St David’s Day is a day for celebration of our national identity, and rightly so. But, this year especially, we give thanks for the Christian heritage that our patron saint bequeathed to us at a time when so many others across the world are struggling – dying even – to win the freedoms that we take for granted.
The current upheavals in northern Africa demonstrate all too starkly the importance that people of all races and creeds place on their ability to express their nationality, their faith, themselves. Here in Wales, those battles were fought and won long ago. But in all too many other parts of our world, the struggles continue.
Nowhere is this more so than in the Holy Land, to which I returned last month after forty years. Our band of pilgrims – following in St David’s footsteps – were deeply moved by the realisation that so little has changed for our Christian brothers and sisters, for whom peace and self-determination remain as elusive as ever.
History tells us that those who seek to deny basic human rights, such as the pursuit of faith, do not prevail in the long run. But those rights are seldom achieved easily, as the early Christians discovered as they sought to spread the Word.
So, as we commemorate our patron saint, and re-affirm our own sense of national pride, let us spare a thought – and offer a prayer – for those less fortunate and less free than ourselves.
