St. Patrick

St. Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, was born around 385 in Roman Britain, the son of a deacon named Calpornius. Remarkably, we know Patrick largely through his own words: two authentic writings survive, his Confessio, a spiritual autobiography, and his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, a protest against the enslavement of Christian converts. At about sixteen, Patrick was seized by Irish raiders and carried into slavery in Ireland, where he spent six years herding animals. In his Confessio he recounts that this captivity became his conversion: alone on the hillsides, he turned to constant prayer. Guided, he wrote, by a voice in a dream, he escaped, walked to the coast, and found passage home. Yet Ireland would not let him go — in another dream he heard the voice of the Irish calling him to walk among them once more. After years of preparation for the priesthood, traditionally including formation in Gaul, Patrick returned to Ireland as a missionary bishop around 432. He traveled the island preaching, baptizing, confirming, and ordaining clergy, confronting the druidic religion of the local kings and planting the Church in a land at the edge of the known world. Within a generation of his mission, Ireland was on its way to becoming one of the great centers of Christian faith and learning. Later legends — his use of the shamrock to illustrate the Trinity, his banishing of snakes from Ireland — belong to popular tradition rather than history, but they testify to the depth of his imprint on the Irish imagination. Patrick died around 461, traditionally at Saul in County Down, and is said to be buried at Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, where a memorial stone marks his traditional grave. Venerated as a pre-Congregation saint, he is the principal patron of Ireland, also invoked as a patron of engineers. His feast on March 17 is celebrated by the universal Church and, far beyond it, by the Irish and their descendants around the world.