Who was St. Patrick?
St. Patrick – The Apostle of Ireland, powerfully portrayed by Patrick Bergen!
A Prayer of St. Patrick:
May the strength of God guide us, may the power of God preserve us, may the wisdom of God instruct us, may the hand of God protect us, may the way of God direct us, may the shield of God defend us, may the angels of God guard us against the snares of the evil one, against the temptations of the world, may Christ be with us, may Christ be before us, may Christ be in us. Christ be over all. May thy grace, Lord, always be ours this day, O Lord, and forever more. Amen
Be Thou My Vision, one of the United Kingdom’s most popular hymns, was written by a blind poet in the 6th Century. Whenever possible, his own words from The Confessio of St. Patrick have been quoted. Following is what appears to be an accurate retelling of the Legacy of St. Patrick. . .
St. Patrick came into this world when the Roman Empire was crumbling, turmoil reigned, war and violence permeated the culture. Barbarians, Goths and Attila the Hun leaving their trademark: devastation, famine, and death behind, after attacking, ravishing, and plundering towns and cities. It was a dark world 386 years after the birth of Christ when St. Patrick was born into a wealthy family of clergymen in Britain. God sent him to Ireland where he would be used to transform the Celtic pagans and Druid priests into believers, and ultimately reach the western world with the Word of God.
Kidnapped at the age of 16, Patrick and thousands of others were taken to Ireland. Why? In Patrick’s words, “we had gone away from God, and did not keep His commandments.” God used him to transform this island of savages and pagans into the island of saints and scholars, the island of salvation. Ireland was about as far away from the center of Christianity as one could go, protected by the Hand of God, set apart by God for His purposes. Now God has made the man He would use to bring His light to this island, and indeed, the entire western world. He begins preparing Patrick for the task by putting him to work as a slave for a Druid priest. It was here that he learned to trust God and to pray. He writes about this time of his life In “The Confessio of St. Patrick”:
After I came to Ireland—every day I had to tend sheep, and many times a day I prayed—the love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night. . .
After six years tending sheep for the Druid priest, the Spirit of God was burning within him. A dream of a voice came to him saying,
“Very soon you will return to your native country.” Again, after a short while, I heard someone saying to me: “Look – your ship is ready.” It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years. It was in the strength of God that I went – God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.
The penalty for a run-away slave was death. Patrick had no fear for he had learned to trust the dreams and visions he had become accustomed to (Ac. 2:17). When he found the ship, the captain was unpleasant and angry, “Don’t you dare try to come with us.” Upon hearing this, Patrick turned to God in prayer and “before I even finished the prayer, I heard one of them shout aloud to me: “’Come—we’ll trust you’. . . They were pagans and I hoped they might come to faith in Jesus Christ. This is how I got to go with them, and we set sail right away.”
After three days, their ship reached land where they wandered without food in the wilderness for 28 days. Patrick writes about this time:
The captain turned to me and said: “What about this, Christian? You tell us that your God is great and all-powerful – why can’t you pray for us, since we’re in a bad state with hunger? There’s no sign of us finding a human being anywhere!” Then I said to them with some confidence: “Turn in faith with all your hearts to the Lord my God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that he may put food in your way – even enough to make you fully satisfied! He has an abundance everywhere.” With the help of God, this is actually what happened! A herd of pigs appeared in the way before our eyes! They killed many of them and there they remained for two nights, and were fully restored, and the dogs too were filled. Many of them had grown weak and left half-alive by the way. After this, they gave the greatest of thanks to God, and I was honoured in their eyes. From this day on, they had plenty of food.
Patrick makes it back home safe with his family in Britain when he has another dream calling him back to Ireland. At the age of 46, after 22 years studying to become a bishop, Patrick sets sail for Ireland. He will travel throughout the country baptizing thousands of people and planting hundreds of churches for the next 30+ years until God calls him home on March 17, 461 AD.
Thomas Cahill, Irish historian, writes:
Only this former slave had the right instincts to impart to the Irish a new story, one that made sense of all their old stories and brought them a peace they had never known before. Because of Patrick, a Barbarian land lay down the swords of battle, flung away the knives of sacrifice, and cast away the chains of slavery.
Nowhere in the history of Christianity is there so clear an instance of the Christian transformation of a pagan culture, with so little influence by the culture that brought the Christian message. (See article on the Influence of the Celtic Church.)
Upon arrival in Ireland, Patrick’s first order of business: share Christ with the man who had enslaved him for six years. This was not good news for Milcho, a savage Druid priest who only knew of revenge and barbarianism. When he learned that Patrick was back in Ireland and on his way to meet him, he gathered his belongings, set his house on fire, and committed suicide, preferring to die by his own hand and not that of his former slave. When Patrick learned of this, he wept bitterly over Milcho’s lost soul.
Patrick’s first missionary effort failed. It is Easter Eve and Patrick sets out to light a paschal fire on Slane Hill, challenging King Laeghaire’s pagan gods. On this night, no light or candle is allowed until the king’s fire is lit by the Druid priests. Death, the penalty. Elijah meets with a similar situation in I Kings 18 when he challenges the prophets of Baal with fire on Mt. Carmel. “If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal, follow him” (I Ki. 18:21).
It came to pass, at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel and I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that You are the Lord God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” (I Ki. 18:37-39)
Similarly, St. Patrick lights a blazing bonfire in honor of Jesus Christ. The King is livid. One of his Druids warns, “Unless that fire is extinguished, it will spread throughout all of Ireland and your kingship will be weakened.” The king orders death for the defiant bishop. To the king’s dismay, many of his subjects who intended to murder Patrick are converted to Christianity on their way to execute him. It has been said that when their would-be captors reach the blazing fire, Patrick and his followers are transformed into a gentle doe and 20 fawns descending the hill, making their way to the King. Fully aware that an ambush lay in wait for them, they begin to sing The Cry of the Deer:
Fuming and bewildered, the king is dumbfounded when he sees Patrick standing before him. It is said that as Patrick approached King Laeghaire, he sang the Psalm, “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will call on the name of the Lord our God.” Only one member of the king’s party approached Patrick, was blessed by him, and converted to Christianity. Like the prophets of Baal, the king’s prophets boasted of powers that were subdued by the True God of Israel. The King’s anger raged as they drew their swords to slay the man of God. Patrick drew the sword of the Word and proclaimed, “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; let those also who hate Him flee before Him” (Ps. 68). Without warning, the pagans turned their swords against each other. The queen, watching the event, becomes a believer. Though unwilling to accept the God of the Bible, King Laeghaire gives Patrick permission to preach throughout Ireland—with his protection!
God used the king to proclaim His message of salvation to the people of Ireland just as He used King Cyrus to proclaim God’s Word to Israel.St. Patrick did live a long, successful life until his death, presumably of natural causes, on March 17, 486.
Skellig Michael, St. Columba and the Iona Monastery, known for the preservation of hand-written biblical manuscripts, are the direct results of the work of St. Patrick. It is here that the Book of Kells was created, an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels, Ireland’s finest national treasure, visited by over 500,000 people each year. Described by The Annals of Ulster as “the most precious object of the Western world.
The legacy of St. Patrick, God’s willing servant: the salvation message that spread throughout Ireland, into Europe, and the entire western world. Evangelists and missionaries sprang up from the good soil where St. Patrick sowed the seeds of faith. Some converts to Christianity sailed back to Britain and Europe where they spread the Gospel message. The English Common Law, rooted in the message. Nurtured, pruned, and cultivated, then transplanted to America where this message became the roots of a country God had protected until He had prepared a people 1200 years later. A pilgrim who would sow seeds in the fertile soil of Scripture that had embedded itself in the lives of her Founding Fathers. America, “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
When he heard the voice of the Lord asking, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Patrick replied, “Here am I, send me.”
Patrick was the man God used to reach Ireland. A teenage Brit, kidnapped slave, and sheepherder for a Druid priest who became evangelist to Ireland. In his lifetime, he baptized 120,000 people and planted 300 churches, Christianizing the pagan islands of Ireland. For 100 years after St. Patrick’s death, students came from all over the world to study at Ireland’s Christian monasteries where they found peace and protection while studying Latin and Greek. A solid faith in God’s Word was sown into the lives of these newly converted Celtic Christians who kept the flame of Christianity burning. These were the men who would write the Book of Kells, reach the Barbarians of Europe, and re-Christianize the world. After the Roman Empire collapsed and the European continent fell into chaos, the once pagan island of Ireland became source and seedbed to high culture, where St. Patrick’s converts to Christianity almost single-handedly preserved the Biblical texts and Western civilization.
God used St. Patrick to affect not only Ireland but all of Christendom in the western world. Ireland, a country that had only just been baptized, became the 2nd center for the dissemination of God’s Word because of one man who, like David a sheepherder in his youth, proclaimed God’s Word in his adult years. Like Elijah, proving the One true God by the Paschal fire, answered the Lord’s call, saying, “Here am I, send me.”
*Note: The Confessio of St. Patrick from Saint Patrick’s Confessio, used with permission.