Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick was the son of an imperial Roman officer in Britain in the year 406. At about age 16, he was kidnapped by Irish pirates who sold him into slavery in their native land. That was his first encounter with the island he would later transform.
During his six bleak years spent as a slave herding sheep, he turned to his faith. He escaped and made his way to Gaul (modern-day France), where he studied at the monastery founded by St. Martin of Tours.
St. Martin of Tours was an influential leader in the early church who started the first widespread Christian movement among the rural people of Europe, those the cosmopolitan Romans called “paganus” (meaning rustic or of the country). From that Latin word comes the English term "pagan".
After he became a monk, Patrick had a dream where he heard the Irish beseeching him to return to the land of his captivity and, eventually, the pope appointed the former slave to be the first bishop of Ireland.
Patrick helped initiate Ireland’s first indigenous Christian movement. To do that, he adapted pagan traditions to reach new converts. For example, if people in a Druid settlement worshiped at a large standing stone, that is where Patrick and his team of missionaries placed a church. The new Christians would then carve the great stone into a cross. He also preached in the native language, Irish Gaelic.
One popular legend is that Patrick superimposed the Christian cross on the popular Celtic ring symbol, which stood for the sun or the world, to demonstrate Jesus’ redemption of the world. He thus created the Celtic cross that churches continue to use. You can google his prayer, “The Breastplate of St. Patrick Prayer,” and see one of his most famous writings. St. Patrick's Day is still a day to remember the first Christian Bishop of Ireland. It is so much more than green beer and shamrocks.
Grace & Peace,
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