It is the custom, when heads of state visit one another, to exchange gifts with due ceremony in honor of the occasion.

Such gifts usually carry cultural, diplomatic, or historic significance.

What, then, did Mr Trump make of being handed a copy of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis by President Catherine Connolly during his stopover in Dublin, on the way to his golf course in County Clare?

A legendary Irish journey

What is the Navigatio anyway? It is one of Ireland’s best-loved stories about one of her best-loved saints: how St Brendan set off with a company of monks in search of the Promised Land of the Saints, and the extraordinary adventures they met along the way.

On one occasion, they land on an island, light a fire to cook, and find the land swimming away beneath them—it is a whale.

Beyond the fantastical adventure, the story is a cleverly constructed framework of the monastic cycle of prayer, observed wherever the sea takes them.

Pointed diplomatic presents

Diplomatic gifts often carry an underlying point.

Consider the ship’s bell King Charles gave Mr Trump on his visit to the United States: the significance was lost on no one except the recipient.

Would he find more in the Navigatio? Let us look a little closer.

Searching for promised lands

The monks were searching for a Promised Land.

Mr Trump’s presidency has been one long search for lands he seems to believe were promised to him: Venezuela, Greenland, Canada.

Yet Brendan’s aim was not annexation, conquest, or invasion—it was to find the presence of God and enter it in peace.

Prayer was the very essence of the voyage.

The monks kept a daily, monthly, and yearly rhythm of devotion, observed the times and seasons, and tried to keep God’s commandments faithfully. A monk who failed was duly punished.

Sent home without deeds

And here is the detail Mr Trump may like least: after seven years of wandering, Brendan’s monks finally reach the Promised Land.

They are allowed forty days to explore it—and are then sent home, because it is not theirs to keep. It will be revealed to their successors in God’s good time.

A seven-year journey to the Promised Land, forty days to admire it, and sent home without a deed: for a guest in perpetual search of lands to acquire, President Connolly could hardly have chosen a finer gift.

• Patricia Rumsey is the Abbess of a Poor Clare monastery. She has an MA and a PhD in Theology from the University of Wales, Lampeter, UK. She has written and published on liturgy and early Irish monasticism and has lectured in England, Ireland and Scandinavia.