March 17, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, buried beneath the St. Patrick’s Day symbols of shamrocks, leprechauns, and green beer, lies the story of a man determined to share a message with a people who made him a slave. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and being that it's that
time of the year, Saint Patrick's Day, we figured we'd
give you the story behind the story, which is what
we love to do here on our American Stories. Here's
Greg Hengler with the story of Saint Patrick.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
RPC Hanson wrote in his book about Saint Patrick that
the tragedy with all the myths and legends such as
Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland, his association
with using shamrock to explain the Trinity, and the preconception
that he's Irish, is that these actually hide the truth.
What we are about to do is get rid of
(00:49):
the myths and the legends and go to the primary source,
the words of Patrick himself. In fact, his fifth century
writings and letters, known as as the Confession, are one
of the earliest surviving documents in Irish history. Here's doctor
Tim Campbell, director of the Saint Patrick Center in down Patrick, Ireland.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
IGU Patrichius Paccato russichismus h Patrick a sinner least fifthful
of many. Those are the words that begin the history
of Ireland.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Patrick was born into a well off family and lived
in a country estate on the western coast of what
was Roman occupied Britain in the very last days of
the Roman Empire. As Roman legions abandoned Britain in order
to protect themselves in other regions of the Roman Empire,
order and authority fell into disarray, and Britain's west coast
(01:46):
became vulnerable to frequent plundering by Irish slave raiders. Patrick
was a teenager living a very comfortable life as the
son of a government official and church cleric, though he
himself had very little interest in anything pertaining to his
father's faith. One day, Irish raiders captured the sixteen year
(02:08):
old Patrick, along with several thousand men, women and children
from the surrounding countryside, packed them tightly into holds of
waiting ships, and took them to Ireland, a wild and
savage place beyond the Roman reach. Patrick was sold as
a slave and was made a shepherd for a very
harsh master. Patrick hated the Irish, and this hatred feeled
(02:32):
his will to live. He vowed one day to repay
them for their cruelty. Here's doctor Campbell Elva Johnston, professor
of History at University College Dublin. Patrick's biographer, Thomas O'Laughlin
and father Billy Swann.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Celtic people did not work with slaves the same way
that the Romans did. I treated their slaves pretty badly
like cattle, and would have worked you until you died.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Particularly as a non Irish slave, he would have been
at an even greater disadvantage because he wouldn't have been
recognized almost as a person. Presumably it is a sort
of meant to be slavery for life.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
He begins to conclude that this has happened because I
deserved it, basically, And this happened to shake me out
of my complacency and to shake me out of a
way of life I was living in which God didn't
matter for me.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Here are the words of Patrick.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during
the day, and more and more the love of God
and the fear of Him grew in me, and my
faith was increased, and my spirit was quickened, so that
in a day I prayed up to one hundred times,
and almost as many in the night. Indeed, I even
(03:56):
remained in the wood and on the mountain to pray
and come hail rain or snow. I was up before
dawn to pray. The Spirit was fervent in me.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Something news happening, something that hadn't happened before. The personal relationship,
that dimension of a person relationship with God.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Patrick's bitterness and loneliness began to melt away as he
came to realize God was with him. He tried to
recall sermons from church and stories from the Bible. He
chided himself for his boyhood lack of interest in God.
Although Patrick knew of Jesus Christ, he never cared. But
now as a slave in a strange, green, distant land,
(04:42):
the little he had learned as a boy came flooding
back to him. He didn't have a Bible, but he
could pray, and as his love for God grew, his
hatred for the Irish died. Patrick was held as a
slave for six years as he continued to pray every day.
Here's the words of Patrick and Patrick's biographer, Thomas O'Laughlin.
