Patricius, Who Else?

The Alpena News + March 17, 2007

As penance in behalf of my English friend who scoffed that Welsh were “Irish who couldn’t swim,” I offer this piece on St. Patrick. I will also drink a Guinness, and warn you right from the start that all dates are tentative and debated. In fact, I will alert you that some subscribe to a “two-Patrick theory” to account for the extraordinary feats attributed to our Patrick in legend, history, and tradition, as if he could never have accomplished so much in one lifetime. But be assured that, though Patrick was raised on the northwest coast of Britain, he was not Welsh and need not be pitied for being trapped there for want of water-wings.

Patrick went to Ireland the first time in a boat rowed by slave-raiders, as one of their captives. This trip occurred about 406, before Irish were Irish or Welsh Welsh, but both were Celts divided into numerous tribes living in and around hill-forts. Patrick himself might have been of Roman or Romano-British descent, for his father was an important official in the late Roman imperial government of Britain. Indeed, his name as we have it is from the Latin Patricius. Whatever his ethnicity, the sixteen year-old Patrick spent five or six years shepherding before escaping his owner. Patrick did not have to swim this time, either, but caught a ship back across the Irish Sea.

Sometime afterward, our Saint-Who-Was-Never-Canonized-By-A-Pope followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who were respectively a deacon (as well as the civil servant described above) and a priest. Patrick claims in his own writing that he became a bishop in Britain, but no diocese has ever been identified as his. But who cares about Britain on St. Patrick’s Day?! He certainly qualifies as a bishop for the scope and manner of his missionary work in Ireland, begun about the year 431 when he was about forty-one and even so, still had visions. Forty-one then was well past middle age.

Patrick’s return to Ireland, he writes, was inspired by an imagined letter that read, "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.” Maybe it was the flattery of being called a boy that drew Patrick, but I think not. Maybe it was the notion of his personal holiness, but again I think not. Of course, I have no idea whatsoever as to what motivated Patrick, but I like to believe that the operative word in his vision was “servant.” I like to think that he recalled his years as an enslaved shepherd, and wanted to transform them into years as a servant bishop, thereby redeeming the time that had not been his own. “Feed my sheep,” the risen Christ told Peter. Might not something like that have been the motivating message for Patrick?  

Again, I warn that all dates are tentative and debated. But the most conservative estimates of dates concerning when Patrick had his vision show him to have been middle-aged -- or in these days, senior-aged. So, the vision I receive as I approach senior age is something like Yogi’s (Berra’s, not Bear’s): “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” There is still work to be done and service to be rendered. Whatever our age, we may still have something to contribute. At any spot in time, no matter how imprecise, the prophecy of Joel applies: “…your old men shall dream dreams…” (2:28) Women shall, too, of course. To these good dreams, we can all respond as Patrick did. And swimming is not a prerequisite.