The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick/The Life and Acts of St. Patrick/Chapter 171

Without Earthly Food the Saint completeth a Fast of Forty Days.

And that in Hibernia or in the other islands which had received his blessing no poisonous animal should continue or revive, nor the wonted troop of demons therein abide, the saint completed without earthly food a fast of forty days. For he desired to imitate in his mystical fast Moses, who was then bound by the natural law, or rather Elias the prophet, appointed under the law; but most principally desiring to please the great Founder of nature, the Giver of the law and of grace, Jesus Christ, who in Himself had consecrated such a fast. Therefore he ascended the high mountain in Conactia, called Cruachan-ailge, that he might there more conveniently pass the Lent season before the Passion; and that there, desiring and contemplating the Lord, he might offer unto Him the holocaust of this fast. And he disposed there five stones, and placed himself in the midst; and therein, as well in the manner of his sitting as in the mortification of his abstinence, showed he himself the servant of the cross of Christ. And there he sat solitary, raising himself above himself; yet gloried he only in the cross, which constantly he bore in his heart and on his body, and ceaselessly he panted toward his holy Beloved; and he continued and hungered in his body, but his inward man was satisfied, and filled, and wounded with the sweetness of divine contemplation, the comfort of angelic visitation, and the sword of the love of God: "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even unto the separation of the body and the spirit," wherewith the saint was wounded, even unto holy love.