He eradicated paganism from Ireland and set the flame of the Gospel alight with such ardour that his apparently small field of action became a missionary hub for the West.
Shrouded in Atlantic mist and wrapped in a mantle of green, Ireland, in northern Europe, is compared to “an emerald set in the sea.” 1
If we unveil its scenario at the dawn of the fifth century, we find a country leagues behind the rest. Situated at the edge of the known world, it was unscathed by the barbarian invasions but also a stranger to Roman civilization. Its sparse population lived in clusters of fortified huts spread along the coasts, rivers and lakes. Its forests were the refuge of the Druids, the pagan priests who dominated the people with their magic.
Nothing indicated that this corner of Europe could become a vanguard of monastic and missionary activity that would greatly benefit the Church. Yet, at a historical crossroads after the collapse of the Roman Empire, eminent historians affirm that Ireland played the role of “the leader of Western culture.” 2
How did such a surprising transformation come about?
The grandeur and humility of a man of God
The cause can be ascribed to a man whose name is inseparable from Ireland: the holy Bishop Patrick. He traversed the island undaunted by the demons of paganism, scattering the seeds of the Faith and watering them with the sweat of his brow and the blood of his soul. “His success was phenomenal; where he planted Christianity, it flourished, and there were no retrograde pagan revivals.” 3
He has won a place in the ranks of providential men, propellers of the life of the Church on a universal scale—men of God’s right hand. “Obstacles are insignificant to them. Such Saints accomplish things that others could never imagine, rapidly accelerating the march of history and the progress of the Church. Such a description applies to St. Patrick, yet it also rightly applies to the Irish nation.” 4
But perhaps his greatest merit lay in seeing himself, not as a key player in history, but as a beneficiary of divine mercy, a debtor before God: “I was like a stone lying in the deep mire; and He that is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up and raised me aloft, and placed me on the top of the wall. 5
The winding ways of Providence
Patrick tells his own story, in brief lines6 “alternately emotional and understated,” 7 which have crossed the centuries with their freshness intact. “I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many. My father was Calpornius, a deacon, son of Potitus, a priest, of the village Bannavem Taburniae; he had a county seat nearby, and there I was taken captive. 8
Born in Roman Britain around the year 387, things may have gone smoothly for him, had a band of Irish marauders not captured him as a slave when he was about 16.
Swept away to the mysterious neighbouring island, he spent the next six years pasturing the flocks of a Druid priest. This phase served as preparation for his evangelizing mission: he dominated the native tongue, familiarized himself with the ways of the people, and became shrewdly versed in the perfidy of the pagan cult.
Moreover, alone in the soft Irish landscape, the ears of his heart became attuned to the whispering of grace, drawing him into God’s intimacy: “The love of God and His fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountain.” 9
Flight and a mystic calling
A day came when he heard a peremptory voice: “See, your ship is ready.” 10 Recognizing the timbre of a divine order, Patrick struck out, covering an enormous distance toward the coast in search of a vessel that would take him back to his country. After many adventures, he finally embarked in Britain.
With little more than 20 years of age, and already well tempered in the forge of suffering, Patrick entered religious life. He would eventually refine his studies in the Abbey of Marmoutier near Tours and receive the ecclesiastical tonsure in Lérins Abbey, on Saint-Honorat Island.
While his writings lament his cultural shortcomings, due to his captivity, he was, in fact, a man of known perspicacity, who accompanied St. Germanus of Auxerre on an important mission against the Pelagian heresy. In Rome, he received the mandate to preach the Gospel in Ireland from Pope St. Celestine I and was ordained a Bishop by St. Germanus shortly before setting sail.
Patrick joyfully welcomed the order of the Supreme Pontiff, for, since his return to Britain, the remembrance of the distant north had haunted him. He seemed to see “the children of the poor Irish pagans whose yoke he had known, holding out to him their little arms.” 11
His memoires, written in old age, narrate that not long after his deliverance, he had a vision of man who seemed to come from Ireland, laden with letters. He gave me one of them, and I read the opening words of the letter, which were, ‘The voice of the Irish’; and as I read the beginning of the letter I thought that at the same moment I heard their voice—they were those beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea—and thus did they cry out as with one mouth: ‘We ask thee, holy boy, come and walk among us once more.’ And I was quite broken in heart, and could read no further, and so I woke up. Thanks be to God, after many years, the Lord gave to them according to their cry.” 12
Return to Ireland
The Holy Bishop disembarked close to present-day Dublin probably in the year 432, to launch an evangelizing venture without precedent: an itinerant Bishop bent on converting a nation.
Along the coast, there were notable conversions: upright persons won over by the spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ personified in St. Patrick. His intransigence toward evil joined with gentleness of manner formed a harmonious contrast—a mark of Christian souls, but a quality alien to the pagans.
He also understood in a flash his most pressing fight: levelling the mountains and valleys of paganism to raise a solid edifice of the Faith. Impelled by grace, he hastened inland toward a head-on encounter with the then powers that be, starting with his former master, the old Druid named Miliuc.
But the tidings of Good News Patrick called out to him fell on a hardened heart. On a frenzied impulse, Miliuc locked himself in his hut, set it alight, and perished in the flames. Well did this pagan leader know the prevision of the poets of Erin of the arrival of a vested personage, staff in hand, who would reduce the druidic reign to rubble. With sinister intuition, he seemed to sense that his days were numbered.
Fire on the holy night
The Holy Bishop stood rooted in horror at this macabre turn of events. But he soon regained his habitual vigour, and forthwith drew up a strategy to reveal the Christian truths before the full eye of the nation. He chose the annual pagan festival of “Baal’s fire’, which in that year of 433 coincided with the Easter Vigil.
At the summons of King Laoghaire, the cream of society flocked to the Hill of Tara: priests, court officials and chieftains accompanied by their clans. The bards—the most influential class after the priests—were also in attendance, complemented by a swell of common folk.
Patrick was boldly determined to risk all: were he to succeed, those souls would open themselves to his preaching; if he failed, he would likely be immolated on the very altar he wished to overturn: “So girding up his loins, like another Elijah, he went on to meet the assembled Druids at Tara and throw down the gage of combat in the presence of those whom they had so long misled by their arts, and oppressed by their ghostly authority.” 13
The Saint, accompanied by a handful of Christians, climbed the Hill of Slane, in plain sight of the Hill of Tara, and set about gathering dry branches, fallen trunks… anything that would serve their purpose. And lo, at nightfall, a flame leapt from the hilltop, shattering the darkness—a colossal Paschal fire representing the sublime proclamation of the Resurrection: “Exult, the hosts of Heaven […] let the trumpet of salvation sound […] ablaze with light from her eternal King, […] knowing an end to gloom and darkness.” 14
A collective cry went up on the Hill of Tara: Who had the audacity to light a fire on the holy night of Baal—something expressly prohibited? The priests, more attuned to signs and symbols, shuddered: if such insolence went unpunished, how long could they hold the people in their sway? Gripped by the imminence of danger, they advised the king to have it promptly extinguished. If not, augured one of wisest, “it will never be extinguished in Ireland. Moreover, it will outshine all the fires we light. And he who has kindled it will conquer us all.” 15
Rising up, the king summoned the offender before the grand assembly. And then, in simple yet authoritative words, Patrick outlined the chief truths of the Faith. The upshot was a tumultuous clash between the Priest of God and the Druids, spanning several days. Prodigious scenes akin to the divine interventions of the Old Testament ensued: darkness covered the earth and was dispelled by the Saint who made the sun shine; the plains were covered with snow at the order of the Druids, and disappeared without a trace with a blessing of the Saint, among many other things. 16
The modern mentality—prone to banality—tends to relegate the supernatural to the world of myths. Yet, history records a radical division of camps on Tara that Easter. Key members of the royal family were won over, as well as the chief of the bards. The doors for the Gospel had been thrown open, and the tireless apostle pressed onward with his epic enterprise.
A springtime of grace
From this moment forward, events are imbued with the innocence of springtime grace. Ireland has become a nation of vibrant Faith, the fruit of a radical conversion. We find Patrick, father and shepherd of the people, surrounded by young neo-Christians. Holding aloft a delicate shamrock he reveals to them the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and looks on in wonder as a surge of souls come forward, desirous of assuming the evangelical counsels.
“How did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God, but until now always worshipped idols and things impure, have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called sons of God, that the sons and daughters of the kings of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ?” 17 This rapid awakening of a monastic movement was strengthened by the fact that despite the rural trappings, there was an advanced intellectual society on the island, especially in the literary arts. With the downfall of the Druids, the Catholic Religion easily assimilated and refined this cultural structure.
Church history proves the triumph of Christ in this nation, which would become a wellspring of Faith for Europe, thanks to St. Patrick: “After thirty-three years of apostleship he died, leaving Ireland almost entirely converted, and moreover, filled with schools and communities destined to become a nursery of missionaries for the West.” 18
That they persevere…
All of this goes back to that new fire—the Light of Christ—lit by Patrick, and his ardent prayer that it never wane in those souls: “Greatly and exceedingly do I wish, and ready I was, that He should give me His chalice to drink, as He gave it also to the others who loved Him. Wherefore may God never permit it to happen to me that I should lose His people which He purchased in the utmost parts of the world.” 19
And to this man who set ablaze the victorious flame of Faith in those lands languishing under pagan dominion went the prize of the true apostle: “those who turn many to righteousness, shall shine like the stars for ever” (cf. Dn 13:3). ◊
