Saint Patrick

St. Patrick’s Day, when I was growing up, St. Patrick’s Day meant that you better be wearing green or your peers were going to pinch you. Now that I’m an adult, my peers have shifted the focus of the holiday off of annoying pinches to heavy drinking and wearing “Kiss me I’m Irish!” t-shirts.

The holiday began as a celebration of St. Patrick, but has since morphed into an all-purpose celebration of Ireland and Irish culture. Despite the holiday’s current focus, St. Patrick himself was an amazing individual. He’s credited with bringing the Gospel to the people of Ireland—an astounding fact made even more impressive by the fact that he had previously been enslaved there for six years of his life.

Patrick was born in Roman Britain at Banna Venta Berniae, a location otherwise unknown, though identified in one tradition as Glannoventa, modern Ravenglass in Cumbria. Calpornius, his father, was a deacon, his grandfather Potitus, a priest. When he was about sixteen, he was captured and carried off as a slave to Ireland. Patrick worked as a herdsman, remaining a captive for six years. He writes that his faith grew in captivity, and that he prayed daily.

2 Thessalonians 1:3-4 You need to know, friends, that thanking God over and over for you is not only a pleasure; it's a must. We have to do it. Your faith is growing phenomenally; your love for each other is developing wonderfully. Why, it's only right that we give thanks. We're so proud of you; you're so steady and determined in your faith despite all the hard times that have come down on you. We tell everyone we meet in the churches all about you.

After six years he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he traveled to a port, two hundred miles away he says, where he found a ship and, after various adventures, returned home to his family, now in his early twenties. Upon returning, he quickly joined the Church in Auxerre in Gaul and studied to be a priest.

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

In 432, he again said that he was called back to Ireland, though as a bishop, to Christianize the Irish from their native polytheism. Irish folklore tells that one of his teaching methods included using the shamrock to explain the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to the Irish people.

After nearly thirty years of evangelism, he died on 17 March 461, and according to tradition, was buried at Downpatrick. Although there were other more successful missions to Ireland from Rome, Patrick endured as the principal champion of Irish Christianity and is held in esteem in the Irish church.

As tradition goes, we are all Irish for the day, which makes us a little Patrick as well. So, how will you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? Drinking or sharing the Gospel?

This is one day that I can be proud of my heritage and my namesake - Michael Patrick McNulty.