Jack Voelkel
The Real St. Patrick
That morning had dawned bright and beautiful on the English western coast, giving no hint of the disaster that would soon strike. Patrick and his teenage friends raced to the beach, to delight in their games even before their families had awakened to the business of a new day.
Patrick’s father was a political official and the boy knew that as the eldest son and heir, the future held much promise for him. The teenagers played on, oblivious to the hungry eyes observing them or the silent approach of the Irish pirates who crept stealthily closer and closer to the beach. Then in a matter of minutes they swooped ashore, easily overpowering the young lads, and were on their way home before parents or guardians even knew they had disappeared.
The kidnapping took place at the end of the 4th Century. For 350 years the Romans had dominated Britain and had colonized the region. Among the local citizens were Christians, like Patrick’s grandfather, Potitus, a Celtic priest, and his father, Calpurnius, a Deacon. Though Patrick was raised in the faith, he did not take it seriously and was careless in its practice.
Upon landing on Irish soil, the pirates quickly sold their young captives to the highest bidders. Milchu, a cruel and surly master, purchased Patrick to tend his sheep and swine. Wrenched from his loving family and the comforts of a loving home, Patrick was unceremoniously thrust into the rough life of a shepherd-slave. His warm and comfortable bed was exchanged for endless nights in the cold open air. “From that day on,” he later recounted, “I was always cold, and always hungry.”
As lonely days on the windswept hills stretched into weeks and months, Patrick’s thoughts naturally turned towards home. How much he had taken for granted! In his desperation, he began to fill his days and nights with prayer, and not just the formal liturgies of his church, but with the deep anguished cries of his heart.
At first he prayed only for material things, and for his deliverance from slavery. Then, little by little, he began to consider the condition of his own heart. He later described his encounter with God in these words:
The Lord opened to me the sense of my unbelief that I might remember my sins and that I might return with my own heart to the Lord my God … The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more – and faith grew and the Spirit was roused, so that in one day I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again, even while I remained in the woods or on the mountain…because then the Spirit within me was ardent (Thomas Cahill).
Six years passed. As Patrick continued to pray he matured and developed into a man. He also became an able shepherd and masterful handler of the half-domesticated sheep dogs. He learned the Celtic language of the Irish, and came to understand their religious system. “They worshipped the sun, moon, wind, water, fire, and rocks and believed in good and evil spirits of all kinds inhabiting the trees and hills. Magic and sacrifice – including human sacrifice – were part of the religious rites performed by the druids or priests” (Tucker). He admired their emotional intensity and their creativity, but grieved over their propensity to violence.
As he drew near to God, the Lord drew near to him. Although he had no Bible with him, the Lord spoke to him in visions and dreams. One day in a vision, God showed him it was time to flee. The Lord himself would take care of him.
Patrick knew that the consequences of attempted escape would include torture or even death, but he followed his vision and headed for the coast some 200 miles away. He traveled by night and hid by day. At long last he arrived at the shore, and found some sailors readying a boat to sail across the Irish Sea. “Take me with you!” he begged, but they laughed at him, since Patrick had no money. “Unless you pay the passage, why should we bother with you?” they replied. “Do you want us to take you for nothing?” Disheartened and distraught, fearful for his life, he watched with sinking heart as they loaded their cargo and prepared to depart.
Then he saw his chance. The sailors were having great difficulty with some of the wild sheepdogs they hoped to sell. He ran to the boat and offered his assistance. He demonstrated his capacity to manage the dogs and soon had them on board and calmed down. Grateful, they agreed to compensate his services by taking him with them. As the shoreline retreated from view, Patrick could at last relax. Now he was free! Free to return home and see his beloved family! Free to take up his life where he had left it! Free never to return to the land and people that had enslaved and mistreated him for those six long years.
The journey home turned out to be lengthy and circuitous. Then at last, the day finally came and he enfolded his dear mother in his arms. He was deeply grieved to learn that his father had died in his absence, but delighted that he would inherit his father’s political position. Tired of his wanderings, he was glad to settle down and begin to organize his life. The sun was at last shining on him once again.
But God had other plans for Patrick. One night he had another dream. This time it was of Ireland. He saw the faces of people he had known there. The whole flood of his experiences washed over him. Then, as he watched, he saw that they were speaking to him. No, not speaking, they were pleading! And what were they saying? They were begging him to do them a great favor. “We beseech you, holy youth, to come and walk with us once more.” Later, he wrote, “Their cry pierced to my very heart.”
When he woke, he couldn’t get the dream out of his mind. Walk with them again? What a crazy idea! He was free of them; free of their strange customs; their cruelty; their continual warfare; their Godless nature religion … But then he stopped. As these thoughts tumbled through his mind, one thing came into focus. The Irish lived as they did because they didn’t have what he had found as he suffered among them – an intimate and vibrant relationship with Jesus. Could it be that this dream was from God?
Could it be a similar vision as came to the Apostle Paul, of “a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us’” (Acts 16:9)? Was God calling him to leave his place of peace and privilege to return to Ireland to plunge into an unknown and dangerous future? Could God really ask this of him?
The Lord of the harvest won that day. And the sun was still shining as Patrick made his way to the church of Auxerre in Gaul (modern day France). He gave himself to years of study and spiritual formation to prepare himself for his apostolic task. Even after his ordination as a Deacon, due to his lack of academic brilliance, his superiors considered him unsuited for pioneer mission work in Ireland. Instead, Pope Celestine sent a monk named Palladius to go. However, “the hostility of Nathi, one of the Irish chieftains, and the general resistance of the people discouraged him and he left no enduring impression on Ireland or her church.” Patrick could only wonder how he could possibly succeed when another had failed so miserably.
