When someone leads a life that focuses on compassion and kindness, it can trigger as big of a cultural change as any war has had throughout history. One such person is St. Patrick and everyone in the world is benefiting from his efforts to this day. In fact, when we stray from his message and forget his real miracles, truly terrible events occur. I can't help but feel that reminding people that he did a lot more for humanity than repelling snakes from an island is extremely important so I will share something personal that we talk about at my home on this particular Sunday in March.
This story has value even if you do not believe in miracles, the word isn't as important as the substance of the acts and I would ask you to label it however you feel like it should be described. Be it miracles or magic, persistence and persuasion, the end result is the key so even from a historian's view point, this story stands out in our timeline for positive reasons.
I'm always amazed when I read about St. Patrick's life story because so many of the worlds most awful and traumatizing things were put upon him at an early age. It does show that no matter how much abuse comes our way, we all still have a choice on how we handle ourselves. Some of us take in pain and transfer it onto others rather than dealing with it or absolving it and that creates a cycle of hurt that needs to be broken. When a person comes along that not only has dealt with their personal trials but has strength left over to take in that of others, we all need to take note and try to learn from them. He was such a person and had the capacity to not only help heal his nation, but took on the burden of ending Christianity's most vicious abuse of power that had been built in to the religion since the days of the Old Testament.
This post is not about focusing on mistakes or the dark times we have went through, it's goal is to show everyone that things can get better and we can change the status quo no matter how much history it has behind it. Wrong is wrong and it really doesn't matter why a bad tradition starts or how many years it has been in practice. It takes courage to take on the establishment and I find it respectable when someone does it with noble intentions, especially when they succeed.
The tradition I am speaking of has it's roots in protecting the Judeo/Cristian faith but had to stop and here is where St. Patrick comes into this. During the time of Exodus things changed. No longer did we follow the covenant of Abraham and took that of Moses. throughout the trials in the desert, Moses struggled to keep the Israelites from adopting and assimilating practices from the religions in the regions they were passing through.
Here is where I need to use the Bible, this is about a saint after all, to prove my point. This is from Exodus 34 :
This certainly goes beyond tearing up golden statues of cows and is very serious. The struggle to keep the faith was so difficult that even Moses himself lost the zeal and never did get to see the promise land. After he died the Israelites were led by Joshua and the faith really became militarized. He decided the days of wandering were over and began a campaign of conquest.
Here is a depiction of Joshua using the arch of the covenant to bring down the walls of Jericho so that his army was able to sweep in and easily conquer the city.
Here is interesting note that connects our faith and ties this together. The pronunciation of the name Joshua changed quite a bit over the centuries as Hebrew gave way to Aramaic then to Greek and so on, theology is no joke, and was likely originally pronounced more like Hosea, which is also a different book in the Bible. It is said that eventually Josh became Jesus and the Christian Lord was probably named after him just as we share family names that get passed down. It is often overlooked that Jesus had a legitimate claim to an actual throne due to his lineage but here is how that is historically justified. I named one of my own children Jacob/Israel, after my first was named Patrick that is, because all of the people in the Bible, he stood out to me as massively important, one person had twelve sons who then went on to found all of the tribes and establish the majority of the names we still know today.
The practice of eradicating other cultures in order to protect the faith went on unbated for millennia until the time of Christ. He did have the authority to challenge the rules and practices of the religion being that he was tied to Levi, the very person that worked with Moses and Joshua to write Leviticus, the literal rule book the Temple followed. All twelve tribes served a unique purpose and Levi's was to be the authority among them all. They were tasked with practicing the rituals, keeping the sacred objects, act as arbiter in disputes between tribes as well as individuals and of course, writing the rules.
The timing of Jesus' arrival is in my opinion divine but even from a secular stand point the timing is notable. He fulfilled multiple prophecy from many disparate countries and religions and I believe that part of human history and his story deserves a lot of attention. The purpose of article is to show how he was able to change the way we thought about other people regardless of how foreign they seemed to us.
He did have the right and position to challenge the powerful ruling class and he gave them and earful daily from the days of his early childhood to the moment of his death. He seized the opportunity to end the cycle of abuse, took the pain of others onto himself and changed the world in a positive way. The majority of his work was all about the need to treat our neighbors better and by extension those we do not know at all by keeping that standard for strangers. He showed the world that if your words are true and benevolent, you do not need to force people to listen to you. The extreme solution of using violence to get your way seems like it is the easy way out but is ineffective and leads to retaliation and thus the cycle I keep talking about.
One entity, be it a person or group, feels threatened by another and reacts by attempting to remove said threat by force, causing pain in the process. Instead of containing that pain and absolving it the second entity takes all of that hurt and puts right back on the party that initiated the force. Both sides feel justified by recycling the aggression at this point and it takes a martyr to take in both sides' pain and get rid of it for good.
This way of thinking completely upset the establishment and caused a massive schism between those were relying on force for centuries and was considered blasphemy to attack tradition in such a way but threats can only suppress the truth for so long. As such, when the power structure was removed from the Temple, the people of the faith were able to reconcile and use this philosophy to find common ground.
I can't say this ushered in the end of suffering on earth but it absolutely helped bring peace to many who would not have it otherwise. This was the reason that religion once again became the refuge from the horrors of the world, rather than the cause, as it is supposed to be for centuries there after.