Speaker 7 (05:06):
It was there, indeed, that one night I heard a voice, Patrick.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
Well, have you fasted? Very soon you are to travel
to your homeland. Behold, your ship is prepared.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I took flight, leaving the man I had been bound to.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
For six years. But the ship was not nearby, but
maybe two.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Hundred miles away, when I had never been and when
I knew nobody.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
The biggest danger is someone says you're a slave.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
I'll find out where you come from, and I'll take
you back in our flame of reward.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
It took him days to walk two hundred miles before
reaching the seaport, and there right before him was a
ship getting ready to depart, but the captain, seeing he
was a slave, refused to give him passage. Patrick turned
to leave, and as he did, he prayed for guidance.
Before he ended his prayer, one of the sailors in
(06:20):
the back of the ship said, come hurry, we shall
take you on. Patrick was then asked to pledge himself
to the crew through a Celtic tradition that included sucking
on their chests.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
These days, we would shake hands. In those days. That
was a way of bonding with each other, to show
that you would be loyal to them. He didn't want
to do that because he was Christian.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The sailors gave him a pass and let him on
board the ship. They traveled for three days before landing
on an unknown, desolate port. They traveled on foot for
twenty eight days searching for food. As the haggard, half
starved men grew weak, the captain and fixed his fiery
eyes on Patrick and said, tell me, Christian, you say
(07:05):
that your God is great and all powerful, Why then
do you not pray for us? We are suffering from hunger.
It is unlikely that we shall ever see a human
being again. Patrick smiled, Be truly converted with all your
heart to the Lord, my God, because nothing is impossible
for him. When the men turned around, a herd of
(07:28):
pigs crossed the path in front of them. They would
feast on him for days. Patrick writes that after this
they thanked God mightily and he became honorable in their eyes.
But just days after this miracle, Patrick was once again
taken captive and made a slave. On the very first
(07:49):
night he was with his captors, he received a divine
message telling him he would remain with them for two months.
This is exactly what happened, Patrick wrote, Lord freed me
from their hands. Two years passed before Patrick finally made
it home to his family in Britain.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
The Patrick that returned was a very different person from
the one who left. He was someone who had encountered
God in the darkest part of his day, and who had,
as a result of encountering God in a real and
living way, become much more comfortable with the idea that
(08:30):
God was active and alive and to be taken seriously.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Then one night a voice returned to him.
Speaker 10 (08:40):
I saw in the night the vision of a man
whose name was Victor, coming as it were, from Ireland
with countless letters, and he gave me one of them,
and I read the opening words of the letter, which
were the voice of the Irish, and they cried out,
as with one voice.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
We ask you, holy Boy, come and walk among us
once again.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And you've been listening to the story of Saint Patrick.
And of course, obviously we're telling this story because so
many Irish Americans call this country home. When we continue
more of Saint Patrick's story here on our American stories.
(09:39):
Continue with our American stories and the story of Saint Patrick.
Let's return to Greg Hangler and the rest of this
remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
After several years in the monasteries of France, Patrick was
ordained a bishop. Patrick told his church family and friends
he would be returning to Ireland, and they were shocked.
Don't you know what they'd do with slaves who run away.
Surely God would not require this from one who has
suffered so much already settled down here in peace. The
(10:14):
church leaders argued he was wasting his time. Those brutal
barbarians have no interest in God. Patrick told them. God
snatched me from my homeland and parents so that I
might know and love Him. It is in Ireland that
I wish to serve until I die, if the Lord
would grant it to me. So, Patrick, who was still
(10:37):
a fugitive in Ireland, set his feet to walk in
heart to share the Gospel message to the Irish everywhere.
Beginning in the year four thirty two. The pre Christian
Druids were a powerful force in fifth century Ireland. These
Celtic religious leaders were part of a pagan priesthood and
(10:57):
would be rivals to Patrick's ministry. The Druids hated him
for leading people away from their idols. They robbed, beat
imprisoned and tortured him. He was enslaved a third time
twelve times. His enemies nearly killed him, but always the
Lord rescued him.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
He sells his nobility, which I take to be a
reference to him selling essentially his inheritance. It's almost like
a form of seed funding which you will enable him
to get to Ireland. I imagine that Patrick's parents had
fully expected him to take on the role as maybe
(11:39):
the heir of the family, he would have.
