[saint patrick]

Green clothes. Clovers. Leprechauns. Corn-beef. Pinching.

All of these pleasant (or... not so pleasant) things are associated with the holiday we call St. Patrick's Day. Every year we check our calendars and make sure we have something green to wear to make sure we don't get pinched by our friends.

But, do any of us really know anything more about the holiday, other than that? Funny, if you think about it. This holiday was set aside to celebrate, honor, and remember the life of the man we call Saint Patrick, but we don't even know what he did.

For sake of education, let's see what he really did.

Saint Patrick, or just Patrick, at the time, grew up in Britain. He was part of a family of reasonable wealth and fame as his father was a decurio (or senator) for Rome.

Then, at age 16, Patrick was captured by Irish raiders and sold into slavery to an Irish chieftain. For 6 years, Patrick tended his master's flocks. I found this incredible quote from Patrick's "Confessio:"

"I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the Love of God, and my fear of Him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time."

What incredible faith and trust, even in such a difficult time. God protected him and cared for him until, one day, God told Patrick to escape, and so he did. Through an incredible chain of events that would take far too long to recount, Patrick found his way back home.

What an incredible story of God's providence! What a great ending. The boy gets captured, he never loses faith, God rescues him, and brings him back safe to his home.

But you see, that's not it. We rejoin Patrick a few years later as, under the guidance of Bishop Saint Germain, as he receives his priesthood. As he served with the bishop he began to receive visions of young irish children calling out to him, begging him to return to Ireland.

So what did Saint Patrick do?

He went back to Ireland. Back to the country he had been enslaved by. Back to the people that had captured him, beaten him, mistreated him, and scorned him. Back to face the pagan religion that had it's hold on the country, the witchcraft and deceit. He went back to share the message of Christ with these people. It was no easy task. But eventually, as we see today, the hope, grace and truth he offered was accepted and celebrated by the irish people.

This story astounds me. I have little faith that many of us would have the faith and trust to go back and show compassion to the people that had hurt us in such ways. This story is incredible, but yet it is told so few times.

Instead, we celebrate the color green. We make corn-beef and cabbage. But no mention is ever made about the legacy of Saint Patrick.

What if all that changed? What if we made an effort, every St. Patrick's day to share the true story of the holiday with at least 3 people? What if, instead of celebrating it by pinching someone who isn't wearing green, we let Saint Patrick's day be a day where we sacrifice pride, bitterness, hurt, and prejudice and forgive those who have done us wrong? Can you imagine, if every March, thousands of broken relationships were fixed? If families were reconciled, friendships revitalized? I think this would honor the legacy of a great man far more than images of shamrocks and leprechauns.

What if we made this holiday truly mean something, that truly matters?