Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh! (Happy St Patrick's Day)
Happy (belated) St Patrick’s Day! Here in Galway in the Republic of Ireland we celebrated St Patrick’s Day with a huge parade. In Dublin, the capital of Ireland, some half a million turned out for their parade. But no matter where you live in the world, you probably heard something about St Patrick’s Day because it is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival! In fact this year, for the first time in history, it was celebrated on Antarctica! The Irish among that small community of 135 scientists organised a parade that totalled eight floats. One St Patrick’s Day celebration was literally out of this world, when in 2011 two Irish-American astronauts performed a song by The Chieftains on the International Space Station!
Every year the Taoiseach of Ireland is invited to present the world’s most powerful political leader with a bowl of shamrocks and share a St Patrick’s Day meal in the White House. The world’s only superpower is crazy about St Patrick’s Day—the largest parade on earth takes place in New York City and two million people turn out to watch it. Every year since 1962, Chicago has dyed its river bright emerald green in honour of St Patrick! The life of St Patrick was made into a movie in 2000, starring Patrick (of course!) Bergin.
All of which raises the obvious question: who was this guy?! Did he really exist at all, or is he some mythical figure in the same category as Finn McCool, Cuchulainn and the Children of Lir? What did Patrick do that was such a big deal? Did he make poverty history in Ireland? End slavery? Save the country from famine? Did he really expel all the snakes and reptiles? What is all the fuss about?!
The answer is that Patrick did exist—he was born in 389 AD—and he did the greatest thing anyone could have done for the people of Ireland, or any other nation: he brought them to good news about Jesus Christ—a message of freedom, hope, peace and redemption. He told the Irish people how they could have a relationship with the God who had made them.
Patrick came to believe this good news for himself while he was a slave here in Ireland. He was kidnapped from his home on the British mainland by Irish pirates at the age of 16 and sold into slavery in County Mayo. He had been taught the Christian message as a child but rejected it as a young teenager. In his own words, he was ‘like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall’. After six years he escaped from slavery and returned home, but felt such burden for Irish that decided to go back to share the good news of the Christian message.
This was a message that most of the people of Ireland had never heard before. In the fifth century AD the Irish, in common with other Celtic peoples, worshipped more than two hundred different gods, including the sun. Patrick came and told them that there is only one true God, who created the sun and the moon and the stars and everything else in the universe as well. As Patrick put it, he is the God ‘from whom all beginnings come.’
In Patrick’s day the Irish people believed worshippers needed to bribe the gods with rituals and offerings and to flatter them with prayers in order to get what they wanted or needed. Patrick taught the people that the true God can’t be manipulated—and doesn’t need to be because he graciously gives his creatures whatever they need.
The false gods worshipped by the Celts were cruel and bloodthirsty—Celtic religion turned the stomachs of the Romans (not exactly known for their gentleness themselves!). The three main gods of their pantheon each demanded a different kind of human sacrifice: Esus demanded that his victims be hanged, Teutates that they be drowned and Taranis that they be burnt alive. Julius Caesar described how they made huge wicker statues for this purpose, ‘huge figures of immense size, whose limbs, woven out of twigs, they fill with living men and set on fire and the men perish in a sheet of flame.’
Patrick told the Irish people about how the true God didn’t ask people to sacrifice themselves or their children to him—instead he gave his Son as a sacrifice for them, to take the punishment they deserved for their wickedness.
This message Patrick preached here in fifth century Ireland is the same message gospel churches believe and preach today. We believe it is every bit as relevant to the people of Ireland (and every nation) today as it was 1600 years ago.
How many people worship false gods today—they look to things to give them meaning, purpose, comfort, joy, peace and hope; things like a career, a relationship, an education, success, a certain kind of image, their family, pleasure. But these are harsh, cruel gods who demand human sacrifice—perhaps not in colossal wicker statues, but how many people today are burning themselves out trying to live for things that can’t satisfy?
Or maybe they’re trying to bribe God with religious rituals like going to church or saying prayers or going on pilgrimages; or secular rituals like giving to the poor and being a decent person.
How many people feel like Patrick described himself: ‘like a stone buried in mud’? They feel like they’re drowning in guilt or regret or despair or fear, being sucked further and further down and they can’t break free.
For people today, as in the fifth century, the message Patrick preached is such wonderful news! The one true God is a God of love, grace and mercy who lifts us up like stone from the mud when we cry out to him to save us.
Many many thousands believed Patrick’s message 1600 years ago. May they do so again!