Speaker 11 (11:44):
Been opting out of any responsibility for running his states, etc.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Here's Patrick, Alan Harper, Chris Seton, co author of New Celts,
and father Neil Carlin.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
It was not my grace God who conquered in me
and who resisted them all that I might come to
the Irish nations to preach the gospel.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
In terms of the challenge of it, it was just awesome.
He didn't know what he faced, possible death and persecution,
more slavery, imprisonment.
Speaker 9 (12:24):
He established his Great Stone Church on the Hilltop. The
site is strategically located on one of the main transportation
routes in Inland Ireland. That makes this an extremely significant
and important place from which to conduct your mission. And
you'll conducting your mission in territory which has not been
(12:47):
exposed to Christianity before.
Speaker 12 (12:50):
Patrick's approach seemed to do very much about confronting the
spirituality of paganism, but not condemning the culture in which
it bred.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
He used what was sacred to the people, but gave
it a new context, a fuller, richer context, which they
were able both to accommodate within their own understanding and
see a continuity of what had been dimly perceived in
the past through the coming of God into human experience.
Speaker 12 (13:26):
Patrick did break the mold of the church at that time,
being in that sense quite radically an outsider. I think that,
to me is an authentic pattern that resonates with the
New Testament. Think of John the bat, just think of Jesus.
They were not comfortable within the institutional structures of the church,
(13:50):
so much of church leadership was quite locked into an
earthly security, of worldly security, whereas what Patrick did was
completely counter intuitive to go to one of the more
wild and unwelcoming places. Patrick needed an awful lot of
conviction in his heart, but he did a lot of
(14:12):
fire in his blood to be able to do what
he did, which was effectively change in nation.
Speaker 9 (14:19):
I think one of the things that most interests me
about Patrick is that he came into what was a
situation of social difficulties and considerable conflict with a completely
revolutionary message which, yes he had to use local influence
(14:39):
to spread, but which transcended, totally transcended the circumstances of
the local divisions and disputes.
Speaker 13 (14:51):
It comes across from his ratings as a very humble man,
a man who knew is freely dark, and of hisself
as a as a great sinner. They called the saints
seem to do and I often think it's like you
come into the sun and you see the dust coming
through a beautiful window in their building. He didn't see
(15:12):
the dust before the sunlight shone through that light. I
don't think of the saints like that, because to you
and I they're not great sinners. But as they came
close to the great Light and are aware of the
Great God, they become more and more aware of their
sin and yet more and we're aware of God's mercy.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Patrick converted thousands to Christianity. He opposed slavers, Irish kings, druids,
and most of all, hostility from his fellow Christians. Here
again is doctor Tim Campbell.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Patrick went a war, and we just don't know how
that all panned out. He said that he wanted to
spend the rest of his life in Ireland because that's
what God demanded, and therefore we got a guess that
he never did go back.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Patrick died of old age and was buried in northern
Ireland in the year four sixty one on March seventeenth,
the day we celebrate Saint Patrick's Day. Not long after
Patrick's death, the Roman Empire fell and Western Europe drifted
into the Middle Ages. But Patrick's work was not in vain.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
As Christianity established itself. As it became more vibrant, it
became known as the Land of Saints and Scholars, and
that led in turn to a whole proliferation of Christian
missionaries leaving Ireland and flooding continental Europe. Patrick's story began
a chain of events that is quite remarkable in the
(16:48):
impact that it had.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
He wore out many more pairs of sandals and death
than he did in life, and he's still going. People
are still reading his confession and still being interested in
Christianity because he wrote his message down here again is
Chris seton.
Speaker 12 (17:05):
The work of evangelism in Ireland, and the establishing of
those monastic houses contributed to a strong place of learning,
of culture and definitely, of course a strong place of
a spreadboard for evangelism, which down the line for the
re evangelization of Britain and mainland Europe.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
To this day, Patrick's works offer hope for religious reconciliation
in Ireland. Here's Harry Smith from Belfast, director of the
Christian Renewal Center.
