St. Patrick's Day

No, I don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day. There's not an Irish bone in my body.

But the holiday is around us everywhere today. Restaurants are serving corned beef and cabbage. People are wearing green, and pretending to speak with an Irish accent. Stores are decorated with shamrocks. And of course, anyplace that has a liquor license is selling green beer.

So it would seem that we are surrounded by an appropriate honoring of this holiday, right?

Wrong.

I read a letter in the newspaper this morning that tells the story of why St. Patrick has a holiday named after him better than I could. So with full credit going to Stephen Crotts in today's Greenville News, I invite you to remember the following story as you celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

Wearing green has religious meaning

His name is Sucant. He was born in Wales, 389 AD., near the town of Dunbarton. His dad was a wealthy farmer. His family, Christian.

At age 16 an Irish raiding party swept through his village and pirated him bound and gagged to Ireland as a slave. For six fretful years he tended sheep and watched the men of Erie make a sport of cruelty. Whiskey and butchery were their specialty, blood their sacrament.

Sucant, until then a nominal Christian, clung to his faith for solace. "I said 100 prayers a day and almost as many by night," he wrote.

At age 23 Sucant had a dream. In it he was told to go to a certain beach where a ship waited to take him to safety. He awoke, followed instructions, and sailed to freedom.

He settled into a monastery, LeReins, in Southern France. There a monk called Germaneous tutored him in Christ and helped him heal from his long ordeal.

In 417A.D. Sucant became a deacon in the church. He took on the Christian name Patrick, Latin, meaning "Fatherly."

The story should end there in the quiet cloisters of monastic society. Ah, but Patrick dreamed again! In his vision the Irish pleaded with him, "Come over and help us! Walk among us and teach us Christ!"

Patrick wrestled with forgiveness. With his poor education. The church argued about carrying the gospel of Jesus outside the Latin-speaking world.

But in 432 A.D. after 14 years in the monastery, at age 42, Patrick journeyed to Ireland a second time.

Over the next 30 years Patrick preached the gospel, baptized over 120,000 people. He started over 300 churches, and organized schools that saved learning after the rest of Europe collapsed into a dark age.

March 17, it was, Patrick died. But we remember. Of him today the Irish say, "When he came to us we were all pagan. When he left us we were all Christian."

In the centuries after his death, Irish missionaries from his schools recarried the Gospel across Europe. And it is likely Irish monks, like Brenadin, came to the New World long before Christopher Columbus in 1492.

Today in the USA, St. Patrick's Day is a day of wearing green, Celtic music and beer drinking. In Ireland still, March 17 is a day for going to church and giving thanks for the one God sent to point the way out of misery.

Stephen Crotts, Greenville

So when you are toasting St. Patrick today, remember that we honor him for bringing Christianity to what was then a pagan population in Ireland. Not because he could throw a great party.