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By Tyson Thorne

Originally published March 13, 2014
 
 

StPatricks large

The wizened elder picked a clover from the field for perhaps the hundredth time during his hard life and lifted it above his head for all to see. It was still moist with the morning dew and sparkled in the early sun. Dozens of students stood around him. He was a bishop now, though this was not always so during his time among these people.

“The holy Trinity is like a three leaf clover…” he began, the new converts to Christianity moved in closer, eagerly awaiting the explanation.

Saint Patrick was born of Roman parents in Scotland in the year 387 AD and lived a privileged life until 403 when the territory his parents were charged to keep in check for Rome was overrun by invaders. Patrick was more fortunate than those who died that night and the next day, for he was taken captive and sold into slavery to a tribal people in Ireland. He served them as a shepherd, learned their language and customs and a few druid practices before remembering the faith of his countrymen. On a hillside while tending sheep he cried out to God for the first time in his life, and clung to the Heavenly father every day thereafter. Patrick wrote of that time:

And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

He was a captive for four years before he made his escape, the idea and plan for which Patrick credited as coming in a dream from God. He followed the dream’s direction and found himself along the coast where he met up with sailors who carried him home.

Reunited with his family, he turned to the priesthood. He trained under the Bishop of Auxerre for years before being ordained Bishop himself. Interestingly, his heart longed to take the truth of the Gospel back to his captors. For most, returning to the land of slavery would be the last place one would want to be. Yet return he did with the message of Jesus Christ:

For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name.

Patrick spent the rest of his life loving and teaching the people of Ireland, planting churches and discipling many until there wasn’t a people he hadn’t met and brought the gospel to. He died in 461 AD in Downpatrick, Ireland – the site of the first church he built.

There are a great many miracles and legends attributed to this remarkable man of God, some of which may even be true. For an incredibly well researched and captivating written account of his life, read Patrick: Son of Ireland by Stephen Lawhead.

The modern celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day seems incongruous with the way the man lived his life. Patrick was an intelligent man of patience and long-suffering not given to drunkenness and carousing. This year, celebrate with your unbelieving friends and, in the spirit of Patrick, extend to them the gospel of grace. If you cannot do so as exquisitely as Patrick, at least do so with his compassion and brevity.