Unfortunately history repeats itself and in time authority began to consolidate in the disciples of Jesus. With that power came money and territory that they decided needed to be defended. A new age of Christian conquest began and passages from the Bible like that from Exodus above were used to expand borders and confiscate wealth. We were saving the unbelievers from themselves by melting down their false idols and turning them into golden coins instead.
This is where St. Patrick comes back into the story and performs his most important miracle, the peaceful conversion of Ireland. By the time the church had set it's attention on the Celtic refuge that is that beautiful country, it had consolidated a great deal of power in Rome and had partial control of the greatest empire in Occidental history. It is plain as day to me that the melding of Ancient Roman conquest with Evangel efforts to spread one's religion is a terrible idea and the antithesis of Christ's teachings but people do have a way of blinding themselves to reality when they choose to.
The standard method being used to convince others of your viewpoint at the time of St. Patrick was again along the lines of this again.
When it came to the Celts of Ireland the church had run into a problem with this tactic though. They had found a culture that upheld the immutable truth that the cycle of violence wouldn't stop no matter and conditions were getting worse for the people of the isle. The Celtic people were the first to settle Europe and are still present in every country there in some form but most have assimilated into the tribes that came after to the mainland. That was not the case with Irish Celts though, we have to consider that of all the people of this vast tribe they were the ones that kept going until they ran out of continent to settle. That says a lot about individuality and independence and feel a sense of pride to be a part of it in my own way.
They had no interest in giving up their culture and art nor were they willing to give up their stories and artwork just because it was deemed dangerous by an authority figure sitting on a golden throne over a thousand miles away, go figure, and were more than willing to martyr themselves to keep their identity and ideals.
I'm grateful they did, to lose any of the beauty in a world like ours only so an empire can maintain control is a travesty and if left to smash and burn, the Christians may have deprived us of works like this.
Without those works as an inspiration what we consider modern day Celtic artwork and in my opinion the world would be darker and less wonderful because of it. Every society brings an undeniably unique piece to the tapestry this humanity and never should eradicated for the sake of the greater good, like I'm saying peace doesn't come, only a circle of violence and force and worse, the erasing of history ensues.
That is St. Patrick's grandest miracle, he was able to convince the most powerful people in the world to change their minds and tactics by reminding them of the message of Jesus. He was able to get them to understand that forcing the last remaining Celts to convert by means of fire and sword would never work and they would be left trying to convert a pile of ash if they thought submission would be possible.
A humble man of his standing should by no means been able to redirect the Roman war machine and the oligarchs that ran its government and priests that ran its other half, but he did and not by force at all. It was the partly the art of the people that helped show the powerful there could be another way.
For the first time in centuries, a culture resistant to the new world order was able to keep their identity and have the process of assimilation take place. St. Patrick worked to bring the word of Christ into the land but did not take away the aspects of the culture which had been developed over thousands of years of history. The result is breathtaking in my opinion, please take a look.
We can't have one with out the other, it a combination of the old and the new and set a big precedent. For the first time the might of empire yielded to some one else for the sake of good. A person saw the pain on both sides and stepped into the middle of it.
St. Patrick had plenty of reasons to want to inflict harm both societies due to the pain they had caused him but instead he absolved it. He approached the conflict with compassion for everyone and reminded us of the time when Jesus made his ultimate sacrifice for the same cause. For once instead of replacing a culture, a give and take occurred and both sides benefited. The symbols and mythology passed on by the druids was accepted and worked into the greater society of Europe and we got a better world.
I have no problem accepting that God speaks us in very different ways and does want a harmonious world as well. Like I said before these acts of those willing to suffer our scars make an indefinite impact on the world but in no way end all suffering in and of themselves. Within a few generations power reconsolidated in a new group and conquest began again using the same passages as before to justify them.
That is exactly why the feast day this Sunday is so important to me. The need to be reminded of this lesson is ever present and the tendency to stray from this philosophy is much more prevalent than that to stay on course is and we need to talk about it so we don't forget it. On Easter we will as Christians celebrate the generations of peace the sacrifice of Jesus gave to us. Tomorrow we will celebrate an example of someone who understood not only what that burden was, but why its was carried.
It is very important that we remember we mortals can live up to the highest of examples of truth and morality. He proved that a single person, armed only with symbols of beauty and a universal message of love, can make the worlds biggest army stand down if their conviction holds true.
These are the ideals that inspire me and my family to the faith. I can say that deep in my heart I know that because of these great examples that even a person like me can change the world with merely my words and beliefs if I too stand strong stay confident.
This is the story I share with my kids on our special Sunday in March so that they will feel inspired to be the best they can be no matter what life puts on their shoulders to bare. That may be the best answer for who St. Patrick is, he is me, you and hopefully our children. He's anyone who understands what I'm trying to say feels better for it going forward. Over all, the holiday is about hope, a belief that there actually is a way to stop the cycle of hate and pain that plagues humanity. If we are strong enough to take in the suffering of others and absolve it than we can break the chain that holds us back. We absolutely can change our ways and if we keep vigilant in our efforts to accept our differences, we can have peace in our lifetimes.
Thank you very much for reading this article, Happy St. Patrick's Day from my family to yours!