Bishop, Apostle of Ireland · Feast: 17 March
Open in the Daily Word app“Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.” Mark 16:15
Patrick lived in the fifth century; his exact dates are not known. We know his life mainly from two short works he wrote himself, the Confession and the Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus. He was born in Roman Britain, at a place he calls Bannavem Taburniae. His father Calpornius was a deacon and his grandfather Potitus a priest, but Patrick says that as a boy he did not take God seriously.
When he was about sixteen, Irish raiders carried him off with many others and sold him as a slave. For six years he tended animals on the Irish hills, hungry, cold and alone. There, he writes, the Lord opened his mind and he turned with his whole heart to God. He tells us he prayed as many as a hundred times a day, and nearly as many at night. In a dream he was told that a ship was ready. He ran away, walked perhaps two hundred miles to the coast, and at last returned home.
At home he had another dream: a man named Victoricus brought him a letter headed The Voice of the Irish, and he heard them begging him to come and walk among them again. After years of preparation, the details of which are uncertain, he was ordained a bishop and went back to the land of his slavery. He preached, baptised many thousands, ordained clergy and encouraged young men and women to give their lives to God as monks and virgins. He lived in constant danger, and he says he was seized and put in chains more than once.
He was keenly aware of his poor education, and he was hurt when some in Britain criticised him. Yet he defended his people fiercely: when soldiers of the British chief Coroticus killed and enslaved newly baptised Christians, he wrote them a burning letter demanding their release. He died in Ireland, according to tradition on 17 March, and is said to be buried at Downpatrick. Irish missionaries and monks later carried the faith across Europe, and in modern times to Asia and Africa, India among them.
God used his worst years to bring him to prayer.
He went back to serve those who had enslaved him.
He called himself a sinner and gave God all the credit.
He denounced those who enslaved the newly baptised.
In his Confession Patrick tells of a night vision in which he read a letter headed The Voice of the Irish, and heard people near the western sea crying out as with one voice for him to come and walk among them once more.
A life written in the seventh century tells that on Easter night Patrick lit a fire on the hill of Slane, in defiance of a royal command that none should burn before the king's fire at Tara. The king came to confront him, and the Gospel was proclaimed before him.
Popular stories say that Patrick explained the Holy Trinity with a three-leafed shamrock and drove all the snakes out of Ireland. The first appears only many centuries after him, and scholars say the second has no basis, since Ireland had no snakes after the Ice Age. His own writings mention neither.
I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and despised by very many.
St Patrick, Confession 1, in substance
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me.
The prayer called St Patrick's Breastplate, traditionally attributed to him, in substance
God met him in his darkest years.
Mission is mercy in action (Mark 16:15).
All he had he gave to God.
Dear friends, the world remembers St Patrick for parades, green clothes and shamrocks. His own writings tell a far greater story. At sixteen he was seized by raiders and sold into slavery in a foreign land. He had not cared much about God. Now, alone on a cold hillside with the animals, he began to pray, a hundred times in the day and almost as many at night.
Many of us have had a season of pain, of illness, or of a job lost or a family broken, in which all we have is God. We ask why. Patrick discovered that these empty hills can be where we are found. In this time of fasting, when the Church leads us into a kind of desert, we can ask God to meet us as he met that slave boy.
But see what comes next. He escaped, he reached home, he was safe. Then he heard the Voice of the Irish calling him back, the very people who had enslaved him. Who of us would go? Jesus told his disciples to go into all the world and proclaim the good news (Mark 16:15). Patrick went back, in danger, and he gave the rest of his life to them. Forgiveness is not merely a feeling. It may mean walking back to serve those who have hurt us.
He never boasted. He called himself a sinner, the least of the faithful, and he gave all the glory to God. At this Holy Mass / Holy Qurbana, let us pray for the missionaries who have left home for Christ, many of them from our own Kerala families. Let us ask St Patrick to teach us to pray in hard times and to forgive those who have wronged us. Christ with us, Christ before us, Christ behind us. Amen.
O God, who chose St Patrick to bring the Gospel to the people who had once enslaved him, grant through his prayers that we may forgive those who have harmed us, carry the good news with courage, and know that Christ is with us wherever we go. Amen.