These are the words of city-centre Dublin people. They may be used to describe a Garda, a priest, the community nurse or a local bank manager. They are usually heard within earshot of the person they are directed at. It is an individual’s, or a community’s, way of saying that they accept you. I remember during my first week in a city parish, I shared a few moments in conversation with some local women. Just as I left them, and thinking I had impressed them with my competence, I overheard one of them say, ‘Ah God love him, he’s only a chiseller’*. Maybe I was meant to hear these words! A way of saying ‘he’s one of our own’.
When I look at statues or portraits of Saint Patrick, I often think he has truly been made ‘one of our own’. Green clothing, clutching a shamrock with maps of Ireland etched in the background; he truly is one of us. Our hearts swell with pride when we walk the cities of the world and find cathedrals named in his honour: ‘one of our own’, and look at his impact.
Saint Patrick is so emblazoned with symbols of his Irishness that we forget he was an immigrant to Ireland. Not unlike the Holy Family and many families today, he was an undocumented migrant, a refugee, a slave, a member of a diaspora and a returnee. Yet somehow, he transcended all of these categories and made himself ‘one of us’.
Your enemy is not the refugee; your enemy is the one who made them a refugee. – Tariq Ramadan
*Dublin slang meaning ‘child’.