Patrick is believed by many to have been born about 387 A.D. in Kilpatrick near Dumbarton in Scotland, the son Calpurnius, a senator and deacon, and Conchessa. Also his grandfather was a priest.1 He was a good Roman, a Latin-speaking son of Roman wealth and Roman privilege, living in Britain, a land from which the Roman Empire was receding from its dominate position in the world.2 When he was about sixteen years old, Irish pirates abducted him, taking him along with thousands of others to Ireland. There he was enslaved as a herder of their flocks. During his enslavement, the teachings from his youth of Christ were reawakened. He escaped six years later to France or Britain. It is at this point in his life that he declares that he had a calling in a dream by a man named Victoricus. This man handed Patrick a letter entitled “The Voices of the Irish” that begged him to come back to Ireland and help them. Realizing his inadequate knowledge, He resumed the education that had been interrupted by his enslavement, took holy orders, and eventually made it back to Ireland.
Ireland at this time was an undivided country, consisting of many petty kingdoms. It was a violent place—as a way of life, brother fought brother and tribes fought each other.3 This made Patrick’s travels in Ireland far from easy. He had to make alliances with these kings and their families in order to secure safe passage throughout the country. His efforts and obedience to God’s leading succeeded; devoting the rest of his life to the conversion of the Irish peoples—ordaining clergymen and baptizing thousands.4 He believed that Ireland was at the ends of the inhabited earth and that he was fulfilling the Lord’s command just as the Apostle Paul, to “bring salvation to the end of the earth” (Acts 13:47). He passionately believed in Our Lord’s proclamation recorded in Matthew 24:14:
“The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
There are many legends which surround the work of Patrick in Ireland. And as with all legends there are elements of truth contained. He is said to have driven all the snakes and frogs from Ireland by ringing his bell from the top of Croagh Patrick, a 2500 feet tall mountain near Westport. However, there is no evidence of snakes in Ireland prior to the Ice Age which separated the island from the mainland. And yet the truth of the matter may be that the druids who were converted to Christianity used the symbol of a serpent in their cultic worship.
A more believable legend is that Patrick used the three-leaf clover (shamrock) to teach the very difficult truth of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as the Triune God. He was apparently very successful for the pagan leaders were converted as well as their subjects, and thousands were baptized into Christianity.
Philip Schaff, the Christian historian, provides an interesting side note:
The Christianity of Patrick was substantially that of Gaul and old Britain, i.e. Catholic, orthodox, monastic, ascetic, but independent of the Pope, and differing from Rome in the age of Gregory I in minor matters of polity and ritual. In his Confession he never mentions Rome or the Pope; he never appeals to tradition, and seems to recognize the Scriptures (including the Apocrypha) as the only authority in matters of faith. He quotes from the canonical Scriptures twenty-five times; three times from the Apocrypha.5
How many Christians today believe as Patrick did, that the Scriptures are the only authority in their lives? This truth comes to us from within the writings of the Apostle Paul who wrote:
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
400 years after Paul wrote this, Patrick took this established doctrine to a land and a people that had enslaved him in his youth and revolutionized their thinking from paganism to a faith in the God of Scripture—the One true God of the universe. In his own writings, Patrick regarded his ministry as God’s accomplishments of converting a people who “cherished idols and unclean things”6 as the fulfillment of Hosea 2:23:
“And I will say to those who are not My people,
‘You are My people!
And they will say, ‘You are my God!’”
The profound lesson we learn from Patrick is that he believed in the sufficiency of God’s Word to direct his life, to the extent that he became faithful in spreading the Gospel of Christ to a pagan people, convincing them to turn from their idols and to serve a living and true God (1 Thessalonians 1:9). Are we challenged today to do likewise? Do our words and actions encourage others to desire to hear the gospel?
We live in a culture that is systematically rejecting its original Christian heritage. Christianity is a fading memory and regarded as nothing more than myths and superstitions. Our challenges today may be different than those of Patrick’s time, yet the Gospel message remains the same, that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
We who believe in Jesus Christ have been given the same calling that Patrick had been given, to communicate this powerful gospel message to our culture by word and by our manner of living. For just as it was not the government or any social organization which resolved the difficulties of the Irish people of Patrick’s day, it is only the gospel of salvation that can resolve the core problem of our own culture.☘
[1] Hoever, Hugo [Ed.] (1959). Lives of the Saints, New York, NY: Catholic Book Publishing, p. 111.
[2] Rogers, Jonathan (2010). Saint Patrick, Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson p. 4.
[3] Rogers, p. 101.
[4] Rogers, p. xxi, 65, 67.
[5] Schaff, Philip (2006) History of the Christian Church. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 4.47.
No comments:
Post a Comment