St. Patrick
Cynthia O’Brien
Hebrews 11:32 – 12:3
On St. Patrick’s Day, people go to special church services, drink toasts and celebrate Ireland. Patrick’s name is found all over Ireland in the names of towns like Kirkpatrick, Downpatrick and Kilpatrick. Who was St. Patrick and why is he so important?
The book of Hebrews lists many saints. Here’s another story of one of those saints whose weakness turned to strength, who fixed his eyes on Jesus, who threw off everything that hindered him and ran with perseverance the race laid for him.
I’ve read a handful of accounts of St. Patrick, from the article in Butler’s Lives of the Saints to books like Edna Barth’s Shamrocks, Harps and Shillelaghs. You can also find St. Patrick on the internet and on The History Channel. I’m drawing on several resources and condensing some of them to put together this account for you.
Edna Barth explains how we get our information:
“Most of what is known about St. Patrick comes from his own Confession, written in his old age. In it there are few names and no dates. [However], the Confession does tell us a good deal about his thoughts and feelings. So as a person he is better known than most saints of those early years.
Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, but he was not Irish himself. He was born in around the year 385 in Scotland to a good family. All of Britain was under Roman rule at the time.
The Roman empire had conquered Britain back in the time of Christ. Many people were Christians living under Roman rule. They had Roman customs and Roman names. Patrick’s father worked for the Roman government. Although his father was a Christian deacon, it has been suggested that he probably took on the role because of tax incentives and there is no evidence that Patrick came from a particularly religious family. It is thought that Patrick’s name was originally Maewyn, but he was given the Roman name Patricius, which means well-born. He describes his young self as one who broke God’s commandments – a young man with a reckless disregard for God’s ways.
At the time Patrick was a boy, the Romans occupied Britain as part of the Roman Empire, but the Roman army was busy defending Rome from invaders and wasn’t looking after its holdings across the sea. Britain became an easy prey for raiders from Ireland. They sailed across the Irish sea and invaded farms, looting and taking about a thousand Englishmen as slaves. A band of Irish pirates captured Patrick’s family’s farm when Patrick was 16, kidnapped him and took him back to Ireland, where he was sold into slavery.
At that time there were very few Christians in Ireland. Most Irish people worshiped the sun, moon and stars. Their teachers were called Druids. The people were afraid of the Druids and let them have control, because they believed that the Druid priests understood all the mysteries of the world and could foretell the future.
Tradition says that Patrick worked for a tribal chieftain named Miliucc who made him take care of cattle and sheep in the fields. He was a slave, like Joseph in Egypt. He was a shepherd, like David. Lonely and afraid, he turned to his religion for comfort, becoming a devout Christian. He remembered breaking God’s commandments and not paying attention to priests who had tried to save him. He thought, “Perhaps God is giving me my well-deserved punishment.” During the long hours in the fields and hills, he found comfort in praying. He wrote later, “I said a hundred prayers by day and almost as many by night.”
After six years in slavery, Patrick had a dream in which God told him to return to England. A voice said, “The ship is ready for thee.” He believed this was God’s way of telling him to run away. He escaped his owner and headed for the coast, nearly 200 miles away, and when he got there, a ship was just ready to sail. Its cargo was Irish wolfhounds – hunting dogs. The ship was going to Gaul, which is now called France. The captain refused to let him on board, then changed his mind and made Patrick a member of the crew.
They sailed for three days and landed. But the area had been invaded and ruined. For nearly a month he and the other sailors wandered through a barren area. Some died from exhaustion and hunger. One day, when Patrick was praying for food, a herd of wild pigs came out of the woods. The sailors thought this was clearly a miracle, and that Patrick was a miracle-maker. They decided to keep Patrick as their slave. So he had to escape again.
Patrick now wanted to make up for the education that he lost while he was in Ireland. He studied for several years in Gaul, then went home to visit his family in England. But God had planned something better for [him]. Once he was there, he had a strange dream. Patrick says he heard “the voice of the Irish, crying as with one mouth, ‘Come hither and walk among us.’” He felt that this was God’s command that he should return to Ireland, to convert them to Christianity. But first he would prepare to do God’s work. He went to the monasteries of Europe to study further, for over 10 years. He was ordained deacon, then priest and finally bishop.
At this time, although the Roman empire was near collapse, the Christian church, based in Rome, was growing stronger. Missionaries were being sent out into other lands to spread the gospel.
In 431, the pope sent a bishop named Palladius to Ireland, but Palladius failed.
