My good friend, Audrey, gave me a book for my birthday awhile back about St. Patrick (since my birthday is on March 17th, clever girl). I was reading in it about the baptism of King Aengus by St. Patrick in the mid 5th century. Sometime during the rite as he moved in close to the King to pray, the elderly St Patrick placed his sharp pointed walking staff on the King’s foot and leaned on it. It punctured his foot going nearly through to the ground. Patrick kept leaning and praying and the King kept silent. When it was over, Patrick looked down, saw blood everywhere, and was shocked by what had happened. He realized what he had done and begged the King’s forgiveness. “Why did you suffer this pain in silence?” the saint wanted to know. The king replied, “I thought it was part of the ritual.” Two things I get from this story. First, pain isn’t always part of the ritual. Second, sometimes pain is inflicted without deliberate intention. There are a lot of other things that come to mind such as the importance of communication, a spiritually significant event being clouded by an accidental offense, and the possiblity that the king felt some sort of royal nobility in his ability to remain composed through such an ordeal. He may have acted as he thought a king should act, proudly defiant of the pain. So much to consider and so much to learn.