Devotional for St. Patrick’s Celebration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XZ3ja-quhA
St Patrick’s Day is another one of the mis-celebrated holidays on the Christian Calendar.
People do everything on St. Patrick’s Day, But celebrate their faith.
To be sure, most Roman Churches have a special St. Patrick’s Day mass, and many people attend it, but if you ask 100 people as they exit the subway or mass transit station what happens on St Patrick’s Day, they will tell you drinking parties, and “wearing of the green”.
Check out the supply of T-shirts for St. Patrick’s Day and you’ll find most of them have drinking as their theme.
Who was St. Patrick and what did he do that made him eligible for sainthood?
St. Patrick is a classic case of hardship and suffering being used by God to prepare someone for His service.
Patrick was the son of a deacon in England, (that’s right, the patron saint of Ireland is English); he was taken prisoner by raiding warriors from England and put to work as a slave herding sheep in Ireland.
There he learned the Irish language and customs and became acquainted with the Druids and their influence in 5th Century Ireland.
One night he had one of those very real dreams, telling him to escape his slavery and flee to the coast of Ireland and return to England. He considered it a vision from God and obeyed the vision returning to England and there applied and was accepted for training as a priest.
Approximately 16 years later, he returned to Ireland to minister to his former captors with the Gospel of Christ.
Most of the stories told of Patrick have suffered from the Irish knack for embellishment and drama.
However, there is one story that has several reliable sources and indeed gives credence to a signature event that lays credence to Patrick’s claim to establishing Christianity as the dominant religion in Ireland.
The story is of the Hill of Tara, the ancient seat of 142 Irish High Kings and a seat of mystical power for the Pagan Druid Priests of Patrick’s days in Ireland.
Here he confronted them on their own ancient turf and defeated their theology and hold over the masses of Ireland and the process of determining the High Kings of Ireland.
HILL OF TARA – VIEW OF THE “MOUND OF HOSTAGES”, WHERE THE HIGH KINGS OF IRELAND WERE CHOSEN WITH THE AID OF PAGAN DRUID PRIESTS.
In a confrontation similar in some ways to the story of Elijah and priests of Baal, Patrick used the druid symbol of victory in a ceremonial bonfire to proclaim Christianity as the religion of the One True God. In somewhat miraculous manner, the warriors of the clans of Ireland came to Patrick’s bonfire and pledged their allegiance to the God of St. Patrick and thus robbed the Druids of their power to decide and enthrone the High King of Ireland.
Patrick did not establish Christianity in Ireland, it existed before his coming, but was a splinter sect without influence or credibility outside its own circles’.
Patrick became, in my opinion, a Warrior-Saint in Ireland. His prayers and many of his later writings clearly indicate his dealing with dark powers of personal attack and clear witness to God’s power in Christ to defeat such enemies both spiritual and temporal.
His real story of continuing legacy to us is that God chooses to use each of His servants in the places He has put them and prepared them to serve.
Most of Patrick’s life was spent among the poor and wretched of the land, serving them and baptizing them into the Christian faith.
Hebrews 13:20.
• 20. May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep,(21.) equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
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Further Reading , If Interested :
Excerpt from St. Patrick’s own description of his life, taken from his writings of his biography. Written to set his life record straight so that those after him would understand his mission and life.
“I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.
2
And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.
3
Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven.
4
For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name. “
