Sometime around 430 CE a sixteen year old Briton was kidnapped by Irish raiders near his home on the west coast, probably close to Dumbarton in Scotland. He was carried away to the north of Ireland and sold to a warrior chief, for whom he worked as a herdsman on the slopes of Slemish mountain near Ballymena, Northern Ireland. Although brought up in the faith Patrick had just been a nominal Christian up to that point in time. Poorly fed and badly treated by his master he began to think about God again and to pray to him regularly. Regretful that he had had little time for God before his capture he repented of his sins and turned to God with all his heart.
After six years of slavery Patrick became convinced that he heard a voice telling him that it was time to leave. He therefore made his escape and travelled to a port two hundred miles south where he boarded a ship bound for Gaul. Details are sketchy but it seems that he trained for the ministry on an island near Cannes before returning home to his family in Britain some years later. There, in a dream reminiscent of the one in which the Apostle received the Macedonian Call, Patrick received his own call to evangelize Ireland. In his dream he encountered a man called Victoricius who carried letters, one of which he read to Patrick. It began with the words: ‘The Voice of the Irish.’
Heeding the call, Patrick arrived in Ireland to find the country in a poor spiritual state. It was steeped in paganism and magic. Patrick travelled throughout the land preaching and teaching; concentrating his evangelistic efforts on the many warrior chieftains. Much of the opposition his mission encountered was from the Druids, a Celtic priestly caste. Having been a slave himself, Patrick was one of the first Christians to speak out against slavery and it is said that shortly after his lifetime the Irish slave trade came to an end. Patrick’s work as a missionary is significant for he was one of the earliest to take the gospel outside the bounds of what had been the Roman empire.
It is hard to separate fact from fiction as regards St. Patrick. Stories about him chasing the snakes from Ireland and illustrating the Trinity with a leaf of Shamrock may be myths but one thing is certain: Patrick was a saint. He has never been canonized by the Roman Catholic church, but that is not how one becomes a saint anyhow. Sainthood is not attained because of what we have done for others and because of what others think of us. We do not have to wait until we are long dead in order to achieve sainthood but we become saints while we are alive. Many of the New Testament epistles were written ‘to the saints.’ The authors were not writing to dead people but to congregations of Christian believers who were very much alive at the time. St. Patrick, like every other Christian believer, did not become a saint because of his good deeds but because he humbly acknowledged his state as a sinner in God’s sight and received Jesus Christ as his Saviour. Patrick wrote;
‘I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many…I was like a stone lying in the deep mire; and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up.’
Patrick journeyed throughout Ireland as an itinerant preacher of the gospel, not to become a saint but because he already was one. He loved the Lord Jesus Christ and wanted to share the good news of salvation with others. His prayer was: ‘Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me…! Are you a saint like St Patrick? If not, then cease from trying to save yourself by your own efforts and instead receive as Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ who died for your sins. That is exactly what a sixteen year old boy in Ireland did almost sixteen hundred years ago, and immediately became a saint!
Written Exposition 