March 17th is Saint Patrick’s
Day. A day when people wear green, drink beer (Guinness, please) and engage in
some good old fashion mischief (there are also others who use it as an excuse
for some old fashion not so good mischief!). Even those with Irish ancestry
and/or Christian faith (here I am) often know little about the man whose day
inspires celebration; save a story or two, like Patrick using the Shamrock to
teach about the Trinity or Patrick running the snakes out of Ireland (in fact,
there never were rolling reptiles in the emerald isle).
There are endless legends
about St. Patrick. On one occasion he and his companions were being hunted down
by a local ruler. When the ruler with his warriors hustled to where Patrick and
his disciples had run off, all he saw was a herd of deer. Of course, they were
Patrick and his followers transformed by God’s miraculous intervention.
Unfortunately, God never changed them back and they had to hoof about from that
day forward (just kidding). There are spiritual lessons in these sorts of
stories, but the actual events of his life, inspire tremendously more.
Patrick was born sometime
in late 4th Century England. He came from a well to do family with a
strong Christian heritage; his grandfather was a priest, and his dad was a
deacon and a minor official in the declining Roman Empire. For most people in
the 4th Century life was rough, but Patrick enjoyed a much easier life because
of his family’s reputation and wealth. This all ended for Patrick around the
age of sixteen when he was captured by Irish raiders. Upon arrival in Ireland
he was sold as a slave, made to tend sheep and live among people he did not
know.
During this time Patrick’s
faith came alive. In his Confession,
he writes, “And there the Lord opened the consciousness
of my unbelief so that…I might turn with a whole heart to the Lord my God, Who
turned His gaze round on my lowliness and took pity on my adolescence and
ignorance and kept watch over me before I knew Him.” Somehow, many years later,
Patrick escaped his enslavement and made his way back to England. He sensed a
calling to the priesthood, and while he struggled with the academics, he was
eventually ordained.
This story alone would be a wondrous one, but
the power of St. Patrick’s life is that he could not put the Irish people out
of his mind. He had a vision where an Irish youth bid him return and preach the
Gospel. If you had been kidnapped from your people, enslaved away to a foreign
country across the sea and somehow managed to escape, what are the odds you
would return at great personal sacrifice to preach a Gospel of love? That is
what Patrick did! He convinced the authorities in England to send him as a
missionary bishop to the Irish.
Much more could be said about the most
well-known of Ireland’s three patron saints (the two others being Saint Columba
and Saint Brigid), from his openness to Irish culture and spirituality, which
in many cases was woven into the new faith, to his missionary zeal and
humility. Patrick’s story is a reminder that whatever your circumstance or mine,
God can find us and God can use the blackest moments of our lives to bring
light and salvation to others. That by itself, parades and shamrocks aside, is
worth celebrating.
As you probably know, there's a town called Naas in Co. Kildare in Ireland. It takes its name apparently, from a sect called The Naasenes who used to live in that area. Their 'god' was the snake. It's reputed to have banished those naasenes from the country, thus beginning the legend of banishing snakes from Ireland. May or may not be true. As far as one can tell, historically, there were a sect that worshipped snakes in ancient Naas. It sounds plausible, I guess.
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