They say he charmed the snakes in Ireland
and drove them into the sea,
that he chose the shamrock, three leaf clover
to demonstrate the Trinity.
They say he could charm a leprechaun
into giving up his gold
and that he blessed the Blarney Stone
in ancient days of old.
They say he was a shepherd boy,
once a captive slave
who grew into a man of faith
and taught living in God's way
to the folks of the Emerald Isle
and they still honor him today.
As a child I had quite a different notion of Saint Patrick and the holiday celebrating the life of this man than I do now. At one time, when I was a very young child, Saint Patrick and a few others were right up there with the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. In my mind he was just as magical. We all know as adults, even older children that the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy aren't real, they are folk lore and legend but Saint Patrick was a real person, though he has been made larger than life through lore and legend much like Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett in American Folk Lore. Both of these men were very real men with a lot of wonderful qualities and they did a lot of good in their lives but they were men and they had their short comings too; so was Saint Patrick.
Taking a look at what we actually do know about Saint Patrick, the facts we know, I still think he was pretty cool and someone we can look up to, respect. I think some of his character could rub off on some of us and we would benefit from it, but, he was just a man and he had his faults too, just like David in the Bible, “the Apple of God's Eye,” but David was not perfect. He did some downright unrighteous things in his life. So did Saint Patrick, I think. There were times when he bent the rules and gave way to public opinion rather than standing steadfast behind the truth. For the most part, however, he stood firm in his beliefs in God.
Saint Patrick was a Christian missionary to Ireland who lived from around 373 AD (There is no absolute record showing his exact date of birth that I can find) to 460AD, (He is believed to have died in that year on March 17th, the reason Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated on that day). He served as a missionary from around 433 AD to his death. Though there is no documentation from his time that he ever had any connection with the Church of Rome, there is some documentation written many years after his death that he spent some years studying in a monastery in Gaul (now France), though there is no actual proof this occurred. Because of his families ties to Rome, however, this is a speculative possibility. Years later the universal church, now the Roman Catholic Church chose to honor him with a day of celebration for his dedication to God and the Church on March 17th and this day became a day of celebration, a Feast Day, early in the 17th century. Because of his tireless efforts in Ireland Saint Patrick became the Patron Saint of Ireland even though he has never been formally canonized by the Pope. Saint Patrick is none-the-less venerated, held in high esteem, by both the Catholic and the Orthodox Christian Churches, and the Celtic Christian Church in the United Kingdom, Ireland and in North America as well as in other parts of the world today.
Saint Patrick has become one of Christianity's most recognized figures and yet much of his life remains a mystery. We don't really know a whole lot about him, only what legend and lore tell us and like so many other outstanding figures, he has been made bigger than life through years of exaggeration and made up stories. I think Saint Patrick was a very good man, but he was, after all, just a man and a man of his time. Like David in the Bible, he probably wasn't always all that perfect.
To maybe get a little clearer picture of Saint Patrick we need to look at what was going on in the world during the years of his life, between 373 and 460 AD; after Jesus life, death and resurrection and His ascension back to Heaven…we have to look at the social, political aspects as well as what the Christian Church was like and doing in that era.
Christianity was still very new to the world at that time and most societies still worshipped many gods, creatures, inanimate objects and had some very strange philosophies foreign to our way of thinking that we now call myths. Much of the world is still doing that in one way or another and it may not all be false, just not Christian.
