"Again a few years later I was in Britain with my kinsfolk, and they welcomed me as a son and asked me earnestly not to go off anywhere and leave them this time, after the great tribulations which I had been through. And it was there that I saw one night in a vision a man coming to Ireland (his name was Victoricus), with countless letters; and he gave me one of them, and I read the heading of the letter, 'The Voice of the Irish,' and as I read these opening words aloud I imagined at that very instant that I heard the voice of those who were beside the forest of Fochut which is near the western sea, and thus they cried, as though with one voice: 'We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.'
And I was stung with remorse in my heart and could not read on, and so I awoke. Thanks be to God, that after so may years the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry. And another night (I do not know, God knows, whether it was within me or beside me), I was addressed in words which I heard and yet could not understand, except that at the end of the prayer He spoke thus: 'He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you,' and so I awoke, overjoyed. And again I saw him praying within me and I was, as it were, inside my own body, and I heard him above me, that is to say above my inner self, and he was praying there powerfully and groaning; and meanwhile I was umbfounded and astonished and wondered who it could be that was praying within me, but at the end of the prayer he spoke an said that he was the Spirit, and so I awoke and remembered the apostle's words: 'The Spirit helps the weaknesses of our prayer, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unspeakable groans which cannot be expressed in words.'"
St. Patrick, Confessio, describing his vocation to go to Ireland
Comments