Patrick

March 17, 2018

Today is the day for corned beef and cabbage, and if you’re so inclined, green beer. St. Patrick Day’s parades used to be a big deal in cities like New York, Boston, Chicago, and Buffalo. I didn’t hear any mention of parades this year; perhaps their politicization last year when the LGBTQ community was granted permission to march has soured people. What I have observed is that politics poisons almost everything it touches, and it insists on touching everything.

That’s too much complaining for today, so I’ll stick to my point. St. Patrick was just that—a saint. But he wasn’t Irish. He was British (or Welsh, if you want to be a stickler), born around 390 AD, captured by pirates when he was sixteen, and taken to Ireland where he was enslaved till his mid-twenties. While there, he was converted. He finally managed to escape and made his way back home, where he subsequently had a dream in which he saw the Irish coming to him asking him to return. He did, never to return to his homeland. In his own words, he “came to the people of Ireland to preach the Gospel, and to suffer insult from the unbelievers, bearing the reproach of my going abroad and many persecutions even unto bonds, and to give my free birth for the benefit of others.”

Patrick faced such opposition that he wrote, “Daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity.” He was undaunted by the difficulties, insisting that, “I cannot be silent about the great benefits and the great grace which the Lord has deigned to bestow upon me in the land of my captivity; for this we can give to God in return after having been chastened by him, to exalt and praise his wonders before every nation that is anywhere under heaven.” 

The celebrations we expect to see on this day are a far cry from the character of the man in whose honor the day is named, a man whose faithful devotion to Christ literally changed the course of a nation. Whenever I begin to feel overworked, overwhelmed, or just plain sorry for myself, I am glad to be able to claim the heritage of men like Patrick who challenge me to be better and do more than otherwise I might.