Lessons from St. Patrick

As I drove through town on Thursday, I noticed a couple of women decked in revealing green dresses, green feather boas, and sparkly green jewelry. They were on their way into an Irish pub to celebrate the holiday with green colored food and drinks, and other revelers equally clad in green attire. The fleeting thought came to mind, "what a strange way to celebrate a saint."

That night I wondered at what a proper way to celebrate a saint would be. So first I looked up a bit of history on this Irish symbol. Wikipedia is great for such things. I was blown away by what I found out:

Patrick was the son of a high Roman official stationed in Britain. When he was 16, he was kidnapped by Irish marauders and sold as a slave to a cruel man. He spent six years in servitude where he learned the Celtic tongue, the intricacies of the druid rituals, and where he learned to pray. In one of Patrick's surviving letters he says, "After I reached Hibernia I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the Love of God, and my fear of Him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time".


Through the direct guidance of God he fled his cruel master and went back to Britain. There he studied and became a priest. The passion for Ireland fostered in his time of service never left him. When the opportunity rose, he went back to the land of his imprisonment. He began his ministry there by paying his ransom price to his old master and then sharing with him the grace of Jesus and the freedom He offers. He proceeded to minister to the people of Ireland for some forty years. 


Today, this humble missionary who gave up all that the name of God would be praised, is celebrated with green beer and skimpy green dresses. I pray, instead, that God will allow me to celebrate this saint by growing in me the heart of St. Patrick: a heart of prayer, a heart of passion, a heart of forgiveness, a heart of boldness, a heart of sacrifice, a heart that beats wildly with the desire that every knee would bow to the King of Kings.