Green hats, beer and Ireland for St. Patrick's day!

Today we celebrate all things Irish and Patrick of Ireland (430-490). However, last Saturday when I watch the parade in Colorado Springs, I neither saw or heard nothing of the venerable saint. It seems to me that the man behind the name has been lost in our collective minds. 

Let me share about the man and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by reminding us of what he accomplished.

This fifth-century saint, a runaway slave, turned into a liberator, was used by God to inaugurate a movement of His Spirit to establish the Kingdom Of God by making disciples, by establishing church-buildings, developing missions, education, and social and cultural renewal that caught up all of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and spread throughout the sixth and seventh centuries to bring renewing grace to much of Western Europe. Today, he is being considered around the globe as a model for many who are seeking His ways.

What kind of person is used of God in such remarkable ways? Patrick explains in his Confession that he was a nominal Christian, born into a privileged existence, who loved the good life more than school or church, when he was captured and carried into slavery by Irish raiders at the age of sixteen. Over the next six years, however, as he tended sheep in western Ireland, his faith came alive and his soul was prepared for the great work to which God gave him upon his return to Britain from slavery.

Patrick has left us only two documents from his own hand. His Confession and the Letter Against the Soldiers of Coroticus are undoubtedly authentic, and they afford tantalizing glimpses into the character of the man. 

Among the many ancient witnesses and celebrations of the life of Patrick, however, there is one that appears to have been written by a contemporary of Patrick. This is the poem, Audite Omnes Amantes (Hearken, All You Lovers of God), and it paints a realistic picture of the man, Patrick, giving us a portrait of the kind of people God uses with great effects. In Audite we see more clearly into the deep spirituality and solid character of Patrick, and we gain a sharper picture of his disciplined work ethic as evangelist and pastor. He emerges from this poetic portrait a true saint of God, well worthy of our remembering once a year with geat celebrations and thanksgiving.

Another ancient document called the “Annals of the Four Masters” reports that Patrick’s mission planted about 700 churches, and that Patrick ordained perhaps 1,000 priests. Within his lifetime, 30 to 40 (or more) of Ireland’s 150 tribes became substantially Christian. Patrick’s achievement included social dimensions. He was the first public man to speak and crusade against slavery. Within his lifetime, or soon after, “the Irish slave trade came to a halt, and other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal warfare decreased,” and his communities modeled the Christian way of faithfulness, generosity, and peace to all the Irish.

In celebrating the day, let us all remember the man and humbly seek to imitate his example no matter where we find ourselves.

Comments

[Rachel Lovell]

Wolf thanks for writing this..an inspiration for someone who lives in Scotland,and spending time out of mainstream 'ministry'. I so desire to be used by God..finding it difficult to be the one that is being 'helped by others' in so many practical ways, still hidden in the caccoon of healing and learning to let God's love and light shine through. May Peace continue in Ireland and the UK..we need that so much in these times.