Saint Patrick was an Englishman!

Well that got your attention, didn’t it? It’s not quite true of course; Patrick may have been born on the isle of Britain, but in a time before the Angles had arrived and started making it Angland.

No, his family were Roman Catholic churchmen from the Roman Imperial province of Britannia.

Today, nobody is going to go around speaking in fake Latin and wearing a toga and sandals, oh no. But I’ll bet you a shiny shamrock that you’ll run into at least one person affecting a fake Irish brogue.

Today is a day in America where we eat immigrant food and pretend it’s Irish, where most folks have their only Guinness of the year, and where everybody wears the most garish colour green imaginable on pain of, well, pain. They’ve dyed the Chicago River green, as they do every year about this time.

What has this to do with Patrick?

First of all, as I said, he wasn’t even Irish. He was a Roman Briton, born in the late 4th or early 5th century. His father was a deacon, and he was something of a wild child. That all ended when, as a teenager, he was kidnapped and sold into slavery by Irish raiders. He spent many years as a slave – a shepherd in the north of Ireland – until he escaped from captivity, inspired by the vision of an Angel.

He went to the continent and became a monk and was ordained. As a bishop, he was sent back to Ireland to preach the Gospel and convert the people – and convert them he did.

In thirty years he covered Ireland with churches and monasteries, and in AD 444 he founded the metropolitan see of Armagh. According to tradition, he died 17 March 493.

No leprechauns. No brogue. No corned beef and cabbage. Patrick was a Roman Catholic Bishop, appointed by the Pope for northern Ireland.

So if you insist on walking around speaking in a silly fake accent, at least do it with the words of the Saint:

I am greatly God’s debtor, because he granted me so much grace, that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon after confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the earth, just as he once promised through his prophets:

“To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited naught but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.” And again: “I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth.”

(from the Confessions of Saint Patrick – today’s Office of Readings)

(reprint)