Today is Saint Patrick’s day so what better day to write about the man behind this day as compared to what it has become. As while many people celebrate Saint Patrick’s day with large parties, going all out with green clothing and alcoholic beverages associated with the Irish of beer, stout and whiskey often colored green and Irish Coffee, a mix of coffee, whiskey, sugar and cream. Along with the traditional throwing Lent out the window for the day, especially if falls on a Friday often refereed to as a “corned-beef indult”. Often to the point of insanity such as dying the Chicago river green every year for Saint Patrick’s day. Which in some ways is ironic considering that up until very recently it was a darker blue and not green that was most often associated with Saint Patrick as was found on older Irish flags.
So I ask what exactly are we celebrating today as Christians on Saint Patrick’s day? To which I believe the best answer is the legacy of a successful missionary who was in a sense an apostle to the Irish much like Paul was an apostle to the gentiles within the Roman Empire. Historically there are only two acceptable primary sources about Saint Patrick that have survived, a pair of letters in Latin that he wrote and gave a brief testimony about his life and call to ministry. From the first we learn that: “Patrick was born at Banna Venta Berniae. Calpornius, his father was a deacon, his grandfather Potitus a priest. When he was about sixteen, he was captured and carried off as a slave to Ireland. Patrick worked as a herdsman, remaining a captive for six years. He writes that his faith grew in captivity, and that he prayed daily. After six years he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he travelled to a port, two hundred miles away he says, where he found a ship and, after various adventures, returned home to his family, now in his early twenties” (wikipedia). In the second a few years after being home he recalls the following vision: “I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: “The Voice of the Irish”. As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.” (wikipedia) To which Patrick was faithful in setting out as a missionary to the very people who had previously kidnapped him as a child and made him a slave as a sign of radical forgiveness and obedience to Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies and to pray for those who persecute you. Converting and baptizing the masses, ordaining priests to serve in the new churches and becoming a bishop in Ireland. And the rest is history or should I say legend as we know that the Celtic Church arose and viewed Saint Patrick as its founder. The other stories such as Patrick using the shamrock or three leaf clover to teach about the trinity, the creation of the first Celtic cross and driving all snakes out of Ireland (possibly figurative for druids and their serpent symbols given the lack of evidence that there were ever snakes in Ireland) along with the collection of prayers credited to him may or may not be true. But what matters most is that he was a man who impacted the culture of Celtic Ireland enough that he was remembered as a worthy man to be associated with such things.
