HANCOCK COUNTY — Maura Hutchinson remembers the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations of her youth.
Children had the day off from school. Those who had given something up for Lent, such as candy, got to break their fast for a sweet 24 hours.
Traditionally, people have gone to Mass on March 17. And on most lapels would be pinned a fresh shamrock from the yard.
St. Patrick is said to have used the three-leafed plant to help explain the concept of the Trinity — of distinct persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit being one God.
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In recent weeks, there have been plenty of shamrock shapes to be found amid the decorations, party plates and napkins sold for St. Patrick’s Day. But long before all the leprechaun hats and “Kiss me, I’m Irish” buttons, there was a man named Patrick who many say brought Christianity to a nation.
The man behind the holiday grew up on the British isle in a family of Roman heritage, likely in Scotland or Wales. He was kidnapped as a teen by Irish vikings who were raiding the coast.
Ireland was a rough place to end up at the time. Before his eventual ministry there, “it was a pagan country,” Hutchinson said.
Yet during his spartan existence there, enslaved to herd sheep, Patrick felt his faith come alive.
“It was those difficult days, where he’s actually being tortured at times … that formed his faith and his love for the Lord in prayer,” said the Rev. Mark Wright, senior pastor of Brandywine Community Church in Greenfield.
St. Patrick himself, writing later in his Confessio, or “Confession,” would describe it this way: “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 …
“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.”
In this work, he also told of hearing a voice tell him to go to the ship prepared for his escape. The ship was some 200 miles away, but he reached it and escaped Ireland to be reunited with his family.
But he would be summoned back to the land he’d escaped. He would go to France, become a priest and eventually return to Ireland.
“He felt called to go back to Ireland, his place of enslavement, and preach Christ,” said the Rev. Aaron Jenkins, priest at St. Michael Catholic Church in Greenfield.
St. Patrick wrote of a dream in which Irish people addressed him: “We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.”
“Within need, there’s love — it brings out the love,” and Patrick responded to the Irish people’s need with love, said Frank Klauder, retired deacon at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church in Fortville.
“There always seemed to be some kind of love and devotion for the people,” said Jenkins. “It’s another witness entirely … to return to them (not only) out of love for Christ, but love for them as well.
“This was an example that went against the culture.”
That culture changed, many say, because of Patrick’s nearly 30 years of ministry there. “He brought Christianity to Ireland,” Hutchinson said.
In Ireland, St. Patrick “just kind of permeates everything,” said Jenkins, who traveled there in 2015.
Each July, spiritual pilgrims scale Croagh Patrick, regarded as the holiest mountain in Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day processionals from Saul Church, at the site where he began ministering, to Down Cathedral, where his grave is marked, are also part of the lasting mark he made.
The Rev. Kris Sorensen was there with a ministry team on March 17, 2009.
“He came back and witnessed to … I would call them a barbaric group of people. They were pagan, they were violent, and that didn’t stop him,” said Sorensen, now lead pastor of Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine. “I love his missionary zeal and his evangelist’s heart as a pastor.”
Sorenson was asked to carry a banner in the processional remembering St. Patrick on the anniversary of his death. After a service in Saul Church, the parade marched down the hill toward Down Cathedral.
But St. Patrick’s legacy is about more than remembrance; there are influences that remain to this day.
Jenkins said the Irish monks who followed Patrick helped develop the individual confession model Catholics are familiar with today. He believes even American celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day, which today might lean toward revelry more than religion, got their start as a symbol of Irish pride and Catholic pride, of solidarity amid “a sense of being persecuted as Irish and Catholics.”
From reading Confessio and a biography of Patrick, Wright finds St. Patrick’s prayer life particularly inspiring. He had plans to share the St. Patrick Breastplate prayer, attributed to Ireland’s patron saint, with his congregation during a sermon series on prayer. His was a prayer life motivated not by duty, but desire, Wright said: “He just loved being in God’s company.”
Wright said people today use some of his methods as an example of crossing barriers in missions. “They believe that he planted several hundred churches when he went back and baptized thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people,” he said. “He’s a hero of the faith.”
St. Patrick referred to himself simply as a stone God had lifted.
“Before I was humbled, I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall,” he wrote. “And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.”
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St. Patrick’s Breastplate is a prayer attributed to Ireland’s patron saint. It’s believed to have been written in the 400s. Perhaps the most famous excerpt is this:
“Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.”
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