March 17, 2010 Matthew Cochrane, St. Patrick: The Missionary Behind the Legend
St. Patrick’s Day is one of my favorite holidays and it’s not because of the parades, green beer and leprechauns (okay, not just because of the green beer). It is the only holiday to celebrate the life of a Christian missionary – and not just any Christian missionary but one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived.
Born in Britain, Patrick was captured by a roving Irish party and sent back to Ireland where he was enslaved for years. After dreaming God would provide for his escape, he journeyed hundreds of miles by foot until chancing upon a ship homebound for Britain. Upon his return home he went to seminary and was preparing to resign himself to a life of monastic bliss until he did the inexplicable: He returned to Ireland, the place of his former captors, to bring them the gospel.
In faith, the forty-something year-old Patrick sold all of his possessions, including the land he had inherited from his father, to fund his missionary journey to Ireland. He worked as an itinerant preacher and paid large sums of money to various tribal chiefs to ensure he could travel safely through their lands and preach the gospel. His strategy was completely unique, and he functioned like a missionary trying to relate to the Irish people and communicate the gospel in their culture by using such things as three-leaf clovers to explain the gospel. Upon entering a pagan clan, Patrick would seek to first convert the tribal leaders and other people of influence. He would then pray for the sick, cast demons out of the possessed, preach the Bible, and use both musical and visual arts to compel people to put their faith in Jesus. If enough converts were present he would build a simple church that did not resemble ornate Roman architecture, baptize the converts, and hand over the church to a convert he had trained to be the pastor so that he could move on to repeat the process with another clan.
Patrick gave his life to the people who had enslaved him until he died at 77 years of age. He had seen untold thousands of people convert as between 30-40 of the 150 tribes had become substantially Christian. He had trained 1000 pastors, planted 700 churches, and was the first noted person in history to take a strong public stand against slavery.
Of course, Patrick’s missionary work successfully transformed Irish culture. In my book review of How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, I write:
Detailing the missionary work of Patrick, the first Christian to evangelize outside the reach and influence of the Roman Empire, Cahill shows the remarkable transformation of Irish culture after Christianity was introduced to the island. In savage and raw detail, Cahill describes pre-Christian Irish culture before Patrick arrived with the Christian gospel as barbaric – blood was routinely shed, wars waged without second thought, traditional marriages did not exist and sexual perversions were the norm. For instance, in one Irish tribe, on the day of his coronation, the new king was forced to copulate with a horse. In Cahill’s own words, it “was an illiterate, aristocratic, seminomadic, Iron Age warrior culture; its wealth based on animal husbandry and slavery.”
As the Irish converted to Christianity at an astonishing rate, Irish culture was transformed. Cahill says Patrick “succeeded beyond measure.”
The result? Ireland changed from an ignorant, perverted, violent culture into the world’s “city on a hill,” becoming a beacon of learning and enlightenment that helped preserve learning and education during the Dark Ages:
After Patrick died, his spiritual descendants planted monasteries around the island. The introduction of Christianity also brought education and literacy to Ireland and the first Irish monks showed a remarkable aptitude for learning. Within a generation, Cahill states, “the Irish had mastered Latin and even Greek, and, as best they could, were picking up some Hebrew.” The Irish monasteries became centers of learning and soon began to reproduce at a breathless pace. As the barbarians continued their now unopposed march across Europe, many monks from the continent fled to Ireland bringing valuable books and scrolls with them. These the Irish faithfully read and copied. While the rest of Europe was burning and regressing, Ireland was blossoming under the influence of newfound religion and education.
For those who want to learn more about Patrick, I highly recommend Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization. For those who prefer historical fiction, Stephen Lawhead’s Patrick is fantastic.
So as we drink green beer and eat Shepherd’s Pie, let’s remember the real reason for the holiday: a former slave who became one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived.
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