PATRICK

A Celtic Cross in Yorkshire.
Patrick brought an early form of
Celtic Christianity to Ireland from Britain in AD 435.

The Saint of
Second Chances

Patrick is the patron saint of the Irish, but he was born in Britain and raised in Britain as a Christian until kidnapped by Irish pirates, and taken as a slave to Ireland. It is not too much of a stretch to think of him as a British as well as an Irish saint.

Growing up in Britain at the end of the 4th century, Patrick did not give anyone the impression he would become a saint with a capital S. Kidnapped by pirates when he was a teenager, and sold into slavery in Ireland, he herded sheep in the hills of Antrim, and returned to his childhood faith in Christ out of desperation. After six years of cold, starvation and misery, he heard the voice of God urging him to leave. He escaped, making his way south, probably to Wexford, and boarding a merchant's ship carrying wolfhounds to Gaul.

Years later, still uncertain of his future but following his visionary inner voice, Patrick made his way across Gaul to the monastery on the sunny little island that was later called St. Honorat, not far from Cannes. The Mediterranean warmth brought him the scents of lavender and basilic, lemon and roses. His six years of slavery in Ireland disappeared from his mind like a boat over the horizon.

Here, where the monks maintained a civilised belief in the siesta, spent in the stone coolness of the fountain-splashed interior, Patrick learned Latin, and the stories and sayings of Christ by heart. He also learned to preach.

It was only in his dreams that the ship returned, and he saw the outstretched arms of the Irish imploring him to return, and heard their voices calling to him from across the water. Among those voices was one voice he could not forget, from his boyhood. For a long time, fear and guilt kept him motionless.

He never described in his Confession what he had done “in my boyhood, in one hour” that so troubled him, but he took Christ’s advice. Sometime before he was ordained he confessed what he had done to a soulfriend, repented, asked forgiveness from God, and felt the smothering stone roll away. When his guilt went, his fear went, too.

Now a priest and a preacher approaching middle age, Patrick had another vision dream. He heard a voice call him to Ireland and say, “He who has given his own soul for you, he it is who speaks in you.”

He decided to go back to Ireland. He made the free but frightening decision to return to the land where he had been a slave, and preach the love of God. All too aware of the dangers of his mission and his own modest abilities, he left the warm scents of the Mediterranean, the sun, and the sea, the easy comradeship and the library of books, and crossed the mountains to the north, travelling through the wilderness that was Gaul, and over the turbulent northern waters, heading toward the cold, green island where there was not one book and where, fifteen years earlier, he had spent six years as a hungry, naked slave boy.

The island of Eire rose on the horizon like the grey ship of captivity. This was the dreaded country of his servitude, but it was also the place where “poverty and calamity have been better for me than riches.” Any number of capable people might have failed in his place, and been captured or killed, but Patrick, as he says in his Confession, gave himself to God, and this was enough, though as he also observes, he had to give his whole self sincerely, since God was not enthusiastic about “theatrical impersonation.”

It is said that Patrick sang Faeth Fiadha, the “Deer’s Cry” as he travelled –

I arise today through the strength of heaven
light of sun,
radiance of moon,
splendour of fire,
speed of lightning
swiftness of wind,
depth of sea,
stability of earth,
firmness of rock.
I arise today through God's strength to pilot me. . .

Living as though God’s strength piloted him, Patrick returned to the people who had kidnapped and enslaved him. He faced violence, betrayal, church snobbery, and his own fears. Becoming the saint of second chances, travelling throughout the island, he talked about the gospel of Isu Mac De (Jesus the son of God in Gaelic) and founded a community of fellowship.

Despite local hostility, his first community grew as he healed the sick, gave pastoral care, and preached. When Patrick was sure the community could survive, he travelled on, leaning on his crook-shaped staff. A few members from the first fellowship came with him to help him plant the second so the second community grew quickly, and Patrick could branch out and start a third and a fourth, seeding Ireland with fellowships. He was attacked and at least once, held captive. That he was not killed was due, he wrote simply, to “the Lord.”

His communities were witnesses to concord, prosperity, and peace, a stunning turnaround in a land where men and women had often waged bloody tribal wars over the ownership of a cow. The reason for their change of heart is readable, even over the distance of many years. Patrick put into practice what he had experienced, . . .that people could only experience the gospel for themselves by becoming part of the vibrant and loving Christian community; and the existence of such communities was the living evidence for the truth proclaimed ("Celtic Gifts", Robert Van de Weyer).

Patrick introduced them to a way of life whose love, fearlessness, and generosity he embodied. He was not afraid. He never hesitated to attack the accepted, profitable way of doing things if he thought it was wrong. The Greek playwright Euripedes is the first man in recorded history to denounce slavery, “that thing of evil, by its nature evil, forcing a man to submit to what no man should submit to”. Patrick was the second or third to denounce slavery –

Patricide, fratricide! ravening wolves eating up the people of the Lord as if it were bread!. . .I beseech you earnestly, it is not right to pay court to such men nor to take food and drink in their company, nor is it right to accept their alms, until they by doing strict penance with shedding of tears make amends before God and free the servants of God. . .

According to the Oxford Dictionary, Germans and Celts called their kinfolk ‘free,’ a word that meant they were ‘dear’ to them and so had personal rights and liberty of action not given to slaves. Patrick declared that everyone was dear to God, and therefore everyone should be free. He created communities that defended and nurtured freedom out of his belief that this is what God wanted.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

At a time of year when the grey trees stand bare, throwing the shadows of their branches across the green grass, when the starry blue flowers of the periwinkle open, and the dog-tooth violets lift nodding blooms on crook-shaped stems, Patrick laid down his crook-shaped staff. After he was gone, he seemed to those who knew him to be the best part of themselves, the slave who had returned to the place of his servitude to free slaves, the middleaged man who had dared to let his life be transformed, giving hope to us that it isn't too late to transform ours.

“I arise today!”

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