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St. Patrick preaching to the Kings of Ireland. * The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland by Fr. William Bullen Morris, 1890
"The man of God, Patrick, was marvellously
favoured with heavenly visions and revelations
in prayer. 'When,' says his biographer,
'he every day in the Mass sacrificed the Son to the
Father, or devoutly recited the Apocalypse of
St. John, it was granted to him to see the
heavens opened, and Jesus standing surrounded
by a multiude of angels; and whilst he meditated
on these great visions his soul was altogether
lost in God.' Three times in the week the
angel Victor visited and conversed with him,
filling his soul with celestial consolations. The
labours of the day amongst men seem to have
been less arduous than those of the night with
God. He divided his time, so that in the first
part of the night he recited a hundred Psalms,
making at the same time two hundred genuflections;
the second part he spent immersed in the water of
some cold spring, keeping heart, eyes, and hands
lifted up to heaven until he had finished the
other fifty Psalms. After this he gave the short
time that remained to sleep, lying on a rock, with
a stone for a pillow, while the rough haircloth
which he wore macerated his body even in his
sleep.
"This is really the prodigious part of St. Patrick's life. We are not surprised that God should give power over nature to a man who had such power over himself, and we are therefore prepared for the statement that the working of miracles was of almost daily occurrence with him, that he gave sight to the blind and speech to the dumb, cured all manner of diseases, and raised thirty-three persons from the dead in the name of the Holy Trinity."--pages 252 - 253.
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