Saint Patrick Quotes

“Before the Irish, no people had ever submitted to the Christian gospel who had not first submitted to Roman rule. The Irish were a fierce people. They had never bowed to the yoke of a foreign ruler. Why, then, did they yield to a bishop? One of the Patrick legends may give a clue. Patrick came upon two brothers whose quarrel over their inheritance had just turned into a swordfight. Moved by “pity of these unpitying men” (a most Patrician sentiment), Patrick froze the two brothers in mid-blow. Thus immobilized, the men had no choice but to listen to the gospel of peace as presented by the saint. Having heard his speech, the quarrelsome brothers “returned unto the mutual kindness of brotherly love,” received Patrick’s blessing, and together decided to build a church where once they had tried to kill one another.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“It seems that Palladius had already made a name for himself as a culture warrior, taking a stand against the spread of the Pelagian heresy in Britain. Pelagius, for whom the heresy was named, was himself of British birth, though he had left for Rome by AD 390. He denied Original Sin and taught that human beings were perfectible, and his heresy was a very hot topic in Patrick’s era. In 429 Palladius, then a deacon, convinced Pope Celestine to send the bishop Germanus of Auxerre (the same Germanus who, according to tradition, trained Patrick) to put Britain back on the straight and narrow. According to Prosper, Germanus “routed the heretics and directed the Britons to the Catholic faith.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“R. P. C. Hanson speaks of Patrick as “acutely, perpetually, embarrassingly conscious of his lack of education.”12 It becomes almost equally embarrassing for the reader as Patrick continues: “So, consequently, today I feel ashamed and am mightily afraid to expose my ignorance, because, [not] eloquent, with a small vocabulary, I am unable to explain as the spirit is eager to do and as the soul and the mind indicate.”13 Now, at last, toward the end of that quotation, Patrick seems to have gotten his rhetorical legs. This was not only a matter of pride or class-consciousness. Patrick felt the frustration of a stutterer. He had so much going on inside—so much desire, so much heart—but his language just couldn’t keep up. That is where Patrick’s weakness became his strength. He testified to the works of God not because he was eloquent (and therefore worthy of praise), but because he couldn’t help it. He was “an epistle of Christ,” bringing salvation “to the ends of the earth,” and written on the hearts of his hearers, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.”14 The apostle Paul wrote similarly that God had sent him to preach the gospel— but “not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Corinthians 1:17). When he was not wallowing in self-loathing, Patrick realized that his very in-eloquence was what made his message compelling, for it made it clear that God had something to say. That is the meaning of his dream of the “learned words.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“He was correct in saying that his academic shortcomings could be proven by the flavor of his writing. Latin experts point out errors and infelicities throughout Patrick’s writings, and even in translation there are places where it is clear that Patrick’s writing is a little clumsy.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“Eugene Peterson speaks of the “God-dominated imagination” that developed in David as he spent his days and nights watching sheep on the Judean hillsides.19 It appears that something similar happened in Patrick. In the lush, green hills of western Ireland, in the towering clouds that rolled across the big sky, even in the most inclement of weather, Patrick sensed the presence of a Creator who hadn’t seemed very real or relevant or necessary in his earlier life of ease. For all its disadvantages, the shepherd’s life leaves plenty of time to think and pray, and Patrick used his time to great advantage. Far from wallowing in self-pity, Patrick celebrated his enslavement, the very shock he needed to bring him to his senses. Throughout his Confession, Patrick’s language is shot through with the confidence that, whatever his circumstances, God was doing good things in his life. He viewed his kidnapping and slavery as God’s direct work; this work, however, was not merely punitive but remedial, not evidence that God had forsaken him, but that God wished to draw Patrick to himself. So rather than growing bitter, Patrick allowed God’s chastisement to do its work in him. His enslavement, he believed, was a hard mercy, but a mercy nonetheless. From the very beginning of the Confession, we get a glimpse of Patrick’s indomitable joy. His tone echoed that of Paul, who wrote from prison,”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“The druids, the priests of Ireland’s pre-Christian tradition, figure hugely in the Patrick legends, but we don’t know a great deal about them. It seems that an important role of the druid was to serve as a repository of the culture ’s lore and history. According to Caesar, they were also arbiters of justice. Their training, wrote Pomponius Mela, lasted up to twenty years and consisted of memorizing huge amounts of secret lore. They wrote none of their learning down, but passed it orally from druid to druid.9 According to Pliny the Elder, the word druid means “oak-knower,” but this was a false etymology. Still, it does seem likely that the religion of the druids was animistic and included some communication with and through the phenomena of the natural world. Classical writers, including Caesar, described human sacrifice as being part of the druids’ priestly duties. The classical writers aren’t always reliable on the subject of Celtic culture, but there is ample archaeological evidence of human sacrifice in the pre-Christian rituals of the British Isles.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“It seems the only sin Patrick could be talking about is homicide. Perhaps in a moment of rage or carelessness, the young Patrick impulsively killed one of the slaves who worked the family’s lands. He could get away with it: after all, he was the son of the lord of the manor. But as time went on—and he found himself in the position of slave, his heart changed by the love of God—the gravity of his crime dawned on him.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground. A spring of water bubbles forth, the baptism goes forward, and the blind priest receives sight when he washes his face with the water. What’s more, the priest discovers that he is literate at his first sight of letters: he reads the words of the baptismal service.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“The legends describe Patrick as an extremely pious child. In one, the infant Patrick miraculously provides the holy water for his own baptism! A blind and oddly underprepared priest, realizing that he doesn’t have any water on hand, takes baby Patrick’s hand and makes the sign of the cross over the ground.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“A remarkable number of the Patrick legends are comic, portraying the saint as a man you would enjoy being around. Consider, by contrast, Patrick’s contemporary, Saint Augustine, with his towering intellect and moral and theological precision. You can’t help respecting the man, but you wouldn’t necessarily want him at your Christmas party.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“For example, Patrick did not run the snakes out of Ireland. Writing two hundred years before Patrick’s time, the Greek geographer Solinus remarked that Ireland was free of snakes. There is no record of Patrick using the shamrock to teach the Irish about the Trinity. Neither did he have any dealings with leprechauns”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“59. And if at any time I managed anything of good for the sake of my God whom I love, I beg of him that he grant it to me to shed my blood for his name with proselytes and captives, even should I be left unburied, or even were my wretched body to be torn limb from limb by dogs or savage beasts, or were it to be devoured by the birds of the air, I think, most surely, were this to have happened to me, I had saved both my soul and my body. For beyond any doubt on that day we shall rise again in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer, as children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ, made in his image; for we shall reign through him and for him and in him.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick

“This is what constitutes an “heroic age”: that a people subsisting stably on pasture and tillage, with a simple system of customary law and an already established social hierarchy, is provided with an opportunity to prey on a rich, highly organized and prestigious civilization.”
― Jonathan Rogers, Saint Patrick