Man, Myth, Missionary: Reconnecting with the Real St. Patrick
I owe St. Patrick an apology. Despite him being my country’s patron saint and having celebrated more St. Patrick’s Days than I can count, I never took him seriously. It didn’t help that a joke was going around school when I was young: “What did St. Patrick say as he was driving the snakes out of Ireland? You boys alright there in the back?”
He was a saint turned taxi driver for snakes, the reason my school had a half-day in March, the inspiration for the horrible habit of dyeing Guinness green, and the slogan emblazoned on hundreds of novelty t-shirts: “Kiss me, I’m Irish!,” “Shake your shamrocks!,” “0% Irish, 100% drunk.”
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Poor St. Patrick. I imagine he’s rolling in his grave so much that he’s tearing up the sod.
It’s tempting and almost unavoidable to impose our own perspective on figures from the past, but I think we can confidently say that modern-day St. Patrick’s Day is not what the saint had in mind when he pondered his legacy. In his diary-esque manuscript, Confessions, he writes:
It is right to spread abroad the name of God faithfully and without fear, so that even after my death I may leave something of value to the many thousands of my brothers and sisters—the children whom I baptised in the Lord.
St. Patrick, Confessions
I discovered Confessions fairly recently and, upon first reading, cringed at those words. They triggered memories of too many St. Patrick’s Day nights spent stumbling drunkenly home through dark streets. The holiday was always special to me, but for the wrong reasons. Having left Ireland at 18, it provided a chance to revel in my homesickness, which was always simmering behind the scenes.
That was the legacy he left for me. But now I know better. St. Patrick is much more than a worldwide party or a sentimental Irish sobfest. His true legacy lies in his love for Ireland and his zeal for its conversion.
An Irish Icon
At 16, the British Patrick was captured, taken to Ireland, and enslaved, escaping six years later. A self-described “simple country person,” St. Patrick had so much faith in God and the Irish that, after becoming a Christian bishop, he returned to the place of his slavery to bring good news to a nation raised on the bloody tales of its warlike heroes and capricious Celtic deities.
More than a thousand years later, he deserves recognition as one of the few Irish icons beloved on both sides of the border. Since he predated the Reformation, all of Ireland embraces our patron saint, bridging the long-standing religious divide. Although regarded as an Anglican saint, St. Patrick is also celebrated by the Catholic Church, and his feast day is observed in both traditions.
My Catholic grandmother certainly didn’t hesitate to name my aunt Patricia when she was born on March 17, and my Anglican stepfather always made it a point to take us to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland, whenever we were in town.
Keeping the Fire of St. Patrick
Given his cross-denominational and cross-border appeal, it’s no surprise that tributes to St. Patrick appear throughout Ireland, from Croagh Patrick in County Mayo to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and from Armagh in the north, where he founded his first stone church, to his final resting place in Downpatrick.
If you’re ever in Ireland, it’s worth visiting any (or all) of these sites. You can even take a “St. Patrick Tour” that shuttles visitors around key stops. One of my favorites is the Hill of Tara in the Boyne Valley. Here, a statue of St. Patrick greets visitors to one of the most historic locations in the world. Tara is studied by historians for its insights into the Neolithic era, by cultural commentators for its central role in Celtic mythology, and by religious scholars as the site where St. Patrick converted one of the most intractable pagan high kings of the era, King Laoghaire.
As the legend goes, King Laoghaire and his druids were prepared to celebrate spring with a bonfire atop the Hill of Tara and warned the populace that no fires could be lit before theirs sparked. Openly defying this edict, St. Patrick lit his own fire, proclaiming it an Easter Vigil. Observing this, the King’s druids began to panic and presciently warned that unless it was extinguished immediately, St. Patrick’s fire would burn eternally and bring down the pagan theocracy.
St. Patrick’s fire has been burning ever since—and not just on St. Patrick’s Day. Visit Croagh Patrick, also known as Ireland’s holiest mountain, on the last Sunday in July, and you’ll see thousands of people climbing to the summit on a centuries-old pilgrimage to honour the place where Patrick spent 40 days fasting and praying around 441 AD.
A Reluctant Missionary
Not everyone who climbs Croagh Patrick is Irish. Pilgrims come from all over the globe to pay tribute to the saint who was, first and foremost, devoted to God. St. Patrick didn’t return to Ireland in 432 AD because of the food or the weather. He felt compelled by the Spirit to finish what he had begun. As he puts it: “I never had any other reason for returning to that nation from which I had earlier escaped, except the gospel and God’s promises.”
St. Patrick loved the people of Ireland enough to risk imprisonment, slavery, violence, ostracism, and death. And he considered it a gift to do so.
It was not by my own grace, but God who overcame it in me, and resisted them all so that I could come to the peoples of Ireland to preach the gospel. I bore insults from unbelievers so that I would hear the hatred directed at me for travelling here. I bore many persecutions, even chains, so that I could give up my freeborn state for the sake of others. If I be worthy, I am ready even to give up my life most willingly here and now for his name. It is there that I wish to spend my life until I die, if the Lord should grant it to me.
St. Patrick, Confessions
It’s that fortitude and faith that makes St. Patrick an inspiration for the ages. I’m no longer cynical about St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t cringe anymore at its excesses because I know that for every St. Patrick’s Day drinker, there’s someone who hikes the Mayo hilltop to retrace the steps of the saint or humbly gets to their knees in a quiet corner of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. After the bars close and the parades are over, his example lives on, a reluctant missionary but a faithful shepherd.
Photo of the Statue of St. Patrick and Croagh Patrick, Ireland, by Tom Szustek, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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