St. Patrick's Day

As usual, St. Patrick's Day comes in the middle of Lent for me.  I give myself permission to put aside any Resolutions I made for the Lenten 40 days.  If I decided I would deepen my silence and quiet my tongue during Lent, then today I will be noisy with telling everyone about being Irish.  I have Grandparents from the Ole Country.  I won't try for any Irish food, since I cannot think of any that I really like.  My parents liked Irish Soda Bread and ate corn beef and cabbage but I like neither.  And I don't drink.   Today, I will pray in gratitude for all the Irish friends we had in our time in the Bronx when I was a boy.  But I am also grateful that we are not so clannish as we used to be when to marry an Italian Catholic was looked down upon, though if you married an Italian girl you got a great cook.  Now if you married Protestant, well, you burn, unless of course they convert.  Times have changed, but we still have St.Patrick's Day.  And sobriety.