BY AARON ALFORD
Meditation: I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.
—LUKE 10:19
Quote of the Day: My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers.
—SAINT PATRICK
The runaway slave fell to the ground, exhausted. The scent of salt water and the sound of crashing waves filled his senses, and the possibility of freedom filled his eyes with tears. Six years ago, he had landed on these same shores in chains, torn from his family and everything and everyone he loved. He was only a boy of sixteen. Now he was a young man of twenty-two, and his heart was nearly bursting with hope. If he could find passage on a sailing vessel, he would soon be home.
Patrick was born into Roman citizenship on the British Isles in 387. His father was a deacon of the church, and his family was wealthy and well respected. Patrick’s life was comfortable, and his future seemed secure. He would probably obtain a position of service within the church, as his father and grandfather had. Nothing too grand or demanding great sacrifice, of course, but of service. Perhaps he would work in government or teaching, or another respectable and comfortable area. He would live a good, pleasant life, free from much hardship.
But there’s just no accounting for pirates.
They came through his town like a storm, and when they reached Patrick’s home, he found himself kicking and screaming, desperately trying to escape the hold of an Irish marauder, to no avail. Afraid and confused, the young man who had been given everything found himself on a slave ship, stripped of everything, and sailing west. When they landed on the shores of Ireland, land of the Celts, Patrick was sold to a cruel Druid named Milchu and taken to work in what is now Northern Ireland.
Although Patrick had been raised with the Christian faith as part of his family’s lifestyle, he had no true knowledge of God, no interest in Jesus, and certainly no desire to live a holy Christian life. With iron manacles around his hands, this all changed. Suddenly God was no longer a nice idea, but the object of Patrick’s desperate prayers. Young Patrick discovered a God he had never known before.
The Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my abjection, and mercy on my youth and ignorance, and watched over me before I knew Him . . . and comforted me as would a father his son.1
Milchu put him to work in his fields as a shepherd, and as Patrick tended these sheep, he found his relationship with the Shepherd of his soul growing ever deeper. Patrick spent days in the fields with the sheep, often with meager provisions. Through snow, through frost, through rain, through hunger, the presence of God became warmth to his soul.
Patrick also learned a great deal of the language and culture of his captors. Beneath the barbaric practices of the religion common to Ireland, which may even have included human sacrifice, Patrick saw the beauty of people made in the image of God. Something of Himself remained in them, some piece of eternity in their hearts.
One night he had a dream that seemed to be sent from God, and Patrick received it as a sign to make an escape. Through darkness and cold and over the forbidding wilderness, Patrick ran. Two hundred miles later, he reached the shores of northeastern Ireland and begged for passage on a ship bound for Britain.
Months after setting sail, Patrick returned to his hometown a different person than the boy who had been stolen away years before. His faith was alive, even dangerous. He began studying for the priesthood and even went on dangerous missionary journeys throughout Britain. But Patrick never forgot the people of Ireland, and one night in a dream, he heard the voice of the Irish people calling out from their shores: “We ask you, boy, come and walk among us once more.”2
Patrick obeyed. While Christianity was not unknown in Ireland, missionary efforts to bring the true faith to its people were limited both in scope and success. Many considered these isolated people simply too barbaric and violent to ever hear and understand the gospel. But Patrick knew the Irish people and their culture intimately. He knew their joys, and he knew the fears that drove their pagan practices. Because of this, he knew how to communicate the gospel effectively.
When he landed with his missionary companions on the shores of Ireland, one of the first things he did was to seek out his former master and pay him the price of his own ransom. From there he traveled throughout Ireland. When he met a chieftain named Dichu, who intended to strike him down with a sword, the man found he could not lift his arm to do so. Patrick preached the gospel to the man in a way he could understand, and Dichu was converted. Dichu gave Patrick one of his barns, which became the first church dedicated to Christ by Patrick.
On Easter of 433, Patrick found himself engaging in a spiritual duel of sorts with the Druid priests and magicians. There was a great pagan gathering of chieftains, and the Druid priests tried once and for all to silence Patrick and drive him (and his religion) out of their midst. Patrick had lit an Easter fire, a bonfire traditionally lit on the evening before Easter morning that symbolizes the light of Christ and His resurrection. The Druids could not extinguish it. They called down a demonic darkness. Patrick dispelled it with a prayer. In a demonstration of their supposed power, “the Arch-Druid Lochru, like Simon Magus of old, was lifted up high in the air, but when Patrick knelt in prayer the druid from his flight was dashed to pieces upon a rock.”3
The inferiority of Druidism to Patrick’s Christian faith was dramatically demonstrated to chieftains gathered from all over the country, and there was an extraordinary breakthrough for the gospel. One of the legends surrounding the life of Saint Patrick says that he drove all the snakes off the island. Truth be told, there is no evidence that Ireland ever had any snakes (New Zealand, Iceland, and Greenland are also snake-free). It’s likely, though, that this legend came about because of the way snakes often symbolize evil in Scripture. Patrick did not drive literal snakes from Ireland, but by his work and witness, the serpent-like stranglehold of Druid superstition was loosened and eventually driven out. In Patrick’s enslavement, the snake of paganism had struck at Patrick’s heel, but Christ in the end had crushed its head.
