Dead Folk you should know - Patrick’

We’ve probably all heard of St Patrick’s Day. It makes us think of the country of Ireland, the colour green, the Shamrock plant and a little too much beer… But… there is more to Patrick than we might think, and some encouragements to our own faith and practice. Colin Reed explains:

Augustine of North Africa left an account of his spiritual journey in his ‘Confessions’.  A few years later, another person wrote of his own spiritual journey and called it ‘Confessio’. His name was Patrick. Contrary to all you might assume, he was NOT Irish. He was NOT a member of the Church of Rome. 

Patrick was born in south-western England, to a ‘Romanised’ family and wrote in Latin. His father was a minor government official and a deacon in the church. The church in Britain was not under the Roman Church, did not acknowledge the Pope. Probably, Christians had arrived with the Roman army and administration.  When Patrick he was sixteen, (about 450AD) he was captured by Irish raiders, taken to Ireland as a slave. After six years he managed to escape back to Britain. Some time later, he had a dream in which he heard Irish people urging him to come back and live among them. Believing it was from God, he went back and travelled throughout Ireland preaching the Gospel. From the ‘Celtic Church’ in Ireland missionaries sailed to south-west Scotland, where the Island of Iona became a major centre. From there, later, Aidan (after whom the church in our parish was named) went to north-east England to share the Gospel. 

In 597 the Pope sent an Italian monk to ‘convert the British’, and the Roman Catholic Church spread, gradually replacing the previous church in Britain.

What do we learn from Patrick? First, missionary zeal; the eagerness to face difficulty and danger for the sake of taking the Gospel to people near and far. Then, the need to identify with the people whom we seek to reach: the principle in 1 Cor.9:22 ‘I have become all things to all people so that by all means I might save some’.

May we have this zeal and flexibility as we reach the lost in our community!

Grace and Peace,
Mark