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Muiredach's
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Discovering the Soul of St. Patrick By Dan Carollo | posted 03/13/2003
They never taught me much about St. Patrick in elementary school. For all I knew, he drove a few snakes out of Ireland, wore a green hat, and probably looked like that guy on the box of Lucky Charms cereal or perhaps the mascot for the Boston Celtics.
In the last couple years, I decided to make up for my poor elementary schooling and school myself a bit in the Celtic tradition (and a little Irish pub hopping).
I learned that St. Patrick never drove the snakes out of Ireland, wasn’t even originally from Ireland, and more than likely -- never even heard of the Boston Celtics.
Although not perfect, and by his own admission - not a particularly learned or articulate person, St. Patrick was an amazing hero of the Christian faith. Considered one of the first missionaries to Ireland in about 432 A.D., he is also thought by some historians as the first person to ever speak out publicly against slavery. It was sometime within his lifetime or soon after that the Irish slave trade came to a halt.
Patrick dared to embrace all of life (being made by God) as sacred, bringing the simple truth of Christ to the Irish without imposing his own cultural agenda.
Historian Thomas Cahill writes in his book: “How The Irish Saved Civilization”:
In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life… Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish. No longer would baptismal water by the only effective sign of a new life in God. New life was everywhere in rank abundance, and all of God’s creation was good. The druids, the pagan Irish priests who claimed to be able to control the elements, felt threatened by Patrick, who knew that a humble prayer could even make food materialize in the a barren desert – because all the world was the work of his Creator-God.
Most of what we know about Patrick comes from his own story “The Confession”, in which he describes his captivity by Irish raiders at the age of 16 from his homeland of Britain. He served as a slave, herding sheep, for about 6 years. It was during this time he began to pray and earnestly seek God.
In his Confession, Patrick describes his daily habit of prayer, praying 100 times both night and day and rising before sunrise to pray again. He later escapes his captors, returns to Britain where he has a vision of an Irish man named Victoricus holding “countless letters”, as Patrick recounts…
And he gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, `The voice of the Irish'; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice — they were those beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea — and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: `We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more.'
The rest, of course, is history. To read a full account of Patrick’s Confessions, click here.
Perhaps one of the most endearing bits of Irish Christian literature is a poem attributed to St. Patrick known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” or sometimes called “The Deer’s Cry”. I can do no better than simply let it speak for itself. Below is excerpt from the poem. To read the full-length version, click here.
…
I arise today …
Christ with
me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
I
arise today . . . To respond to this message, please direct your emails to: dan.carollo@verizon.net
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