Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Here is an informative talk on St. Patrick by Gary Hicks.  He discusses how Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland and transformed Celtic Civilization.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

While you sleep among the sheepfolds,

the wings of the dove shine with silver,

her feathers glow with green gold.
~Psalm 67

(From this morning's Office of Readings.)

According to American Catholic, St. Patrick was born either in Dunbarton, Scotland, Cumberland, England, or in northern Wales. At the age of 16, he was captured and sold into slavery in Ireland. Forced to remain outside for long periods of time tending his master's flock, he prayed constantly and experienced a conversion.

He escaped after 6 years, probably to France, and later to Britain. He returned to Ireland a priest, and paid the price of his ransom to his former master, Milchu of Dalriada.

He converted pagan Ireland, the country that had formerly enslaved him, to Christianity.

Green Martyrdom

As the era of overt Christian persecution ended in the early days of the Church, the question arose among Christians as to how one could give everything (including one's life) for Jesus. When killing Christians was no longer a common past time, people needed to know how to radically live out their faith as the early Christian Martyrs did. Taking their cue from Christ, they wanted to follow Jesus' command in Matthew 19:21:

Jesus said to (the rich young man), "If you want to be perfect, sell what you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then follow me!"

They wanted to follow Jesus' own example and go out into the desert to fast and pray. Unable to duplicate the arid conditions of the Desert Fathers in the Middle East the ever creative Irish came up with the idea of "green martyrdom".

Three types of martyrdom
Red martyrdom is the most obvious and involves literally giving up one's life for Christ. (Note that in Christianity, this does NOT involve killing one's self, but being killed by others for one's faith.) White martyrdom is giving up one's home for Christian evangelization. This is what St. Patrick did. Patrick was originally from Britain and was sold as a slave to Ireland. After returning to Britain, Patrick went back to Ireland to help evangelize the island.

Green martyrdom is "the daily struggle for goodness and purity, the shedding of bad habits and routines that separate us from God. We must wrestle daily with our baser nature." (~Christopher Bygonaise)

It is indeed a type of martyrdom to continually strive to live a life that Christ would have us live; to avoid sins, both heinous and common, and to go to Jesus, ask for His grace and beg for His forgiveness. If society was ever truly "Christian", it is not Christian now. As many people are discovering, sin is firmly planted, even within church communities.

It is part of our fallen human nature to blame others. It is so easy as to be almost unconscious in most of us. But, we need look no further than our own souls to see what is ailing society. Following Christ takes the true freedom of death to self. We cannot do it alone. We must unite ourselves to Christ.

God bless Saint Patrick! Saint Patrick, pray for us!

Canticle of Saint Patrick

Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all.

Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick was the first missionary to Ireland. He was born in Scotland in 387. At 16, he was sold into slavery in Ireland, where he prayed continually to God and found strength. While there, he learned to love the Irish people and learned about the Druid religion. The Lord was preparing him, through his captivity, for his future mission.

Told in a dream to escape, he returned to his homeland, but continually felt the pull to go back to Ireland to evangelize the pagan population. While in Ireland, Saint Patrick performed many miracles and used the now-famous shamrock to explain the concept of the Holy Trinity.

The influence of Saint Patrick on civilization cannot be underestimated. His introduction of Christianity to Ireland paved the way for future groups of monks to painstakingly hand copy manuscripts, both pagan and Christian, which became the record of western civilization that was preserved after the fall of Rome.

I think we need Saint Patrick today more than ever. There are countries and peoples who have long been Christian who are no more. We need Saint Patrick's intercession to re-evangelize the western world.

Saint Patrick, pray for us!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Saint Patrick was born Patricius in Roman occupied Great Britain. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Ireland as a teen and worked for a local warlord as a shepherd. He escaped 6 years later and returned to Great Britain to study for the priesthood.

Patrick received a vision to return to Ireland to evangelize the land of his captivity. He did this without hesitation, in spite of the fact that no one had taken the Gospel outside of the Roman Empire.

In the five centuries before Saint Patrick, the followers of Christ had not yet taken the Gospel to "all nations", in part, because they didn't believe that the "barbarians" living outside of Roman Civilization, were fully human. Saint Patrick was the first to do this.

Patrick's kidnapping was a blessed turning point in his life. Had he not been kidnapped at that crucial time of adolescence, he would not have grown to become the man he became. As a result of his captivity, he spoke out against the enslavement of human beings centuries before the Church officially condemned it. He also saw women as equal human beings in Christ. Patrick speaks in his Confessions of

...a blessed woman, Irish by birth, noble, extraordinarily beautiful—a true adult—whom I baptized.

Had he not answered God's call to missionary work, Ireland would have remained without God's Word for an untold time in the future.

Saint Patrick was the first recorded human being to speak out against slavery and the first true Christian Missionary. By the time of Patrick's death, or soon after, Ireland stopped the slave trade and never again participated in human sacrifice. Because of Saint Patrick's work, Irish monks went on to help preserve Western Civilization during the Middle Ages.

Thanks to the Saint Anthony Messenger for much of this information.