Patrick was no longer a young man when at last he convinced his teachers of his call, he vision, and his capacity for missionary service. They ordained him a priest, with the commission and expectation of founding churches in the land of his captivity. With a small group of committed colleagues he sailed to the land for which he had interceded these long years. The flame of his conviction burned bright as he committed his task to God, fully aware of his limitations. When they arrived in Ireland in 432 he described the region as “the very ends of the earth…beyond the reach of everyone.”
Accounts of the next years are confusing as fact and legend have blended and passed down through history. What is clear, however, is that his preaching was scriptural and evangelical. The power of Holy Spirit in his life and message confronted the power of the druids as he suffered stiff opposition. Twelve times he faced death, including a harrowing kidnapping and a two-week captivity. Little by little, the message of Jesus and the Cross triumphed. In time, individuals, including powerful chieftains, responded to the Gospel.
Patrick longed to see his own master, Milchu, come to Christ. He prayed for him as he walked the many miles to the place where he had tended sheep and had received his first dreams. Milchu heard that Patrick was coming, not as a slave now but a leader of importance. Milchu could only imagine that he was coming for vengeance. Terrified, he took his own life and burned his house and barns over his head. As Patrick crossed the last hill, all that was left were smoldering embers.
Though his education had suffered while he tended sheep, and though he had struggled to master Latin, Patrick retained a keen sense of practical matters. The foundation of his discipleship was the Bible and he understood the Church to be a missionary community. In His lifetime he founded some two hundred churches. He put great emphasis on spiritual growth and his converts were not only trained to know and love God but also be concerned for those who needed to hear the Gospel. Some of these early missionaries were celibate, others were married.
He was open to female leadership, as well. His disciples and those who came after them crossed the Irish Sea to Britain, moved into Europe, and went as far south as Italy. They founded missionary communities like Iona and Lindisfarne. They were called the peregrini, “those on pilgrimage.” The leaders who remained at home continued to build up the Irish Church and in later centuries became famous for their copying of Greek and Latin manuscripts, thus preserving them for future generations. In time the whole island become Christian.
Though today he is considered by many as the most famous “Irish Saint” of the Catholic Church, actually Patrick was neither Irish nor Roman Catholic [See Postscript below - ed.]. He never had contact with the administrative center of the Catholic Church in Rome. To our knowledge, he never returned home to Britain. He died an old man, amazed at how the Lord had found him as a hungry and shivering sinful slave boy, and had given him the opportunity to take what he had been given and share it so amply with those who needed it so desperately.
Sources: Blair, Hugh J. “Patrick of Ireland” and Adam Loughridge “Palladius”. In J.D. Douglas (Ed). Dictionary of the Christian Church (Zondervan, 1979). Latourette, K.S. A History of Christianity (Harper, 1953). Tucker, Ruth A. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Zondervan, 2004). Cahill, Thomas How the Irish Saved Civilization (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
Postscript
Some readers have taken exception to the statement that Patrick was neither Irish nor Roman Catholic, since Patrick has been so identified with the Irish and is a Roman Catholic Saint. Let me clarify my statement.
It would be interesting to know the full story of Patrick's relationship to Rome. However, what is clear is the existence of the Christian Church in the British Isles before Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to England in 596. This church was sufficiently organized to send representatives to the Synod of Arles in 314 and the Council of Arminum in 359. The pelagian heresy spread to the Celtic Church, and Germanus of Auxerre (France) visited England to try to combat it (429), which shows something of the contacts the church had with the Continent. The Saxon invasions of 450, which took place while Patrick was still living, isolated the British Church from continental life and resulted in the virtual extermination of Christianity in England. It survived only in remote areas of the British Isles which stimulated the missionary activities of the Celtic Church under Columba and his followers and which resulted in the establishment of the “missionary outposts” of Iona (on the English western coast) and Lindisfarne (on the eastern coast).
When Augustine’s mission reestablished contacts with Rome he encountered the Celtic Christians. There were a number of differences of ethos and of religious observance between these two streams. Though some were superficial (such as the date of Easter and the tonsure of the monks), the Irish church had a strong emphasis on Biblical study, missionary expansion, scholarship, and a rich artistic tradition. The issue came to a head in 663. A synod was called at Whitby, in Yorkshire. The Celts argued that their tradition went back through Columba and Polycarp to John the Evangelist. Wilfrid, on the Roman side, pleaded the near-universality of the observance of a tradition going back to Peter and Paul. King Oswy of Northumbria, presided. He judged in favor of the Roman party on the grounds that he would rather be on good terms with “the keeper of heaven’s gate” than with Colomba (Nixon). The decision caused some bitterness among the Celtic party and was influential in bringing England within the mainstream of Christendom for the next eight and three-quarter centuries. It was at this synod, some two centuries after his death, that Patrick was promoted to sainthood, “most likely as an incentive for bringing the Celtic church under Roman Catholic domination” (Tucker).
As for the matter of “universal roots,” one of the things that impresses me so much about Patrick was his decision to take his followers, both lay and clergy, into deep Scripture study and as a result, restore the vitality of missionary vision and spiritual power that so characterizes the Book of Acts and which the Church on the Continent had largely lost.
Thanks to all who wrote in; I wish we could chat for an evening!
Jack
Sources: Clouse, Robert G. “Celtic Church,” in J.D. Douglas (Gen Ed), The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, (Zondervan, 1974). Nixon, R.E., “Synod of Whitby (663/4),” in J.D. Douglas (op.cit.), and Tucker, Ruth A. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, (Zondervan, 2004), pp 37 to 40. Tucker states textually: “Popular opinion notwithstanding, Patrick was neither a Roman Catholic nor an Irishman” (p. 37).
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