Speaker 11 (17:41):
Patrick brought a Christianity that was pre Roman in that sense.
Speaker 12 (17:46):
You know.
Speaker 11 (17:47):
Therefore he produced everything that we would see in this
land as being Catholic or Protestant, and there in a
sense he's an anchor point for us, whether we're talking
about reconciliation in this land of something of a commonality.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
In closing, let us hear Patrick's final words.
Speaker 7 (18:05):
I pray for those who believe in and have reverence
for God.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Some of them may come upon this writing which Patrick
Sinner wrote in Ireland. May none of them ever say
that whatever little I did or made known to please
God was done through ignorance. Instead, you can judge and believe.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
In all truth that it was a gift of God.
This is my confession before I die.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I'm Greg Hengler, and from all of us here at
our American stories have a great Saint Patrick's day.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
And great job as always to Greg Hengler, and again
a special thanks to CBN Films for allowing us to
access their movie drama I am Patrick, and we'd also
like to thank the folks at Vision Video for giving
us access to footage of their film Patrick. Check out
the full documentary and nineteen hundred other titles of uplifting,
(19:13):
family friendly videos at vision video dot com. And my goodness,
he was an entrepreneur of sorts, going into a wild,
untamed land with a message that caused him to meet
enemies everywhere around him, converting thousands to his faith, but
in the end lots of enemies too. And those final words,
(19:34):
my goodness. I pray for those who believe in and
have reverence for God. May none of them ever say
that what I did to please God was not done
in ignorance, but to please him. Beautiful words, a beautiful story,
Patrick's story, Saint Patrick's story, and by the way that
he calls himself a sinner is something we can all,
(19:54):
all of us believers or not know that we're all flawed.
And what a beautiful story, what grace he found through
his God. A great story, a great Irish story, a
great human story. Here on our American stories
This is our American Stories, and being that it's that
time of the year, Saint Patrick's Day, we figured we'd
give you the story behind the story, which is what
we love to do here on our American Stories. Here's
Greg Hengler with the story of Saint Patrick.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
RPC Hanson wrote in his book about Saint Patrick that
the tragedy with all the myths and legends such as
Patrick driving all the snakes out of Ireland, his association
with using shamrock to explain the Trinity, and the preconception
that he's Irish, is that these actually hide the truth.
What we are about to do is get rid of
(00:49):
the myths and the legends and go to the primary source,
the words of Patrick himself. In fact, his fifth century
writings and letters, known as as the Confession, are one
of the earliest surviving documents in Irish history. Here's doctor
Tim Campbell, director of the Saint Patrick Center in down Patrick, Ireland.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
IGU Patrichius Paccato russichismus h Patrick a sinner least fifthful
of many. Those are the words that begin the history
of Ireland.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Patrick was born into a well off family and lived
in a country estate on the western coast of what
was Roman occupied Britain in the very last days of
the Roman Empire. As Roman legions abandoned Britain in order
to protect themselves in other regions of the Roman Empire,
order and authority fell into disarray, and Britain's west coast
(01:46):
became vulnerable to frequent plundering by Irish slave raiders. Patrick
was a teenager living a very comfortable life as the
son of a government official and church cleric, though he
himself had very little interest in anything pertaining to his
father's faith. One day, Irish raiders captured the sixteen year
(02:08):
old Patrick, along with several thousand men, women and children
from the surrounding countryside, packed them tightly into holds of
waiting ships, and took them to Ireland, a wild and
savage place beyond the Roman reach. Patrick was sold as
a slave and was made a shepherd for a very
harsh master. Patrick hated the Irish, and this hatred feeled
(02:32):
his will to live. He vowed one day to repay
them for their cruelty. Here's doctor Campbell Elva Johnston, professor
of History at University College Dublin. Patrick's biographer, Thomas O'Laughlin
and father Billy Swann.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Celtic people did not work with slaves the same way
that the Romans did. I treated their slaves pretty badly
like cattle, and would have worked you until you died.
