Feast day: March 17

St. Patrick

Bishop, Apostle of Ireland · c. 385–461

Patron of Ireland, engineers, against snakes

Kidnapped from Britain and enslaved in Ireland at 16, he escaped — then chose to return as a missionary to the people who had enslaved him.

Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the late fourth or early fifth century, the son of a deacon and grandson of a priest, into a Christian but not especially devout family. In his own writings — the 'Confession' and the 'Letter to Coroticus,' the only certainly genuine documents we have from him — he tells how, at about sixteen, he was seized by Irish raiders, carried across the sea, and sold into slavery, spending six years tending flocks in the cold and loneliness of the Irish hills.

It was in that captivity that the careless boy became a man of deep prayer. He escaped at last, guided, he believed, by God, walked some two hundred miles to a ship, and made his way home to Britain. But in a dream he heard 'the voice of the Irish' calling him to come back and walk among them again — and so, after years of study and preparation for the priesthood on the Continent, he returned to the very land of his slavery as a bishop and missionary.

Patrick's mission, traditionally dated from 432, carried Christianity across Ireland. He confronted local kings and druids, baptized great numbers, ordained clergy, and encouraged monastic life, planting a faith that would make Ireland a beacon of learning and send its own missionaries back across Europe in the centuries to come.

Much that is popularly told of him — that he drove the snakes from Ireland, or used the shamrock to explain the Trinity — belongs to later legend rather than his own sober writings. But those writings reveal something rarer than legend: a humble, grateful man who never forgot that he had been a slave and a sinner, and who ascribed everything to the grace of God. He died, by tradition on March 17, and is honored as the apostle and patron of Ireland.

Patrick wasn't Irish. He was a Roman Briton who went back, voluntarily, to the land of his enslavement to bring it the Gospel.

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me.”
— St. Patrick

Image: Nheyob (CC BY-SA 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm