Cross of St. Patrick

Standing in New York's St. Patrick’s Cathedral reading a prayer attributed to Patrick during a spring break trip with my niece’s Renaissance class, I got my first real education about the man. Sure, I knew about shamrocks and green milkshakes and beer. But I mean the real person who loved the Irish.

When I returned home, I looked him up. And I found that at age sixteen, he was kidnapped from his upper-class family in England and sold into slavery. His captors took him to Ireland, where he endured six years of servitude. He worked as an often-terrified shepherd in the hills, and there he grew in his relationship with the Good Shepherd. Finally, he escaped and returned to his family.

But afterward, he experienced a call similar to that of the apostle Paul told to “come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16). By then a cleric, Patrick returned to the land of his oppression, recognizing that the people there also needed the Good Shepherd. He told them that God had made a way to reconcile them to Himself through His Son, on whom the Spirit fell. When the people believed in this message of God's love and grace from one formerly mistreated, Patrick ordained indigenous leaders (way ahead of his time), and lived a life of simple dependence (poverty) among the people for whom he cared with a supernatural love. We attribute this quote from Confessions of St. Patrick to him:

“According, therefore, to the measure of one’s faith in the Trinity, one should proceed without holding back from danger to make known the gift of God and everlasting consolation, to spread God’s name everywhere with confidence and without fear.”

He certainly practiced what he preached: Go!

On this, the anniversary of the probable date of his death, we remember Patrick as part of the cloud of witnesses who walked by faith in a world unworthy of them. May we do likewise.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!