But now we find that it's not so simple.

Perhaps neither hope nor love is possible without faith.

The recent comment of the ombudsman, Emily O'Reilly, that "it would be good if we recognised the new religions of sex and drink and shopping for what they are and tiptoed back to the churches" was an eloquent statement of the emptiness many people now see around them, and feel inside.

In a spiritual vacuum there is plenty of room for rising suicide rates, exploitative relationships, loutish behaviour in the streets, and a deepening of our national obsession with alcohol.

IT'S not just in our personal behaviour that the problem lies. Our public policy also reflects the sometimes soulless nature of modern Ireland. We have an immigration policy that allows children to get deported while still, allegedly, wearing their school uniforms.

Our Government abandons a much-trumpeted commitment to increase Irish aid spending in poorer countries to 0.7% of Gross National Product (GNP) by 2007. (Trócaire fears this broken promise will precipitate a reversal of similar commitments by other rich nations.)

And the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, charged with reducing the number of women who opt for abortion, instead calls for the legalisation of abortion in Ireland.

Each of those policy moves, in its own way, suggests that the Christian vision of society has receded somewhat, and that a more predatory, self-interested approach is taking its place.

The process is not irreversible and for each of the signs of cultural decay there is a corresponding indicator of recovery. The mobilisation of teachers and young people in solidarity with deported student Olunkunle Eluhanla from Palmerstown Community College was testimony to the innate decency of many Irish people.

In Britain, too, there are positive counter-signs, for example the Blair government's plan to prioritise the relief of poverty and economic stagnation in Africa as it presides over the G8 nations and, later in the year, the European Union.

The British also seem ready to rethink their barbarous state of affairs on abortion the procedure is available on demand during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, and with no time-limit at all if the unborn child has a disability such as a cleft palate. Religious leaders are to the fore in launching the challenge there.

Last week, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor welcomed the commitment of the Conservative party leader, Michael Howard, to row back the permitted time limit for abortions to 20 weeks.

He has been joined by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who says there is a 'groundswell of distaste' over British abortion laws.

What we are seeing here is renewed determination by Christian leaders to challenge the worse excesses of secular society and to put values of love and self-sacrifice on the agenda again.

And this is what Easter is all about. We may not celebrate it with the same gusto as we do Christmas, yet it is the most important Church season of all.

It is by faith that people believe Christ died on the cross so that people might enjoy eternal life. Faith in this unsparing expression of love inspires you to love your neighbour in turn.

This is why the Christian Church invites all people to mirror Christ in their personal lives and to promote, as far as possible, his values of love and self-sacrifice in the societies in which they live. Faith inspires love because it gives meaning to life.