The saints

Saint Patrick

Bishop and Missionary · Feast day March 17 · Fifth century · Britain and Ireland · Also known as Padraig, the Apostle of Ireland

Saint Patrick was a young Briton carried off into slavery in pagan Ireland, who escaped, found God, and then astonishingly returned to the land of his captivity to bring it the gospel. He is the apostle of Ireland and one of the most beloved missionaries in history.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:Matthew 28:19 (KJV)

Carried into slavery

Patrick was born in Roman Britain to a Christian family, the son of a deacon, though as a boy he had little real faith of his own. When he was about sixteen, raiders swept in from Ireland, seized him, and carried him across the sea to be sold as a slave, where he spent six years alone on the hills tending sheep in cold and hunger.

In that misery he turned to the God he had ignored. As he later wrote in his Confession, the love of God grew in him, and he prayed a hundred prayers a day and as many in the night, and the faith that had been only his family's became his own. God, he said, had used his captivity to open his eyes.

Escape and calling

After six years Patrick heard a voice in his sleep telling him a ship was ready, and he fled two hundred miles to the coast, found the ship, and after great hardship made his way home to his overjoyed family. He might have stayed there in safety for the rest of his life.

But he began to have dreams of the people of Ireland, hearing them call, We beg you, holy boy, come and walk among us again. He understood it as the call of God, and against every natural instinct he resolved to go back to the very people who had enslaved him, not for revenge but to bring them Christ. He trained for the ministry and returned as a bishop to Ireland.

The gospel comes to Ireland

For the rest of his life Patrick traveled across Ireland preaching, baptizing, and planting churches among a people who had never heard of Christ. He faced hostile chieftains and real danger, was robbed and threatened, and pressed on. By long tradition he used the three-leaved shamrock to teach the mystery of the Trinity, three persons in one God, and confronted the pagan priests with the greater power of the living God.

He baptized thousands, ordained clergy, and encouraged many to give their lives wholly to God as monks and nuns. Within a few generations the island he found in darkness had become known as a land of saints and scholars, sending missionaries back out across Europe.

The Confession and the Breastplate

In old age Patrick wrote his Confession, a humble account of his life and God's grace, insisting always that he was a sinner, unlearned, and that whatever good was done had been done by God through him. It is one of the earliest and most moving pieces of writing to survive from the British Isles.

To him is also attributed the great prayer called Saint Patrick's Breastplate, which binds the soul to God for protection: Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me. It still guards and gladdens Christians who pray it today.

Why Patrick still matters

Patrick is proof that God can turn the worst thing done to us into the door of our calling. The slave came back as an apostle, and forgave the nation that had stolen his youth by giving it the gospel. His feast on March 17 is kept around the world, and beneath the parades stands a man who loved his enemies and won a whole people for Christ.

A note for all traditions: the saints are honored across the church as examples of faith and, in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, as friends who pray with us, never worshiped, for worship belongs to God alone. What Scripture records and what later tradition holds are distinguished above. In every tradition there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and every believer, not only the saints, is called to follow him.

Related: Saint Patrick's Day · Saints for March 17 · Saint of the day