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TDIH- March 17- Death of St. Patrick |
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Written by eric francke
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 |
This Day in History- March 17- The Death of Saint Patrick
Leprechauns, Green beer, shamrocks, okay. I get it. It’s St. Patrick’s Day. March 17th actually marks the death of Patrick, missionary, and now Patron Saint of Ireland. The symbolism and events we now associate with the holiday seem to belie the genesis of the tradition. Patrick wasn’t a leprechaun, didn’t drink beer, and he wasn’t even originally from the country. And, contrary to the apocryphal story, didn’t even “drive snakes” out of Ireland.
Patrick was a youth living in Scotland in the late 4th Century. He was captured by pirates who were raiding his father’s estate, and brought as a slave to Ireland, which was predominantly populated by druids and pagans.
In his Confessions, he recounts that he was not religious in any sense when he was put in servitude, but over the years, in his distress and despair as a slave, he turned to God. For nearly seven years he suffered in hunger, humiliation, and hopelessness, until God spoke to him in a vision, telling him to rise up, and head towards the coast where a ship would be waiting to take him back to Scotland. He did so, and as he had heard in the vision, the ship took him to his native land.
None of this would make him a remarkable individual, except for that fact that after he returned to his homeland, God again spoke to him, and told him to return to Ireland as a preacher. Patrick studied for over a decade for his mission. He left the security of his family’s estate to return to the country where he has been so mistreated. Since he had spent years as a slave there, he knew the local dialects, and gained audience with clan leaders wherever he could.
Patrick remained for nearly 40 years in that country. While there, he was constantly persecuted, survived numerous attempts on his life, took no money or gifts from anyone, and selflessly preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When he died, Ireland had some 300 churches that Patrick had planted, and over 100,000 converts to Christianity.
The shamrock is probably the only token today associated with the holiday that has some bearing on the true story of St. Patrick. While with the druids and pagans of Ireland, he used the symbol of the shamrock to explain the concept of the Trinity.
Writing in his Confessions, Patrick sums up his own amazement, at how from God turned the horrible circumstances of his youth into an opportunity to win the lost:
“And I was not worthy, nor was I such that the Lord should grant his humble servant this, that after hardships and such great trials, after captivity, after many years, he should give me so much favour in these people, a thing which in the time of my youth I neither hoped for nor imagined.”
Patrick stands as testament, not to “Celtic spirit” or Irish nationalism, but simply as a reminder as to how God can use the most desperate of circumstances, and darkest of times to ultimately do great things.
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