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Today, Catholic Christians celebrate the feast of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland.
There are many legends about Patrick, but not many concrete facts that we know.
We know that he was born somewhere in the early fifth century in Great Brittan, but we don’t know exactly where in Great Brittan; it could have been in England, Wales, or Scotland.
When he was sixteen years old, raiders from Ireland came and captured Patrick and workers from his father’s estate. The raiders took them to Ireland and sold them as slaves.
As a slave, Patrick worked as a shepherd for six years. Often, he was hungry and cold in this very rainy country.
During his time in Ireland as a shepherd, Patrick had a spiritual conversion. In a dream, he saw all of the children of Ireland stretching out their hands to him. He interpreted this dream to mean that God wanted him to become a missionary priest in Ireland.
After six years as a shepherd, Patrick escaped and fled to France. There, he studied and became a priest. Then, at the age of forty-three, he was consecrated a bishop.
As a bishop, he went to Ireland to spread the good news of Catholic Christianity. He made many converts in his time, and he began to organize the Catholic Church in Ireland by establishing dioceses and ordaining priests and bishops to serve the people on this island nation.
One of the things Patrick was most famous for was using a shamrock – a three-leaf clover – to teach the people about the Blessed Trinity. He told them that just as a shamrock is one yet had three leaves, so the Trinity is One God with Three Divine Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From this story, the shamrock has become a symbol of the Blessed Trinity as well as of Ireland.
St. Patrick is called the Apostle of Ireland and is the patron saint of Ireland and Nigeria in Africa.
The influence of St. Patrick’s missionary is easy to see, for even in modern times, the Catholic Church in nations such as the United States of America were able to grow because of Irish missionary priests. In fact, most Catholic priests in the United States in the nineteenth century were from Ireland.
