Enslaved, persecuted and defamed: St. Patrick was a model for Christianity. He was quick to reconcile with and pray for his enemies, working toward healing and peace.
He overcame any obstacles opponents put in his path with charity, whether the obstacle was his own churchman accusing him of moral corruption or the forces of evil trying to keep the Irish people in ignorance and despair. To this day he personifies the endurance of the hardships of his adopted spiritual sons and daughters.
Everyone knows the St. Patrick of the parades–the heroic missionary to Ireland who converted a pagan king and people with the shamrock, the symbol of the Trinity. Honoring Patrick has always been in celebration of Irish freedom, dignity and spiritual favors as gifts of God.
There is a nobler side to this great fifth century apostle, who personally had to free himself before he could liberate a people. He began life as a slave, captured as a boy in Scotland and taken to pre-Christian Ireland. Ironically, the enslaved shepherd boy became a shepherd of souls.
Patrick eventually freed himself and went to France, preparing to return and liberate the Irish from a spiritual darkness he recognized.
Returning as a bishop, he revealed a God who can unshackle the truly indomitable soul, the soul of an entire nation. Ireland became that “island of saints and scholars,” whose preservation of Western cultural heritage is told by Thomas Cahill in “How the Irish Saved Civilization” (1995).
Cahill notes a remarkable fact, that “the greatness of Patrick is beyond dispute: [he was] the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery” (p.114). More extraordinarily, Patrick had a special compassion for the plight of women, declaring “it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most” (p.109), a reality in whatever form that still persists.
Not until the 19th century would established churches arrive at Patrick’s wisdom on each count and begin to abolish both slavery and gender discrimination.
In March 1993, a New York Times essay appeared about Patrick the slave. Professors Nerys and Orlando Patterson proposed him as inspiration for all oppressed peoples and minorities, from Irish immigrants who endured prejudice to African Americans who arrived in slavery and still suffer from its tragic effects.
The Pattersons’ cultural comparison summarizes a magnificent, selfless act of reconciliation: “This Patrick, who helped to bring the Irish into the mainstream of Western history, who forgave and was forgiven [by the British who believed him too great a sinner], who suffered enslavement and overcame it, who epitomized the West’s central drama – the outsider who stayed to transform the culture of his conqueror – belongs to all of us.”
The strongest comparison is reconciliation. All who suffer discrimination are called, like Patrick, to Christ-like forgiveness. Patrick never yielded to the ethnocentric hatred of his captors, even returning as a foreigner at great personal risk to help them.
The fiercely proud Irish people inherited his indomitable spirit, promising never to submit but to always forgive as their founding saint had personally modeled for them.
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