Speaker 4 (03:01):
Particularly as a non Irish slave, he would have been
at an even greater disadvantage because he wouldn't have been
recognized almost as a person. Presumably it is a sort
of meant to be slavery for life.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
He begins to conclude that this has happened because I
deserved it, basically, And this happened to shake me out
of my complacency and to shake me out of a
way of life I was living in which God didn't
matter for me.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Here are the words of Patrick.
Speaker 6 (03:34):
I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during
the day, and more and more the love of God
and the fear of Him grew in me, and my
faith was increased, and my spirit was quickened, so that
in a day I prayed up to one hundred times,
and almost as many in the night. Indeed, I even
(03:56):
remained in the wood and on the mountain to pray
and come hail rain or snow. I was up before
dawn to pray. The Spirit was fervent in me.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Something news happening, something that hadn't happened before. The personal relationship,
that dimension of a person relationship with God.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Patrick's bitterness and loneliness began to melt away as he
came to realize God was with him. He tried to
recall sermons from church and stories from the Bible. He
chided himself for his boyhood lack of interest in God.
Although Patrick knew of Jesus Christ, he never cared. But
now as a slave in a strange, green, distant land,
(04:42):
the little he had learned as a boy came flooding
back to him. He didn't have a Bible, but he
could pray, and as his love for God grew, his
hatred for the Irish died. Patrick was held as a
slave for six years as he continued to pray every day.
Here's the words of Patrick and Patrick's biographer, Thomas O'Laughlin.
Speaker 7 (05:06):
It was there, indeed, that one night I heard a voice, Patrick.
Speaker 8 (05:15):
Well, have you fasted? Very soon you are to travel
to your homeland. Behold, your ship is prepared.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
I took flight, leaving the man I had been bound to.
Speaker 7 (05:36):
For six years. But the ship was not nearby, but
maybe two.
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Hundred miles away, when I had never been and when
I knew nobody.
Speaker 4 (05:48):
The biggest danger is someone says you're a slave.
Speaker 9 (05:52):
I'll find out where you come from, and I'll take
you back in our flame of reward.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
It took him days to walk two hundred miles before
reaching the seaport, and there right before him was a
ship getting ready to depart, but the captain, seeing he
was a slave, refused to give him passage. Patrick turned
to leave, and as he did, he prayed for guidance.
Before he ended his prayer, one of the sailors in
(06:20):
the back of the ship said, come hurry, we shall
take you on. Patrick was then asked to pledge himself
to the crew through a Celtic tradition that included sucking
on their chests.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
These days, we would shake hands. In those days. That
was a way of bonding with each other, to show
that you would be loyal to them. He didn't want
to do that because he was Christian.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
The sailors gave him a pass and let him on
board the ship. They traveled for three days before landing
on an unknown, desolate port. They traveled on foot for
twenty eight days searching for food. As the haggard, half
starved men grew weak, the captain and fixed his fiery
eyes on Patrick and said, tell me, Christian, you say
(07:05):
that your God is great and all powerful, Why then
do you not pray for us? We are suffering from hunger.
It is unlikely that we shall ever see a human
being again. Patrick smiled, Be truly converted with all your
heart to the Lord, my God, because nothing is impossible
for him. When the men turned around, a herd of
(07:28):
pigs crossed the path in front of them. They would
feast on him for days. Patrick writes that after this
they thanked God mightily and he became honorable in their eyes.
But just days after this miracle, Patrick was once again
taken captive and made a slave. On the very first
(07:49):
night he was with his captors, he received a divine
message telling him he would remain with them for two months.
This is exactly what happened, Patrick wrote, Lord freed me
from their hands. Two years passed before Patrick finally made
it home to his family in Britain.
Speaker 9 (08:08):
The Patrick that returned was a very different person from
the one who left. He was someone who had encountered
God in the darkest part of his day, and who had,
as a result of encountering God in a real and
living way, become much more comfortable with the idea that
(08:30):
God was active and alive and to be taken seriously.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Then one night a voice returned to him.
