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The Spirituality of St Patrick
“St Patrick:
Spirit and Prayer” by Jude Groden, RSM, with essay on the spirituality of St
Patrick by Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm.
© Jude Groden and
Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm. 2002. ISBN: 0 85597 637 3. Published by
McCrimmons, Great Wakering, Essex, England.
These excerpts are
taken from an essay by Christopher O’Donnell, O.Carm., which appears in
“St Patrick: Spirit and Prayer” and are reproduced
here with permission.
“We
have from
St Patrick two brief works: his Confession, a spiritual
autobiography, and an angry letter to the soldiers of the pirate Coroticus
who had kidnapped and murdered some of Patrick’s Christians.”
“Every time we
read the Confession we can be struck by some other new thought. There
are any number of ways of summing up this great work in a few words,
depending on what element of Patrick’s teaching or complex personality we
focus on at a particular time. But there is perhaps one key to his
spirituality, what he called the “desire of his life” which he wants others
to know. This lies somehow in his single-mindedness. He had fallen in love
with God, he wanted nothing but what God wanted. God’s will was expressed
for him in the very concrete terms of a mission in exile – so nothing else
mattered.”
“People today seek
spirituality. Some find a value, a meaning for their lives which continues
to sustain them. Others try on spiritualities like new clothes, and abandon
them when they become tired of them. Patrick shows us a spirituality, which
is very simple. He is loved, blessed and called by God and he responds.
Patrick had stickability. His holy mountain in the West of Ireland – Croagh
Patrick – has many lessons for us. We can see its majestic summit from a
distance. But as we begin to climb, the summit vanishes and all we can see
is the intervening slope. The summit is often covered by fog. For ordinary
people Croagh Patrick is quite a difficult climb, and it demands grit and
determination to get to the top. Patrick can lead us to ascend life’s
mountain where, like Moses and Patrick, we meet the living God.”
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Saint Patrick is
the patron saint and apostle of Ireland. He was born about the year 389 in
what was then Roman Britain, possibly in Wales. Around the year 403 he was
carried off by pirates and sold as a slave in Ireland where he remained for
six years before escaping back to Britain. However, the call of the people
of Ireland was ever with him and so he became a priest and was consecrated
bishop by St Germanus at Auxerre. He returned to Ireland to take up the
missionary work of St Palladius. He travelled about the island bringing the
message of the Gospel and his work was supported by miracles, though much of
his life is now unknown to us. There are only two writings of his known to
us today, of which the Confessions are the largest and most
important. Patrick established what is now the primatial church of Ireland
at Armagh about the year 444.
He is
traditionally believed to have died about 461, possibly at Strangford Lough
in the North East of Ireland. At Downpatrick, Co Down, there is a grave
reputed to be that of St Patrick and also of St Brigid and St Columba (also
known as St Colmcille). The three bodies are said to have been brought there
by John De Courcy in the twelfth century, thereby fulfilling the old legend
that the three saints should lie together in the same place in death.
Patrick’s feastday
is celebrated with full solemnity in Ireland and throughout many parts of
the world on March 17th.
In the west of
Ireland there is a mountain named after the saint – Croagh Patrick – to
which many thousands of pilgrims come each year to climb to top of this
stony mountain and to pray for Patrick’s protection on Ireland and its
people. Many still complete the walk barefoot.
The Confession of St Patrick
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