Saint Patrick s Day

I am sitting on the hands of God
And I'm reading the Lenten Triodion,
So that devil couldn’t torture us
For Christ suffered to save us beforehand,

How He wishes all of us salvation,
All we need is to approach God,
When misapprehension is rejected
Then Communion mind will overflow.

And today is also - the St. Patrick.
To America I send hello,
To the heir of the righteous Irish,
Educated by the convent church

In the northern and warm Minnesota.
I pray for us and for the whole world.
God will pierce everyone with virtuos
Righteous and high love of superforce.


***
But there is a downside to St. Patrick's Day and it is much bigger than one day - it has to do with drinking too much alcohol, and looking for excuses to justify it. St. Paul has a very large Irish American population and they turned the saint's day into a wild, unhinged drinking spree. It's one thing to savor alcohol - in moderation - it's quite another thing to drink to excess and then keep drinking.And encouraging others to do so - because it's St. Pat's Day.
 The annual St. Patrick's Parades in cities with a large Irish American population were scandalous. Public intoxication was condoned for that day, but excess should be stopped. And in the 1990s St. Patrick's Day,
this wanton drinking was stopped, and guess what? No one objected. Even the drinkers realized it had become intolerable. Nowadays the day is focused on Irish American contributions to American society,
and Irish soda bread and Irish eggs more evident than Irish whiskey. What the Irish brought to American culture was a fierce commitment to helping the needy and making government serve the people's interests. The English, to their shame, treated Ireland like their possession, and kept the Irish people ignorant and subservient.They forced the Irish to give up their language Gaelic and speak the language of their conquerors. That's why so many Irish immigrated to America. When government officials told Queen Victoria that the Irish were starving due to a famine and did not even have bread to eat, she replied, "Let them eat cake." That is both insulting and cruel. "Cake" is dessert not food, and people who can't afford simple bread can't afford cake. But the Queen, who should have been a moral leader, let the Irish starve; she offered no help. That is why IrishAmerican politicians in the U. S. have always advocated social welfare programs which help the poor and weak. And they have persuaded our whole country that government should HELP THEIR CITIZENS, not ignore their crises. There are no more sick jokes like "Let them eat cake." Now government agencies are the first to provide services to the needy, whether the cause is economic or Nature or war, the government gives comfort and resources. And so St. Patrick, who came to save souls, also started a tradition of people helping people, government  giving aid, people seeing the whole population as one. It's been a long journey to Justice, we aren't there yet, but we keep striving for a just society. It's in the best spirit of St. Patrick's Day to say everyone is Irish, but let that
be a day of sobriety so that all people will be treated with kindness and hope will be alive in every heart. That will make St Patrick rejoice that his sacrifices and virtues have triumphed.

***
Elizaveta, this poem moves me deeply. It is succinct and triumphant, very appropriate in Lent because it is concrete proof that hard times will not last, and Easter Sunday will liberate us. In the first stanza " I am sitting on the hands of God." That is startling image, and shows from your first two lines this poem celebrates the success of Jesus's mission. There is both a foreground aspect to this poem, and a background aspect.  The foreground involves the Speaker in a quiet intimacy with God. Many poets - and artists- have focused on the hands of God, a familiar trope in Christian poetry. God's hands protect us, carry gifts to us, tend the gardens of HeavenAnd perhaps most significantly God's hands molded the clay that  became Adam, the first human being. Perhaps at some future time God's hand will point the way forward for us. The hand of God has
creative powers and in the Sistine Chapel his hand is poised to infuse divine life into humanity, just created.  And God shelters Eve under his arms, because she is not yet needed for the Eden story. So God's hands
are symbolic of his divine authority and creativity. This paragraph I just wrote is top heavy with information, but I wanted to show how much Christian truth is embedded in your brief but shining words.
The third and fourth lines of the opening quatrain  emphasize two goals of Christ's Incarnation: to eliminate Satan's power over us humans, and to assert God's cosmic authority. Because of Jesus's passion and death
redeem humanity, the only barrier to salvation is internal. That is, our individual sins keep us from salvation. If we choose God, nothing can break the bond that establishes between God and an individual person.
The battleground is now the human soul. 

You write each soul must overcome the world's false allure  and the devil's lies, and thereby dispel anything that keeps it from a full affirmation in God's Kingdom, of which all of us have a portion if we choose rightly, or righteously. You call these last barriers "misapprehension."   We do not have to fight again the Battle of Heaven and defeat Satan once and for all. No, the total victory of God is later event in Providence. What is
 required of us is that each of us APPROACHES GOD   Then it's as if God stretches forth His Hand and pulls us into His favor. You call this process the "Communion Mind," it is a wonderful concept to bring your poem to a climax, a spiritual climax of the triumph of good over evil.

The Communion Mind suggests so many positive things. The word "communion" means our human mind is now linked to the divine mind. It means at very least the soul that chooses God is a fortress evil cannot infiltrate or damage. Just as receiving the Eucharist in a church service purges the individual soul on earth and gives him or her the necessary spiritual strength and aid, because God is within that soul, so the community of Christianity is purged, blessed and redeemed. You write the Communion mind will "overflow," that is the goodness of individuals means the goodness of the world swells and swells until the whole world is blessed. Your metaphor points to condition of Creation after God's plan (Providence) is fulfilled, and it is a kind of prophecy of how thoroughly we will be changed  into God's People. citizens of Heaven and a redeemed Earth. But that is a cosmic future still shrouded in Mystery. Your poem takes us further along that path towards the fulfillment of divine Providence.

Your closing three lines are a prayer of utmost certitude in faith. It illustrates the Communion Mind focused on God's cosmic truths and authority. I wrote these three luminous lines on a note card and tapped it above my desk.  It is a beacon of Light, the presence of the Truth, a homecoming, the fulfillment of the Communion Mind.