Saint Patrick—The Missionary, a Friend to Slaves and to Women

The person who was to become St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was born in Wales about AD 385. His given name was Maewyn. His father was a wealthy alderman and a Christian. When Patrick was 16 years old, pirates captured him during a raid and sold him as a slave in Ireland.  He served as a shepherd of an Irish Chieftain in Ulster. During his captivity, he dedicated himself to religion. After 6 years of slavery he escaped and returned home to Britain.  He later returned to Ireland as a missionary, determined to convert Ireland to Christianity. He used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity.

Patrick was quite successful at winning converts. And this fact upset the Celtic Druids. Patrick was arrested several times, but escaped each time. He traveled throughout Ireland, establishing monasteries across the country. He also set up schools and churches which would aid him in his conversion of the Irish country to Christianity. He is said to have founded more than 300 churches and baptized more than 120,000 people. He brought clergymen from England and France for his new churches. He succeeded in his mission to Ireland, even though many British clergymen opposed him and the way he organized the churches. Patrick preached in Ireland for the rest of his life.

Here’s what Thomas Cahill said about Patrick in his book “How the Irish Saved Civilization”

At length, he is ordained priest and bishop, virtually the first missionary bishop in history. We understand that Jesus’s apostles preached his Good News—Good Spell or Gospel, to use the Old English term—after the descent of the Spirit at the Feast of Pentecost in Jerusalem and that they intended to preach “to the ends of the earth.” We are a little uncertain as to how far most of them actually got, though we think Peter was nailed upside down to a cross at Rome. Thomas—in legend, at least—got as far as India. But the first Christian missionary for whom we have extensive documentation is Paul, not one of the original apostles, but an apostle, as he puts it, “appointed not by human beings”—that is, appointed by vision. Patrick may be the second such appointment. What is remarkable is not that Patrick should have felt an overwhelming sense of mission but that in the four centuries between Paul and Patrick there are no missionaries.

In truth, even Paul, the great missionary apostle, though he endured all the miseries of classical travel for the sake of the Gospel, never himself ventured beyond the Greco-Roman Ecumene. Thomas, presumed apostle to India, though traveling perhaps beyond the official Ecumene, would have proselytized an ancient civilization with many ties to the Greek world. So Patrick was really a first—the first missionary to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law. The step he took was in its way as bold as Columbus’s, and a thousand times more humane. He himself was aware of its radical nature. “The Gospel,” he reminded his accusers late in his life, “has been preached to the point beyond which there is no one”—nothing but the ocean. Nor was he blind to his dangers, for even in his last years “every day I am ready to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved—whatever may come my way. But I am not afraid of any of these things, because of the promises of heaven; for I have put myself in the hands of God Almighty.”

His love for his adopted people shines through his writings, and it is not just a generalized “Christian” benevolence, but a love for individuals as they are. He worries constantly for his people, not just for their spiritual but for their physical welfare. The horror of slavery was never lost on him: “But it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most—and who keep their spirits up despite the menacing and terrorizing they must endure. The Lord gives grace to his many handmaids; and though they are forbidden to do so, they follow him with backbone.” Patrick has become an Irishman, a man who can give far more credibility to a woman’s strength and fortitude than could any classically educated man.