Like most humans, when there is no way out, no one to talk to, no apparent answer to your plight, you end up down on your knees and looking to God. Even if you aren't sure about God you somehow sense a high power, something or someone far greater than yourself, when push comes to shove, there is God even if you don't know Him as your God yet. I feel reasonably sure this is what happened in young Patrick's life. When you seek God, God is there to be found. The one stabilizing factor in his young life was God. He knew about God even if he did not yet really know Him. I think young Patrick became much better acquainted with God in those six years of captivity as he struggled to survive on those hillsides of what is now Ireland.
After escaping captivity, Patrick, now about 22 or 23 years old, returned home and stayed there for the next ten or eleven years learning and studying the scriptures. It was during this time that Patrick claims to have had several revealing dreams or visions, not unlike those of the Apostle Paul in the Bible in which he was encouraged and later commissioned to return to the land of his captivity to share God's word. He was to return as a missionary to the people of what later would become Ireland.
I have not been able to find any confirmed record of where Patrick had any direct connection with the Church of Rome at that time or that he had ever been ordained or commissioned by them. I may have overlooked something but I didn't find it. What I did find and some of this in his own letters was that Saint Patrick held firmly to the fundamental Christian doctrines of the early apostolic church including the keeping of the Ten Commandments, the keeping of the Sabbath (7th Day) as Holy and without labor, the divinity of Jesus, the Christ, baptism, atonement through Christ, inspiration and prophecy. This is not what the Roman church of that day was teaching or if they were teaching it, it was only in part and tainted with pagan rituals and beliefs. In his letters Patrick never mentioned a connection with the Roman Church of the time.
Patrick returned to what is now Ireland somewhere around 433 or 435. There is some discrepancy as to the date of his return. Patrick returned to Ireland to teach the same gospel that had been brought there to the Druids, Celts and Picts by the original apostles three centuries earlier. He returned to the household of his former master, where he had been a slave and converted his household and from then on taught the Gospel throughout what is now Ireland.
The apostolic church took root and flourished until around the year 1130, almost 700 years before it was nearly crushed by the influx of Roman Catholic influence and the power of the Roman Church State. The classical Ancient Roman Empire, as a government, fell in approximately 476 AD but the influence of the Roman Church has lasted through time even to modern day. It is the grassroots apostolic church that seeded the Celtic Christian church and later the Orthodox Church that was nourished by Saint Patrick and still thrives, though in later years they have all been influenced by certain Catholic doctrine, including the Protestant movement in which the work of Saint Patrick is also recognized.
It is March 17th and we celebrate the life of Saint Patrick, a man who stood firm in his beliefs and helped to spread the Good News to Ireland and the world. He wasn't without his faults. He was only a man but he was a man of faith. He was a humble man but also a man of strength, not bowing to public opinion or governmental influence or to the Church of Rome. He lived by what he believed. He shared his beliefs that others might believe also.
Today, like so many other holidays, Saint Patrick's Day has become commercialized. It has taken on a whole new light. It is filled with legend, lore and fantasy and turned a humble teacher of the Gospel into a legend bigger than life. He is the Patron Saint of Ireland. They have a right to be proud of him. Patrick was a good man. He has earned our honor and respect. He is not God, however, nor is a magical or mystical. He would be the first to tell you so. We all enjoy hearing legends and lore. It makes us smile and in the case of Saint Patrick to boost our own faith and not let life beat us down. He was a man, a man who held firm to his faith in God.
Saint Patrick's Day is a day of fun and frolic and feasting but it is also a day to look at your own faith and see where you stand with God and young Patrick did on the hillsides of Ireland when he was just a slave boy. He sought God and God was right there to be found and then he tried to share God with all who would hear.
