Every March 17th St Patrick’s Day is celebrated all over the world. While it is originally a Catholic feast day and an Irish tradition, it has overtime come to be celebrated all over the world. If you didn’t know much about St Patrick’s Day, we’ve got you. Below is all you need to know about the priest who is celebrated on that day and his work in evangelizing Ireland which was once a pagan nation.
Brief History
St. Patrick’s Day is the feast day (March 17) of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Born in Roman Britain in the late 4th century, to a Christian family. At the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by a handful of Irish pirates who took him with them to Northern Ireland and sold him as a slave. In his Confession, in which he tells the experience of those years, he writes, “Love for God and His fear grew in me, and so faith. In a single day I recited one hundred prayers, and at night almost as many. I prayed in the woods and mountains, even before dawn. Neither the snow, nor the ice, nor the rain seemed to touch me.”
After six years of imprisonment, Patrick had in a dream, a premonition of freedom, and, obeying the vision he had as he slept, escaped surveillance and went the roughly 200 kilometres that separated him from the coast, on foot. There he was able to induce some sailors to pity him, who took him aboard their ship and carried him back to Britain where he could embrace his family once again.
A Vision
A few years later, Patrick had another vision, which he also described in his Confession: “I saw a man coming to me as coming from Ireland; His name was Victorious, he had some letters with him, and he handed me one. I read the first line: ‘The Voice of the Irish’. While I was reading, I seemed to hear the voice of the people living in the Forest of Voclutus [the place of his captivity] near the western sea, and their voices as one seemed to beg me, calling me ‘young servant of God’, and bidding us all walk together.”
This vision galvanized Patrick, who continued his studies and training and was ordained to the presbyterate by Germanus, bishop of Auxerre.
His dream of evangelizing Ireland, however, was not yet close to coming to fruition. His candidacy for the episcopal ministry, given his mission to Ireland, met with opposition owing to a supposed lack of preparation due to the irregularity of his studies. This remained for a long time a burden for Patrick, who in the Confession admits: “I had not studied as others who have fed in equal measure of Law and Sacred Scripture, and from their infancy perfected their language. Instead, I had to learn a foreign language. Some accuse me of ignorance and have a stuttering speech, but it is written that stuttering tongues learn quickly to talk of peace.”
Mission To Ireland
Finally, on an unknown date between 431 and 432, Patrick was consecrated Bishop of Ireland by Pope Celestine I and arrived in Slane on March 25, 432. The Bishop who had preceded him, Palladius, had returned to his country discouraged after less than two years of the mission.
Patrick then found himself faced with countless difficulties: the chief of one of the Drude tribes tried to kill him, and for sixty days he was imprisoned, but despite the tribulations, Patrick persisted for nearly forty years in his missionary work, converting thousands of Irish, introducing monastic life, and establishing the episcopal see in Armagh.
The Clover
According to tradition, St. Patrick used to explain the mystery of the Trinity by showing the clover, in which three leaflets are joined at a single stem. The first written testimony of this dates back to 1726, though the tradition could have much older roots. The images of St. Patrick often portray him with a cross in one hand and a clover in the other. That is why the clover is now a symbol of St. Patrick’s Day, which falls on March 17, the day of his death in 461 at Saul.
His remains were transported and buried in the cathedral of Down, which since then has been called Downpatrick.
By the time of his death on March 17, 461, he had established monasteries, churches, and schools.
Many legends grew up around him—for example, that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. Ireland came to celebrate his day with religious services and feasts.
The day was first established in 1631 as a modest religious holiday, and honouring Ireland’s patron saint. Because it fell right in the middle of Lent, people began using it as a reason to celebrate and take a break from the restraints and abstinence of the period leading up to Easter. However, it didn’t become a public holiday in Ireland until 1904!
St. Patrick’s Day was originally celebrated in Ireland with religious services and feasts in honour of St. Patrick.
The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for over 1,000 years.
According to Marion Casey, a clinical assistant professor of Irish Studies at New York University (and a regular marcher in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Manhattan).
Legend says St. Patrick was born Maewyn Succat, but that he changed his name to Patricius (or Patrick), which derives from the Latin term for “father figure,” after he became a priest. And that supposed luck of his is the root of all the themed merchandise for modern St. Patrick’s Day.
It wasn’t until the early 18th century that many of today’s traditions were kicked into high gear. Since the holiday falls during Lent, it provides Christians a day off from the prescriptions of abstinence leading up to Easter, and around the 1720s, the church found it “got kind of out of control,” Casey says.
It was to remind celebrants what the holiday stood for that the church first associated a botanical item—customary for all saints—with St. Patrick, assigning him the symbol of the likewise lucky shamrock.
On St. Patrick’s Day, which falls during the Christian season of Lent, Irish families would traditionally attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. Lenten prohibitions against the consumption of meat were waived and people would dance, drink and feast on the traditional meal of Irish bacon and cabbage.
