Who was St. Patrick?
Today, people the world over will be celebrating the life of St. Patrick. Most have no clue what they are celebrating and many don’t care to know. To them, it is a day of revelry, parades, and drunkenness. But, just who is St. Patrick and why is he celebrated. David Plotz has an article here in which he attempts to separate facts from fiction. According to Plotz:
The facts about St. Patrick are few. Most derive from the two documents he probably wrote, the autobiographical Confession and the indignant Letter to a slave-taking marauder named Coroticus. Patrick was born in Britain, probably in Wales, around 385 A.D. His father was a Roman official. When Patrick was 16, seafaring raiders captured him, carried him to Ireland, and sold him into slavery. The Christian Patrick spent six lonely years herding sheep and, according to him, praying 100 times a day. In a dream, God told him to escape. He returned home, where he had another vision in which the Irish people begged him to return and minister to them: “We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more,” he recalls in the Confession. He studied for the priesthood in France, then made his way back to Ireland.
He spent his last 30 years there, baptizing pagans, ordaining priests, and founding churches and monasteries. His persuasive powers must have been astounding: Ireland fully converted to Christianity within 200 years and was the only country in Europe to Christianize peacefully. Patrick’s Christian conversion ended slavery, human sacrifice, and most intertribal warfare in Ireland.
Plotz dispels a few myths about Patrick (such as his driving the snakes out of Ireland) and points out that he has been co-opted by many groups who would like to claim him as part of their cause. Irish catholics and protestants argue over whether he is a protestant hero or a catholic hero (at least both claim his life was heroic). New agers and gay-rights activists have claimed he lends support to their causes. Plotz states that Ireland has quietly celebrated St. Patrick for 100’s of years, but it “took the United States to turn St. Patrick’s Day into a boozy spectacle.” In truth, it appears Patrick did accomplish much for his country and for the kingdom of God.
According to Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization, Paddy’s influence extended far beyond his adopted land. Cahill’s book, which could just as well be titled How St. Patrick Saved Civilization, contends that Patrick’s conversion of Ireland allowed Western learning to survive the Dark Ages. Ireland pacified and churchified as the rest of Europe crumbled. Patrick’s monasteries copied and preserved classical texts. Later, Irish monks returned this knowledge to Europe by establishing monasteries in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy.