Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. For fun, I welcomed my church congregation in all the services, speaking in an Irish accent. I emphasized that we should celebrate the testimony and missionary work of St. Patrick. Later that day, my family and I (remotely Irish at best), listened to Celtic music, dressed in green and had a "green" dinner of green pancakes, sweet pickles, grapes and green milk (food coloring is fun!).
It could be argued that St. Patrick's Day is the holiday where the original person is least understood. I have a few colleagues who eagerly anticipate the holiday as an opportunity to drink themselves silly while merely wearing green, maybe celebrating the peripheral or stereotypical aspects of Irish culture. Once, I heard an advertisement on Chicago radio that assured "non-Irish" people that all it takes was green apparel and a love of drinking to be "Chi-Irish."
Myself? I'm thankful for the musical input from Ireland to the world (the Church included), from Celtic music to U2. But I'm also thankful and inspired by St. Patrick himself. Some things you should know about him from the Resurgence:
-He was one of the greatest missionaries who ever lived.
-He considered himself “a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful, and most contemptible to many.”
-He was actually more of a blue man (not sad, but the color), than a green one.
-As a teenager, he was stolen from his home and sold into slavery for six years in Ireland. He would later return to preach the gospel there.
-Satan attacked him violently in his sleep to the point where he couldn’t move.
-Legend has it that he contextualized and used shamrocks (an already-sacred symbol in Ireland) to teach people about the Trinity.
-He begged God to grant him to die a martyr’s death, even if it meant being torn limb from limb by dogs or pecked to death by birds. (Maybe St. Patrick inspired Alfred Hitchcock?)
Links for further reading here.
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