What does St Patrick teaches us?
What I find the most interesting about St Patrick’s life is that he returned to the place of his slavery as a missionary with the intention to raise the consciousness of the local pagan people – his captors among them.
St. Patrick’s story talks about enlightenment by being separated from your herd, and great courage to return to the place where he was where once a captive.
St. Patrick used his own enlightenment and new-found faith to spread the word. So he became a missionary to raise people’s consciousness and understanding a ‘One God’ .
How to celebrate the day?
We can use the Celebration of St Patrick day to review our own faith whatever that may entail. We can observe what it is that we may need to become aware of and to do so we can lift our own consciousness to a higher platform.
We can also celebrate how far we have come on our journey of enlightenment.
INTRODUCTION
Saint Patrick’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, lit. ’the Day of the Festival of Patrick’), is a religious and cultural holiday held on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. 385 – c. 461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, and, by extension, celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in general.
Who was St Patrick?
Saint Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and Bishop in Ireland. Much of what is known about Saint Patrick comes from the Declaration, which was allegedly written by Patrick himself. It is believed that he was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century, into a wealthy Romano-British family. His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest in the Christian church. According to the Declaration, at the age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Gaelic Ireland.
It says that he spent six years there working as a shepherd and that during this time he found God. The Declaration says that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would be waiting to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick went on to become a priest.
According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. The Declaration says that he spent many years evangelising in the northern half of Ireland and converted thousands.
Patrick’s efforts were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove “snakes”, heathen practices, out of Ireland, despite the fact that actual snakes were not known to inhabit the region.
Tradition holds that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. Over the following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick and he became Ireland’s foremost saint.
Celebration
Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, Irish traditional music sessions (céilithe), and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.[9] There are also formal gatherings such as banquets and dances, although these were more common in the past. Saint Patrick’s Day parades began in North America in the 18th century but did not spread to Ireland.
