Feast of Saint Patrick

Every year as we approach the feast of Saint Patrick, I read again the Confession of Saint Patrick. Patrick tells us that he came from a deeply Christian family, probably somewhere on the west coast of Britain. His father was a town councillor and a deacon of the church and his grandfather was a priest. Yet, on his own admission, he had turned away from God as a young person. The faith of his family didn’t impact his life. Then, as he says himself, when he was almost sixteen, he was taken captive into Ireland. It is hard to imagine the trauma that must have entailed for such a young person. He went from being a freeborn son in a prosperous household to a slave of a master in a land that was totally foreign to him and whose people spoke a language he didn’t understand. He was a migrant, a victim of human trafficking.

Yet, writing his Confession as an old man, he could see that out of that personal tragedy came great good. He said that, in his captivity, the Lord made him aware of his unbelief. He writes about ‘the great benefits and grace that the Lord saw fit to confer on me in the land of my captivity’. He uses a striking image to describe this grace, ‘Before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in the deep mud. Then he who is mighty came and in his mercy he not only pulled me out but placed me at the very top of the wall’. He says. ‘My faith increased and the spirit was stirred up so that in the course of a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers’. Patrick’s experience suggests that great good can come out of even the most painful times in our lives. The Lord can work powerfully for our good even at times of great loss. When we feel isolated, separated from all we have known and loved, we are never separated from the Lord. He is always there as our strength and our helper.

After many years in captivity, Patrick somehow managed to escape from his owner and after a hazardous journey by boat and overland he finally made it home again to his family. He had been presumed dead, and now he was alive. Patrick writes that his relatives ‘welcomed me as a son and earnestly begged me that I should never leave them again’. Yet, Patrick did leave his family again. Some years later he had a vision of a man called Victor, who appeared to have come from Ireland with an unlimited number of letters. Victor gave him one of the letters, and as Patrick began to read it he tells us, ‘I seemed at that same moment to hear the voice of those who were near the wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea. They shouted with one voice: “We ask you, holy boy, come and walk once more among us”’ He sensed that the Lord was calling him to go back to the land of his captivity to proclaim the faith that had become so important to him. Through his prayer, his growth in the Spirit, Patrick was able to discern what the Lord was asking of him, even if it made no sense to his family and to many others. We are all trying to discern what the Lord is saying to us, what he may be calling us to do, where he may be trying to lead us. The Lord is always involved in our lives, calling us to share in some way in his mission.

After studying for the priesthood, Patrick arrived in Ireland as a priest in the later part of the fifth century. As he writes, ‘I gave up my free born status for the good of others’. He was not the first Christian missionary to come to Ireland. Earlier in that century a bishop called Palladius had established churches probably in the south and east of the country. However, Patrick was the first to preach the gospel in parts of the country where it had never been preached, probably in the north and the west. As he writes in his Confession, ‘The good news has been preached in distant parts, in places beyond which nobody lives’. Looking back over his life’s work in his old age and now a bishop, he could write, ‘Many people have been born again in God and afterwards confirmed, and clergy have been ordained for them everywhere’. It is clear from his Confession that his mission cost him a great deal. He wrote, ‘How dearly would I have gone back to Britain… but the Spirit held me’ and he also wrote, ‘I daily expect to be murdered or robbed or reduced to slavery’. He gave everything so that others would come to know the Lord.

We have the faith today because of people like Patrick who lived the faith and passed it on in the most challenging of circumstances. The witness of people like Patrick encourages us to treasure the gift of the faith we have received and never to take it for granted but, rather, to live it as best we can so that the Lord can work through us to bring others to him. Patrick was very aware that his life as a whole left a lot to be desired. He once declared, ‘I have not altogether led a life as perfect as others’. Yet, the Lord worked powerfully through him. The Lord does not ask us to be perfect before calling us to share in his good work. He knows we are all a mixture of wheat and weed in the language of the gospel reading. All he asks is that we remain in a communion of faith and love with him, and then he will work through us in ways that will often surprise us.