The New Irishmen

"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark. Rome is the light."
- Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator (2000)

More than 1,400 years ago, the Roman Church, seeing that the Faith was waning in its former strongholds in Western Europe, tapped a most unusual human resource to bring the light back to its darkening corners.

These were the Irish monks, faithful men who lived at the very margins of the known world. From their grim corners, they were summoned to bring the faith they brought to the farthest corners of Europe back to the wavering center. It was these Irishmen who would reinvigorate the Church in Gaul, as well as evangelize the vicious Germanic tribes and the ferocious Vikings.

You know what tamed this man-beast? A skinny Irish guy in a brown robe...

Seeing as history is prone to repeating itself, Christendom finds itself once more in the same situation. The Faith is faltering at the center. When one tries to look for religious Europeans on Google, one is immediately confronted with this:


So, where does the Pope draw the people needed to take back the strongholds of the Faith? The same places his ancestor drew upon when confronted with the same situation: the farthest corners of Christendom itself.

The Filipinos, who stand at the geographical margins of the Christian world, are the new missionaries.

Our methods are different though. Where the Irishmen sent monks from the farthest isles, we send nurses, laborers and domestic helpers. As sad as that may seem at first, it is actually the reason we are so effective. In places where monks are more likely to be spat at or turned from the door, domestic helpers are in demand. Where monks and nuns once trod, there are now nurses, whose own uniforms were inspired by those of the religious orders who began the Western tradition of the hospital. (Although I'm still waiting for doctors who dress up as Knights Hospitaller. That would be so bad-ass.)

There are already many stories of Filipino domestic helpers bringing entire families of fallen-away Christians back to church in Italy, the heart of the Roman Church. Like the early Christian slaves who evangelized their masters, they start with the children, and eventually even the parents join in.

But for me, the most visible mark of the Filipino influence in the revitalization of Christendom comes in the cultural hallmarks we bring with us that the host countries adopt, much like how the stern practices of Irish monks came to influence European monasticism.

Here, I present Simbang Gabi in the US.

What is surprising about the story is that it is not just the Filipino suburbs and strongholds in places like Hawaii and California that are adopting the practice. Simbang Gabi has gone completely mainstream in the American church, with parishes in every major archdiocese participating. They even started the practice in Anchorage, capital of the state of Alaska. How many Filipinos do you know went to Alaska?

They even added in touches of their own, such as that ceremony where they lower the parols from the roof to be blessed on the first Simbang Gabi.



I think it is part of the genius of Heaven that, poor as we are, we are given a chance to give back from the blessings we have received. Great is the God in Heaven who invite even the least of His children to the building of His great house.

We are the new Irishmen. We drink, we fight, we sing a lot. And we, the saltiest of the salt of the earth, are the hope of Christendom. Rome is the light, and we, among the least of the Romans, are now among its greatest torchbearers.