If you attended public schools as I did, then you probably remember St. Patrick's Day, March 17, as a day when the classroom was decorated with green shamrocks, and mean kids went around looking for someone they could pinch because he wasn't wearing green. Little was said about the occasion's namesake, "Saint Patrick," artistically depicted in the robe and miter of a Catholic bishop, unless it was a legend about him using the shamrock to teach the Trinity, or driving the snakes out of Ireland.

The truth about Patrick of Ireland is more interesting than the fiction. For starters, he wasn't Irish, or Roman Catholic in the usual sense, but was born into a Christian family on the west coast of Britain late in the 4th Century A.D. Despite the influence of his father, who was a deacon, and his grandfather, who was a pastor, Patrick did not genuinely know God. That changed completely at the age of 16, when Irish raiders captured him one night and sold him into slavery in Ireland. There, as an abused teenage slave herding sheep on lonely hillsides, he had ample time to reflect on his sinful past and pour out his heart to God in prayer. After six years of this, God directed him in a dream to escape. He ran away, and with God's help, finally made it back to his family in Britain. Then came another dream in which God made it clear he should go back to the Irish as a missionary. He obeyed God's call, against the wishes of his family, and went back to Ireland. It wasn't easy. He experienced hardships, imprisonment, and narrow escapes from martyrdom, but he also rejoiced in the "so many thousands" he won to faith in Christ.

We know all this from two surviving sources, his Latin Confessio, written in the latter half of the 5th Century A.D., in which he defends his ministry against the critics back in Britain, and his letter to a British marauder named Coroticus. He humbly acknowledges his lack of proper education and his poor Latin, but both his "Confession" and his letter are saturated with the Word of God. Almost every sentence echoes phrases from the Old or New Testament. Obviously Patrick knew the Bible so well that its words came as naturally as his breath. It's easy to see how the convicting power of God's Spirit would accompany his preaching.

I hope that parents of any Alpha Omega Academy® distance learning students who at the moment do not show a lot of appreciation for a biblical Christian education will take heart from the story of Patrick. God hears prayer, and will never run out of ways to deal with pride or indifference. Who knows, there may be a sixteen-year-old in the Academy today who, although no one would ever guess it, will some day be used of God to transform a nation!

Patrick's testimony translated into English is too lengthy to copy here, but I encourage everyone to read it carefully. You will find it inspiring! Here are several internet sources:

Balleybeg Village.com  
Official Chronology of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland
Letter to Coroticus


David Bauman

Principal, Alpha Omega Academy