The Saint of Second Chances

 From Brits at their Best:

The patron saint of the Irish, Patrick he was born and raised in Britain until kidnapped by Irish pirates, and taken as a slave to Ireland.

Enslaved
Growing up in Britain at the end of the 4th century, Patrick did not give anyone the impression he would become a saint with a capital S. Then his life changed abruptly. A teenager, he was kidnapped by pirates and taken west across the sea, to be sold into slavery in Ireland.

He found himself living outside, herding sheep, cold and hungry and at the mercy of those who owned him. Out of desperation he returned to his childhood faith in Christ. For six years he survived, and prayed. One night he heard the voice of God telling him it was time to leave.

Escape
Patrick decided to go. He walked south. Incredibly no one stopped the runaway slave. He reached Wexford, but couldn't find a ship that would take him. Just before a ship carrying wolfhounds to Gaul shipped anchor, he was allowed to board. The sailors offered him their nipples to be kissed - a sign of welcome that Patrick found a little disconcerting.

They landed in Europe to discover desolation. It is speculated that tribes had recently crossed the frozen Rhine and devastated the Roman Empire.

A sunny sanctuary
Years later, still uncertain of his future but following his visionary inner voice, Patrick made his way across Gaul to the monastery on a sunny little island, now called St. Honorat, that lies in the Mediterranean not far from Cannes. Southern warmth brought him the scents of lavender and basil, lemon and roses. His six years of slavery in Ireland disappeared from his mind like a boat over the horizon.

At the monastery the monks maintained a civilised belief in books and in the siesta, spent in the stone coolness of the monastery's fountain-splashed interior. Patrick learned Latin, though not very well, and the stories and sayings of Christ by heart. He learned to preach, but like some modern graduate students he began to think he could live a companionable academic life, shielded from the hectic life outside, forever.

Dream visions
It was only in his dreams that the ship returned, and he saw the outstretched arms of the Irish imploring him to return, and heard their voices calling to him from across the water. Among those voices was one voice he could not forget, from his boyhood. But for a long time, fear kept him motionless.

He was a priest and a preacher approaching middle age when he had another visionary dream. He heard a voice in Ireland say, “He who has given his own soul for you, He it is who speaks in you. Come back to Eire and free us.”

There are people who ignore their visions and die filled with regrets. Patrick ignored his visions until he was strong enough to face them. He made the free but frightening decision to return to the people who had kidnapped and enslaved him, and preach the love of God. He faced violence, betrayal, church snobbery, and his own fears.

Return to Eire
All too aware of the dangers and his own modest abilities, he left the warm scents of the Mediterranean, the sun, and the sea, the easy comradeship and the library of books, and crossed the mountains to the north, travelling through the wilderness that was Gaul. He sailed over the turbulent northern waters, heading toward the cold, green island where there was not one book and where, fifteen years earlier, he had spent six years as a hungry, naked slave boy.

It was eary in the fifth century. The island rose on the horizon like the grey ship of captivity. This was the dreaded country of his servitude, but it was also the place where poverty and calamity have been better for me than riches.

Faced with assault and assassination, Patrick gave himself to God. That proved enough, though as he also observes, he had to give his whole self sincerely, since God was not enthusiastic about theatrical impersonation.

Patrick was said to have sung Faeth Fiadha, the Deer’s Cry as he travelled –

I arise today through the strength of heaven
light of sun,
radiance of moon,
splendour of fire,
speed of lightning
swiftness of wind,
depth of sea,
stability of earth,
firmness of rock.
I arise today through God's strength to pilot me. . .

Living as if God’s strength piloted him, he travelled around Ireland, talking about the gospel of Isu Mac De (the Gaelic for Jesus the son of God). and founding communities of fellowship.

Seeding community
Despite local hostility, his first community grew as he healed the sick, gave pastoral care, and preached. When Patrick was sure the community could survive, he travelled on with his crook-shaped staff. A few members from the first fellowship came with him to help him plant the second so the second community grew quickly, and Patrick could branch out and start a third and a fourth. He was attacked and, at least once, held captive. That he was not killed was due, he wrote simply, to “the Lord.”

His communities were a stunning turnaround in a land where men and women had often waged bloody tribal wars over the ownership of cattle. The reason for their change of heart is visible, even over the distance of many years. People experienced the gospel for themselves by becoming part of the vibrant and loving Christian community; and the existence of such communities was the living evidence for the truth proclaimed (Celtic Gifts, Robert Van de Weyer).

Attacking slavery
Patrick introduced people to a way of life whose love, fearlessness, and generosity he embodied. He was not afraid. He never hesitated to attack the accepted, profitable way of doing things if he thought it was wrong. The Greek playwright Euripides is the first man in recorded history to denounce slavery, that thing of evil, by its nature evil, forcing a man to submit to what no man should submit to. Patrick was the second or third to denounce slavery –

Patricide, fratricide! ravening wolves eating up the people of the Lord as if it were bread!. . .I beseech you earnestly, it is not right to pay court to such men nor to take food and drink in their company, nor is it right to accept their alms, until they by doing strict penance with shedding of tears make amends before God and free the servants of God. . .

According to the Oxford Dictionary, Germans and Celts called their kinfolk ‘free,’ a word that meant they were ‘dear’ to them and so had personal rights and liberty of action not given to slaves. Patrick declared that everyone was dear to God, and therefore everyone should be free. He created communities that defended and nurtured freedom out of his belief that this is what God wanted.

The Venerable Bede, writing in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, reported that the communities which Patrick founded in Ireland became havens of education for young English men. And a century after Patrick's death, Aidan brought learning and Christ's teachings of peace back to England, to strife-torn Northumbria.

At a time of year when the grey trees stand bare, throwing the shadows of their branches across the green grass, the starry blue flowers of the periwinkle open, and the dog-tooth violets lift nodding blooms on crook-shaped stems, Patrick laid down his crook-shaped staff. After he was gone, he seemed to those who knew him to be the best part of themselves, the slave who had returned to the place of his servitude to free slaves, the middle aged man who had dared to let his life be transformed, giving hope to us that it isn't too late to transform ours.
I arise today!