LENT 2024 - DAY 26 - Who was the REAL St. Patrick? (2024 update)

Setting aside the millions of Americans who will be getting drunk and being debauched in St. Patrick’s honor this coming weekend, who obviously know NOTHING about him, others seem to know next to nothing.

In fact, most of what Christians have heard about St. Patrick amounts to Fake ‘Theological’ News.

Different Christians want to claim him as their own, the Roman Catholic Church being the loudest voice.

There have been a growing number of other Christians in recent years claiming to be “Celtic” and/or seeking to recover Celtic roots or Celtic ‘spirituality’. Sadly, much of that is distorted and often infused with New Age beliefs and ideas.

Other historical revisionists will look to the Celtic Christians to justify other ideas/agendas – such as radical feminism and even environmentalism.

So, who were the original Celtic Christians? And who was St. Patrick, the Apostolic pioneer who sparked that entire movement? 

The following summary of his life is primarily taken from two books about Patrick’s life and ministry – one is a biography entitled Let Me Die in Ireland, by David Bercot (Scroll Publishing), and the other, The Celtic Way of Evangelism – How Christianity Can Reach the West Again (George G. Hunter III, Abingdon Press, 2000). Even as so many Christians today “claim” Patrick as their own – most will be surprised that he doesn’t really fit any of the modern labels that we might try to put on him or the movement he birthed.

Patrick was NOT a Roman Catholic (and neither was he a modern-day Protestant Evangelical and/or Charismatic!), but rather a British Roman citizen born in the late 4th century (AD 386) on the West Coast of Britain. He was a part of the independent British or Celtic Church which did not come under Roman control until the 6-8th centuries. His father was an ordained Deacon and his grandfather had been an ordained Presbyter, but Patrick as a young man didn’t show a tremendous amount of interest in the things of the Lord.

God had a radical way of getting this boy’s attention. As a 16-year-old, he was captured by Irish raiders who took him back to Ireland where he was a slave for six years. It was during this “captivity” that Patrick really came into a relationship with the Lord. His role was to shepherd flocks and he became a man of prayer. In his own words,

“After I had arrived in Ireland, I found myself pasturing flocks daily, and I prayed a number of times each day. More and more the love and fear of God came to me, and faith grew and my spirit was exercised until I was praying up to a hundred times every day and in the night nearly as often”.

He learned the Gaelic language (the language of the Irish people) fluently and developed a heart for the very people who enslaved him. After 6 years, God miraculously enabled him to escape. The Lord spoke to him in a dream – “You are going home. Look! Your ship is ready”. The following morning the Lord led him to the coast where he found a ship and sailed away from Ireland. Upon being reunited with his family in Britain, he never intended to set foot in Ireland again.

God spoke to Patrick in a dream to return to Ireland to bring the Pagan Irish the Gospel. In the dream, an Angel gave him letters from his former captors asking him to return and he then heard the Irish calling out to him, “Please, holy servant boy, come and walk among us again”. It was God who called Patrick to take the Gospel to the Irish, not the Pope of Rome as some have mistakenly taught. He was ultimately sent out by the independent British/Celtic Church as a pioneer missionary to Ireland. Interestingly, the Bishop of Rome had sent a missionary to Ireland about the same time, who lasted about one year before returning.

At the time Patrick was sent to Ireland, in 432 AD, he was a Bishop of over 40 years of age. He took with him several younger ordained presbyters, who he had taught Gaelic in Britain. In the face of great danger, and unbelievable hardship, this band of missionaries began to bring the Gospel to the pagan Druid Irish and God powerfully blessed their work. In 28 years of ministry which history records were full of Biblical signs and wonders, 30 to 40 of Ireland’s 150 tribes were Christian, between 200 to 700 churches had been planted and over 1000 local Irish leaders had been raised up and ordained. Truly their ministry was both the WORD (preaching) and the SPIRIT (signs, wonders, and miracles).

The Irish Church became a major missionary Church (arguably the greatest in Church History) in the following few centuries, taking the Gospel to other pagan peoples in Scotland and even Northern Europe.

Patrick was a man of prayer and fasting. He was a man who lived like Christ – he never married, he forfeited his worldly inheritance (he was from a wealthy British family), and suffered great hardship for the sake of the Gospel.

Patrick’s vision to reach the pagan Irish was resisted by his own British Church – it was considered too dangerous, an impossible task and it would not be an understatement to say that the “civilized” (Romanized) British Christians harbored racist attitudes towards the “barbaric” pagan Irish Druids. When the Church today considers the task of evangelizing the Muslim World or other places full of hostility and conflict, let us remember the fearless commitment of these 5th-century Apostolic teams who literally won an entire nation whom the Church in their day didn’t love and considered unreachable. And for us Western Christians, who are looking at a neo-Pagan West, steeped in all sorts of New Age spirituality and multiple other godless ideologies, may we remember Patrick and his radical disciples who overcame a very similar paganism in the 5th century onwards. The pagan Druids were steeped in mysticism, occultism, and genuine counterfeit spirituality empowered by the Kingdom of Darkness. Paganism and occult practices are far more common today than most Christians realize. If we desire the Apostolic fruit that Patrick and the Celtic Church achieved, we would do well to reach out to a pagan West today with the same commitment to Biblical signs and wonders and to demonstrate that the power of Christ’s Kingdom and His Gospel is MORE POWERFUL than the counterfeit New Age spirituality that is so prevalent around the world today.

As we approach this weekend, when many people will be caught up in all sorts of twisted St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, may we be reminded of the real man behind the ‘myth’. May it open doors with others who most likely don’t know anything beyond leprechauns, 4-leafed clovers, and pinching people who aren’t wearing green.

From a spiritual perspective, may we learn from the real Celtic Christianity that was thoroughly supernatural and Kingdom-minded, without ‘importing’ pagan mysticism (today’s New Age movement) into their Christianity. That being said, I believe a recovery of the Celtic approach may well be one of the most effective ways to reach those who have been infected and deceived by Eastern spirituality. But may we do as AS Christians and FROM a place of Historic and Apostolic Christianity.

Let St. Patrick’s final words recorded in his Confessions humble us today as we remember him and his Apostolic legacy:

“But I pray those who believe and fear God, whosoever has designed to scan or accept this document, composed in Ireland by Patrick the sinner, and unlearned man to be sure, that none should ever say that it was my ignorance that accomplished any small thing which I did or showed in accordance with God’s will; but judge ye, and let it be most truly believed, that it was the gift of God. And this is my confession before I die.”