Patrick would spend the rest of his days as an itinerant pastor, a shepherd of the people he loved so dearly. Somehow, in the evil that had been done to him in his kidnapping and enslavement, Patrick found his calling. Evil had been turned to good. The runaway slave had returned a free man, a slave of Christ, and a servant of the Irish people.
Patrick is said to have prayed this famous prayer in preparation for his confrontation with the Druids. It’s a prayer that beautifully summarizes the depth of his faith and the source of his courage:
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ’s birth and His baptism,
Through the strength of His crucifixion and His burial,
Through the strength of His resurrection and His ascension,
Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love of cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In service of archangels,
In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In preachings of the apostles,
In faiths of confessors,
In innocence of virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of the sun,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of the wind,
Depth of the sea,
Stability of the earth,
Firmness of the rock.
I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From every one who desires me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone or in a multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and evil,
Against every cruel merciless power that opposes my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.
Christ shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that reward may come to me in abundance.
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 in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.4
CONTEMPLATION
1. Have you seen bad circumstances turn to good in your life? Did you discover some aspect of your own calling through them?
2. Are you in the midst of a difficult time now? What are you learning in the midst of it? Are you discovering anything about who God has made you to be?
3. What might God be speaking to you about your own calling?
PRAYER
Holy Spirit, speak to us in our worst circumstances, that in them we might find You.
THE LEGEND OF SAINT PATRICK AND THE FORMERLY DEAD GIANT
BY JONATHAN ROGERS*
Saint Patrick’s beard was not an orange chinstrap. That’s a leprechaun you’re thinking about. According to the portraits and stained-glass windows, Patrick’s beard was white and well groomed—not as well groomed as that of The Most Interesting Man in the World, but in that ballpark. Indeed, the legends that sprang up around Saint Patrick do have about them the aroma of The Most Interesting Man in the World, or perhaps Chuck Norris, that other bearded saint.
According to one legend, baby Patrick provided the holy water for his own baptism by causing water to spring out of the ground. The same holy water healed the blindness of the priest who was to baptize Patrick—and also gave the previously illiterate priest the ability to read the baptism!
In another legend, a young Patrick was out playing one cold day and came home with an armload of ice chunks. His nurse scolded him, saying he would have been better off to bring home an armload of firewood. So he piled up the ice chunks like fire logs, made the sign of the cross, blew on them, and they flared up into a nice little fire.
The Patrick legends demonstrate the connection between holiness and comedy—and by comedy I don’t mean merely the humorous, but the divine comedy whereby every sad thing eventually becomes untrue, and life overwhelms death.
Perhaps this marriage of holiness and comedy—both high comedy and low comedy—is most apparent in a story recorded in The Life and Acts of Saint Patrick by Jocelin of Furness.
Patrick, according to the story, was traveling across Ireland on one of his preaching journeys, accompanied by the disciples who often accompanied him, when he came across an enormous tomb. The tomb was so enormous, in fact, that Patrick’s followers wouldn’t believe that it could contain the body of any man.
Patrick, however, was convinced that this was the tomb of a giant. To prove it, he prayed that God would raise the dead giant back to life. And it happened even as Patrick had prayed. A living, breathing giant, “horrible in stature and in aspect,” awakened from the dust and stood before the saint and his followers. When he looked on Patrick, the terrible giant broke down weeping. For he had been suffering the punishments of hell since his death and was grateful to have been released if even for just an hour.
The giant begged Patrick to allow him to join his travel party. But Patrick refused on the grounds that the giant was just too big and ugly and scary to accompany him on his evangelistic travels: “No man for very terror could stand before his countenance.” But Patrick did him one better: he preached the gospel to the giant. The giant believed, was baptized, then died again, this time freed from the torments of hell.5
The monstrous, the horrible, and the barbaric folded into the love of a God who laughs. Those great reversals are the divine comedy.