Patrick knew Irish manners, the customs and the language. He also had a deep desire to go there. So Patrick was sent to Ireland with a dual mission—to minister to Christians already living in Ireland and to begin to convert the Irish.
He prepared for success, packing gold and silver ornaments for the churches he would build, and taking along seamstresses who could make priests’ robes and hangings for the altars.
Patrick first landed in County Wicklow, south of what is now Dublin, and started preaching. He was driven out of town, just as Palladius had been. But he kept going north toward the home of Miliuc, his former master. When they finally reached it, they saw that it was on fire. No one knows how this happened, although one legend says that Miliuc had heard of Patrick’s arrival and about this powerful new religion. Rather than be put to shame by a former slave, he had set his house on fire and thrown himself into the flames.
Patrick was one of those like the ones spoken of in Hebrews, whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful.
He met a chieftain named Dichu who was already a Christian. Dichu gave him a wooden barn which became Patrick’s first church.
Butler records some highlights of Patrick’s mission:
In the first year of his mission, he attempted to preach Christ in the general assembly of the kings and states of all Ireland held yearly at Taraghe, the principal seat of the Druids and their paganish rites. The son of Neill, the chief monarch, declared himself against the preacher; however, he converted several, and afterwards baptized the Kings of Dublin and Munster, and the seven sons of the King of Connaught, and before his death almost the whole island.” [1]
He was famous throughout Ireland. Whenever he came to a new tribe, he preached to the chieftan and described Christianity. If the chieftain agreed to be baptized, the rest of the tribe usually did, too. Then Patrick would ask for land to build a church. He would mark off the church foundations with his staff, leave some monks behind to build the church, then move on.
Patrick was often nearly captured by savage tribes. He was in constant danger on his travels, but he trusted God for safety. His prayer says, “I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the Trinity … the host of heaven to be my guard.”
Once Patrick went to Tara, where the high kings of Ireland were seated. It was the beginning of the holiday called Beltane. Tradition said that all lights were put out throughout the land and no one could light a fire until king Lagohaire lit his fire on the hill of Tara. But Patrick’s campfire could be seen across the river. The king was outraged and went with some Druids to Patrick’s camp. The Druids were afraid of Patrick’s magic, and they advised the king not to enter the camp. Patrick preached to the king, and was unharmed.
The Druids were his worst enemies. Some of them cast spells on him and plotted to kill him. They worried that he would take away their power. But many Druids were impressed by Christianity and became Christians themselves, even Christian priests.
Since he was familiar with the Irish language and culture, Patrick could find ways of making the gospel understandable to the uneducated people. He did not insist that they give up all their native Irish beliefs, but chose to incorporate traditional ritual into his lessons of Christianity. For instance, the Irish were used to honoring their gods with fires in the spring, so he used bonfires to celebrate Easter. I learned on the History Channel website that the sun was a powerful Irish symbol, so Patrick superimposed it onto the Christian cross to create what is now called a Celtic cross, so that the symbol would seem more natural to the Irish. [2]
Patrick worked among the Irish for 30 or 40 years. He traveled to Armagh, and after baptizing the Armagh chieftain, he built a church on a hill called The Ridge of Willow. That town became his home, and that church was the center for all of Ireland. Students came from all over Europe to study with him.
Patrick baptized people everywhere he went, in streams, rivers and wells that today are still called “St. Patrick’s wells.” He also taught everyone the Roman alphabet so that they could read and write. Before Patrick came, Ireland had no written history. He brought the Bible and other sacred books in Latin. In the monasteries he built, monks copied books by hand, often decorating the pages in gold and colors. He liked the tales of Irish heroes, and especially enjoyed the poems of Caolite, an Irish bard, so Patrick ordered that the poems be written down for Irish people in the future.
Meanwhile, in much of Europe, fewer people learned to read and write Those books that were written were mostly of poor quality. Arts and crafts were being forgotten. Rome was crumbling. The Dark Ages was beginning. But Ireland kept Roman learning alive. It became known as the Island of Saints and Scholars. Today it is widely known that the Irish saved Western civilization by preserving books and Roman teaching. That could not have been possible if Patrick hadn’t brought reading and writing and books to Ireland. Patrick’s legacy is with us today.
It’s no wonder that the Irish and people in many other places set aside a day to celebrate St. Patrick. By the time of Patrick’s death, 80 percent of Ireland was Christian, supported by churches and schools and monasteries. An incredible legacy for a slave boy who cried out to God from among a flock of sheep.
(Heb 12:1-3 NIV) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. {2} Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. {3} Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
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