March 17 Means More Than Green Beer

The man we call St. Patrick was born in Roman Britain around 385 as Maewyn Suc­cat. Two of his orig­i­nal let­ters sur­vive: his Con­fes­sio and his Epis­to­la ad Coroticum, the lat­ter being notable for mak­ing him, in Thomas Cahill’s words “the first human being in the his­to­ry of the world to speak out unequiv­o­cal­ly against slav­ery” (How The Irish Saved Civ­i­liza­tion, page 114).

At 16 he was cap­tured in a slave raid and tak­en to Ire­land where he was sold to a Druid chief­tain. For the next six years Patrick labored as a shep­herd.

Although Patrick was raised in a Chris­t­ian fam­i­ly, he had not tru­ly believed in Jesus. His slav­ery gave him time to reflect on life, and as he explained, “the Lord opened my mind to an aware­ness of my unbe­lief, in order that, even so late, I might remem­ber my trans­gres­sions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignif­i­cance and pitied my youth and igno­rance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even dis­tin­guished between good and evil, and he pro­tect­ed me, and con­soled me as a father would his son” (Con­fes­sio 2).

Patrick’s devo­tion to Christ inten­si­fied, “More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spir­it was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hun­dred prayers, and in the night a like num­ber; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the moun­tain and I would wake up before day­light to pray in the snow, in icy cold­ness, in rain, and I used to feel nei­ther ill nor any sloth­ful­ness, because, as I now see, the Spir­it was burn­ing in me at that time. And it was there of course that one night in my sleep I heard a voice say­ing to me: ‘You do well to fast: soon you will depart for your home coun­try.’ And again, a very short time lat­er, there was a voice proph­esy­ing: ‘Behold, your ship is ready.’” (Con­fes­sio 16–17).

After receiv­ing this vision, Patrick fled 200 miles to the coast and found a ship prepar­ing for a sea voy­age. He jour­neyed back to his home­land, expe­ri­enc­ing mirac­u­lous guid­ance and pro­vi­sion along the way.

After liv­ing at home for a few years Patrick had anoth­er vision, “I saw a man whose name was Vic­tori­cus com­ing as it from Ire­land with innu­mer­able let­ters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the begin­ning of the let­ter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’, and as I was read­ing the begin­ning of the let­ter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the for­est of Foclut which is near the west­ern sea, and they were cry­ing as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intense­ly in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke.” (Con­fes­sio 23)

So Patrick obe­di­ent­ly returned to Ire­land. As before, he was a slave. But this time he was a slave of Christ. His mis­sion to Ire­land brought fierce oppo­si­tion from the Irish Druids. He faced them with great faith: “Dai­ly I expect to be mur­dered or betrayed or reduced to slav­ery if the occa­sion aris­es. But I fear noth­ing, because of the promis­es of Heav­en; for I have cast myself into the hands of Almighty God, who reigns every­where.” (Con­fes­sio 55)

Even­tu­al­ly, tra­di­tion tells us, Patrick found him­self debat­ing the Druid lead­ers before an Irish king. The debate was ran­corous, and at one point the Druids began attack­ing the doc­trine of the Trin­i­ty. Patrick plucked a three-leaved clover and asked them whether it was one or three. The Druids had no answer, and this debate was piv­otal in per­suad­ing the king to con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty.

By the end of his life, Patrick had plant­ed over 700 church­es and trained around 1,000 min­is­ters. One third of the tribes of Ire­land became Chris­t­ian through his min­istry. He thus ranks as one of the great­est mis­sion­ar­ies in his­to­ry, and became known as the one who “found Ire­land all hea­then and left it all Chris­t­ian.”

If you want to learn more, you should read his Con­fes­sio – it’s only 62 vers­es long and is avail­able many places online (at the Chris­t­ian Clas­sics Ethe­re­al Library, at Robot Wis­dom, and at the Catholic Infor­ma­tion Net­work, to pick three).

And so remem­ber – St. Patrick’s Day is about far more than green beer and pinch­ing peo­ple. It’s about hon­or­ing one of the most effec­tive min­is­ters of all time.