St Patrick - Patron Saint of Ireland

St Patrick's Day March 17th

Almost all we truly know about Patrick comes from two short documents that he wrote. These are the only written accounts that exist from that time. These two documents are Patrick's Confession and his "Letter to Coroticus." The Confession, recounts his own call to convert the Irish and attempts to justify his mission to an unsympathetic British audience. And the "Letter to Coroticus," who is apparently an Irish warlord whom Patrick was forced to excommunicate, illustrates some of Patrick's prowess as a preacher but doesn't tell us much else.

What we do know about Patrick is that he was born Patricius somewhere in Roman Britain to a relatively wealthy family. Although some believe he was born near Dumbarton close to Glasgow on the banks of the River Clyde in what is now known as the Kilpatrick Hills. His gaelic name was Padraig, but the Romans made citizens of all their conquered races and gave them Roman names. He was not religious as a youth and claims to have renounced the faith of his family.

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Patrick was kidnapped, when he was in his teens, by Irish marauders. He was transported to Ireland, where he was enslaved to a local warlord and worked as a shepherd until he escaped six years later. When he returned home and he eventually undertook studies for the priesthood with the intention of returning to Ireland as a missionary to his former captors.

Though Patrick's writings tell us little in terms of names and dates, they do reveal much about Patrick the man, especially his humility and his strength. Patrick was so certain that he had been specifically called by God to do exactly what he did return to the land of his captivity and convert the barbarians to Christianity that his Confession leaves even the modern reader little room for doubt. In this certainty, Patrick finds his strength sufficient, in fact, to overcome every obstacle he will encounter in the remaining years of his life.

The first obstacle was his education. The six years Patrick was enslaved in Ireland put him permanently behind his peers in terms of his classical education. His Latin would always be poor. Later in life when he used Latin less frequently, it was practically unintelligible at times. Despite the fact that Patrick would be self-conscious about his literary limitations to the end of his days, he was not uneducated. One suspects, however, that he was primarily self-educated.

Had he never been kidnapped, it seems quite likely that it would have been decades, probably centuries, before Ireland was converted.

Not surprisingly, his own experience in captivity left Patrick with a virulent hatred of the institution of slavery, and he would later become the first human being in the history of the world to speak out against it. In fact, although he is renowned as the patron saint of the country and the people he evangelized, a better advocate than Patrick cannot be found for anyone disadvantaged or living on the fringes of society.

Women find a great advocate in Patrick. Unlike his contemporary, St. Augustine, to whom actual women seemed more like personifications of the temptations of the flesh than persons, Patrick's Confession speaks of women as individuals.

As recounted in the Confession, most of the major events in Patrick's life are preceded by a dream or vision. The visions were usually simple, almost self-explanatory, but they were also very vivid and carried enormous emotional impact with Patrick.

The first vision, which he received after six years of servitude in Ireland, came by way of a mysterious voice, heard in his sleep. "Your hungers are rewarded: You are going home," the voice said. "Look, your ship is ready." Indeed, some 200 miles away, there it was. (Patrick was nothing if not tenacious.)

The second vision, the one that came to him after he'd returned home and that called him back to Ireland, was equally straightforward. Victoricus, a man Patrick knew in Ireland, appeared to him in this dream, holding countless letters, one of which he handed to Patrick. The letter was entitled "The Voice of the Irish." Upon reading just the title, he heard a multitude of voices crying out to him: "Holy boy, we beg you to come and walk among us once more." He was so moved by this that he was unable to read further and woke up.

But the dream recurred again and again. Eventually Patrick tells his family of his plans to return to evangelize Ireland and soon begins his preparations for the priesthood. What is interesting about this dream calling Patrick to his lifelong mission to the Irish is that it comes not as a directive from God, but as a plea from the Irish.

When he finally returns to Ireland, he proceeds to treat the barbarians with the respect implicit in his dream. From the outset, Patrick feels humbled and honored that God has selected him to convert the Irish. Apparently he never doubted that he would be able to do so.

By the time of his death, or shortly thereafter, "the Irish stopped slave trading and they never took it up again." Human sacrifice had become unthinkable. And although the Irish never stopped warring on one another, "war became much more confined and limited by what we might call the 'rules of warfare.'

In fact, Patrick's success couldn't have been more permanent. Not only had he accomplished what he'd set out to do, convert the nation to Christ, but in the process he'd retrieved from obscurity the primary objective set by Christ for his apostles: the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

The inadvertent results of his conversion of Ireland, however, were equally astonishing and long-lasting.

First, it is Patrick's conversion of Ireland that makes possible the preservation of Western thought through the early Dark Ages by the Irish monasteries founded by Patrick's successors. When the lights went out all over Europe, a candle still burned in Ireland. That candle was lit by Patrick.

Second, by converting the Irish pagans to Christianity without making any attempt to romanize them as well, he founded a new kind of Church, one that was both Catholic and primitive.

Third, with Patrick's introduction of Christianity to Ireland, the faith was introduced for the first time into a culture free of the sociopolitical baggage of Greco-Roman civilization. Prior to Patrick's gift of the faith to Ireland, to be Christian was to be Roman, or at least to be a product of Roman civilization.

Finally, Patrick gave the Irish himself, knowingly, willingly, joyfully, proudly. He did this despite the fact that, even at the end of his life, he knew you couldn't change people overnight.

But change them he eventually did. And the example of his life, his courage, his intelligence, his compassion and his incredible, indomitable faith, made the lives of all Catholics, even those living 1,500 years later, just a little easier.

There is an old legend that promises that on the last day, though Christ will judge all the other nations, it will be St. Patrick sitting in judgment on the Irish.

This is excerpted from an Article by: Anita McGurn McSorley, associate editor of The Leaven, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas.
http://www.americancatholic.org/Messenger/Mar1997/feature1.asp