The man we call St. Patrick is well worth our consideration, in spite of the fact that he was not an Irishman, did not drive the snakes out of Ireland (supposedly there never were any there), and may have never even seen a shamrock, much less used it to teach the doctrine of the Trinity. But some things that are true about Patrick's life can be useful to our own lives.

Patricius, for that is surely what his mother called him, was a Roman Briton, born in 385 A.D. in the town of Bannavem Taberniae, located somewhere in the western part of the island of Great Britain, perhaps near the Severn River. His parents were Christians and Roman citizens. His father was a deacon, and one of his grandfathers was a priest.

When Patrick was barely sixteen years old, he was captured by Irish marauders and carried off to County Antrim in Ireland, which was then completely pagan. There he tended sheep as a slave for six years. His constant companions were hunger and nakedness. Like many others in like circumstances, Patrick began to pray. He had never before paid attention to the teachings of the Christian religion. He later wrote in his testimony, called The Confession of St. Patrick, that he did not believe in God at the time and that he found priests foolish. On the cold mountainside, there was no one for Patrick to turn to but the God of his parents. In the process he became a Christian believer. After his conversion, he did not stop praying. As he put it later, "Tending flocks was my daily work, and I would pray constantly during the daylight hours. The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more--and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again, even while I remained in the woods or on the mountain."

At the end of six years, Patrick, in response to a voice in a dream, managed to escape and took a ship for Gaul, where, at length, he became a monk. In 413 he returned to his native Britain. After several years in his hometown, Patrick began to have other visions, all with the same theme. In one, a multitude of Irish people cried out, "We beg you to come and walk among us once more."

When he could hold out no longer, Patrick went to Gaul to seek a theological education to prepare him for his task as missionary to the Irish. This took twelve years. (And I thought I held the record for how long one could take to get out of graduate school!) By that time Patrick was not only a priest but an archbishop as well. He returned to Ireland in 431 and soon set up his headquarters at Tara, seat of the high king of the many Irish tribes.

Patrick made many converts during his thirty-year ministry among the Irish, although he suffered "many dangers, toils, and snares" in the process. That his evangelizing efforts were so successful is not surprising to those who have read Patrick's Confession. In it, the saint's love for the Irish shines through. The people in general responded positively to Patrick's message as much or more because he was a decent loving person as for the words he spoke.

Patrick worried constantly about the welfare of his adopted Irish people, and this included their physical as well as spiritual welfare. The horror of slavery was never lost on him. At the time many people were held in bondage in Ireland. The missionary worked hard to persuade those who owned other persons to set them free. Patrick was one of the first human beings in the history of the West to speak out unequivocably against slavery. And his efforts were not without effect. Within his lifetime, or at least soon after his death in 461, the Irish slave trade came to a halt. Not only that, other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal warfare, decreased.

There is a contrast in the attitude of Patrick and that of another contemporary Christian leader, St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. Augustine looked into his heart and the hearts of people and saw the anguish of sin. Patrick looked into his heart and then made his peace with a God who unconditionally loved him. As a result, when he looked into the pagan hearts of Irish men and women, he foresaw what the love of God could do for them. Slave traders could turn into liberators, murderers could act as peacemakers, barbarians could take their places as noble members of the family of God.

In his missionary work, Patrick did not try to force the Irish to stop being Irish and become Romans instead, as had been expected of most other barbarian converts elsewhere. Rather, he took the wonderful imagination of the Irish and made it more humane and noble.

There is a prayer attributed to the great Irish saint called "The Shield of Patrick." In its present form, it may be more recent than Patrick's era, but it surely takes its inspiration from him.

Here is an excerpt from it.

"Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me."
Amen.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws