Pastor Glenn McDonald: Patrick Returns to Ireland

Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

March 17 annually arrives on a tidal wave of Irish blessings, green beer, and clothing choices that would make even a leprechaun wince. 

But who exactly is the figure for whom this day has long been associated?

Legends embellish the life and ministry of Patrick. He is said to have driven the snakes out of Ireland, and to have reached down during a theological bull session with a pagan chieftain to pluck a three-leafed shamrock (a representation of the Trinity) that had miraculously grown at his feet. 

But Patrick’s real life, or at least what we know of it, is so fascinating that legends are quite unnecessary. 

As some might put, “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Patrick was born in Britain around A.D. 390. Even though his parents were Christian, he doesn’t seem to have paid much attention to spiritual matters. That all changed at age 16 when he was captured by slave traders and sent to work in Ireland as a pig handler on a farm. 

After a number of years he managed to escape, journeying 200 miles on foot to the coast. He arrived just as a ship with a cargo of hounds was departing. Patrick talked his way aboard as a dog-tender. His travels took him to France, to the Mediterranean, and finally back home to Britain.

Patrick had a truckload of good reasons never to set foot in Ireland again. 

But he was haunted by dreams in which Irish children begged him, “Come and walk among us once more.” 

After a time of study and preparation he returned to the Emerald Isle, this time to present what he had learned about God and God’s ways through his own struggles.

Previous Christian missionaries had fallen flat in their attempts to engage the pagan tribes that had dominated Ireland for centuries. But something about Patrick’s straight-to-the-point style clicked. It’s likely that his years in slavery had uniquely formed him to understand his audience.

We have no reason to doubt that Patrick occasionally used shamrocks to illustrate the one-in-three reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (although, as we noted earlier in our series, no illustration adequately conveys the mystery of the Trinity). But let’s put the legends aside. What do we actually know about his ministry over the next 30-plus years? 

Most of Ireland converted to Christianity. It was a remarkably peaceful transition, since historians cannot name a single Irish martyr. 

Patrick launched approximately 300 churches. That would be one about every five weeks. He baptized around 120,000 people. If you do that math, that would be approximately 12 per day for three decades. Most American church leaders would do handsprings just to baptize a dozen adult converts per year. 

But that was just the beginning of how Irish Christianity became a major hinge point for the rest of the global Church.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Cahill’s book How the Irish Saved Civilization. At first glance this title would seem to be about as self-evident as How the Cleveland Browns Saved the NFL.   

But Cahill’s work is a moving account of the medieval monastics who, living in comparative isolation on the Emerald Isle, picked through the cultural ruins of the Roman Empire and managed to save – for all the world and for all time – the priceless literary legacy of the Mediterranean world.

Irish monks, as a spiritual exercise, faithfully copied and preserved many of the greatest classics of ancient Greece and Rome, not to mention crucial religious documents. Apart from their faithfulness, Cahill asserts, the West as we know it would never have come into existence.

The Irish church also bequeathed a rich legacy of music.  

According to tradition, the lyrics of Be Thou My Vision were written by the Irish poet St. Dallan within 100 years of Patrick's death. It was only about 100 years ago, however, that the familiar words were finally set to the Irish folk tune "Slane" - an association that seems likely to endure.

Perhaps more than any other hymn in the English language, this is a musical prayer: 

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art

Thou my best thought by day or by night

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Be Thou my wisdom and Thou my true word

I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord

Thou my great Father, I Thy true son

Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one

High King of heaven, my victory one

May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's sun

Heart of my own heart whatever befall

Still be my vision, O Ruler of all

This rendition by singer-songwriter Ginny Owens is especially poignant, since she herself does not have physical vision, having lost her eyesight at age three: Be Thou My Vision (Live) - Ginny Owens

You may not be into shamrocks and green socks.

But that Irish hymn is a prayer worth singing any day of any year.

Especially if our own lives - like Patrick's - are taking twists and turns we never saw coming.