Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Here’s a snippet from an email I got from Catholic Culture yesterday:
Perhaps we can do better on Wednesday than mustering another secular drinking bout in honor of Saint Patrick. The restoration of Catholic culture demands that we celebrate feast days with keen attention to the virtues of the saint in question. Here are two things to read about St. Patrick:
- The Conversion of Ireland from Warren Carroll’s book The Building of Christendom
- The Confessio of St. Patrick, written around 450 AD.
The first link tells of what Patrick did; the second, of who he was, in his own words. I love how the Confessio begins: “I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many.” Pat Madrid uses another translation of this intro as his “About Me,” which I think is great.
Anyways, if you only check out one, check out the Confessio. In paragraphs 10-11, he talks about how eloquence was never a gift he possessed, but how he is called to preach the Truth of the Gospel anyways:
But had it been given to me as to others, in gratitude I should not have kept silent, and if it should appear that I put myself before others, with my ignorance and my slower speech, in truth, it is written: ‘The tongue of the stammerers shall speak rapidly and distinctly.’ How much harder must we try to attain it, we of whom it is said: ‘You are an epistle of Christ in greeting to the ends of the earth … written on your hearts, not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.’ And again, the Spirit witnessed that the rustic life was created by the Most High.
12. I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that 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. 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.
It’s a beautiful confession of the goodness of God, and well worth your time.