Speaker 10 (08:40):
I saw in the night the vision of a man
whose name was Victor, coming as it were, from Ireland
with countless letters, and he gave me one of them,
and I read the opening words of the letter, which
were the voice of the Irish, and they cried out,
as with one voice.
Speaker 8 (09:01):
We ask you, holy Boy, come and walk among us
once again.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And you've been listening to the story of Saint Patrick.
And of course, obviously we're telling this story because so
many Irish Americans call this country home. When we continue
more of Saint Patrick's story here on our American stories.
(09:39):
Continue with our American stories and the story of Saint Patrick.
Let's return to Greg Hangler and the rest of this
remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
After several years in the monasteries of France, Patrick was
ordained a bishop. Patrick told his church family and friends
he would be returning to Ireland, and they were shocked.
Don't you know what they'd do with slaves who run away.
Surely God would not require this from one who has
suffered so much already settled down here in peace. The
(10:14):
church leaders argued he was wasting his time. Those brutal
barbarians have no interest in God. Patrick told them. God
snatched me from my homeland and parents so that I
might know and love Him. It is in Ireland that
I wish to serve until I die, if the Lord
would grant it to me. So, Patrick, who was still
(10:37):
a fugitive in Ireland, set his feet to walk in
heart to share the Gospel message to the Irish everywhere.
Beginning in the year four thirty two. The pre Christian
Druids were a powerful force in fifth century Ireland. These
Celtic religious leaders were part of a pagan priesthood and
(10:57):
would be rivals to Patrick's ministry. The Druids hated him
for leading people away from their idols. They robbed, beat
imprisoned and tortured him. He was enslaved a third time
twelve times. His enemies nearly killed him, but always the
Lord rescued him.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
He sells his nobility, which I take to be a
reference to him selling essentially his inheritance. It's almost like
a form of seed funding which you will enable him
to get to Ireland. I imagine that Patrick's parents had
fully expected him to take on the role as maybe
(11:39):
the heir of the family, he would have.
Speaker 11 (11:44):
Been opting out of any responsibility for running his states, etc.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Here's Patrick, Alan Harper, Chris Seton, co author of New Celts,
and father Neil Carlin.
Speaker 6 (11:57):
It was not my grace God who conquered in me
and who resisted them all that I might come to
the Irish nations to preach the gospel.
Speaker 5 (12:14):
In terms of the challenge of it, it was just awesome.
He didn't know what he faced, possible death and persecution,
more slavery, imprisonment.
Speaker 9 (12:24):
He established his Great Stone Church on the Hilltop. The
site is strategically located on one of the main transportation
routes in Inland Ireland. That makes this an extremely significant
and important place from which to conduct your mission. And
you'll conducting your mission in territory which has not been
(12:47):
exposed to Christianity before.
Speaker 12 (12:50):
Patrick's approach seemed to do very much about confronting the
spirituality of paganism, but not condemning the culture in which
it bred.
Speaker 9 (13:02):
He used what was sacred to the people, but gave
it a new context, a fuller, richer context, which they
were able both to accommodate within their own understanding and
see a continuity of what had been dimly perceived in
the past through the coming of God into human experience.
Speaker 12 (13:26):
Patrick did break the mold of the church at that time,
being in that sense quite radically an outsider. I think that,
to me is an authentic pattern that resonates with the
New Testament. Think of John the bat, just think of Jesus.
They were not comfortable within the institutional structures of the church,
(13:50):
so much of church leadership was quite locked into an
earthly security, of worldly security, whereas what Patrick did was
completely counter intuitive to go to one of the more
wild and unwelcoming places. Patrick needed an awful lot of
conviction in his heart, but he did a lot of
(14:12):
fire in his blood to be able to do what
he did, which was effectively change in nation.
Speaker 9 (14:19):
I think one of the things that most interests me
about Patrick is that he came into what was a
situation of social difficulties and considerable conflict with a completely
revolutionary message which, yes he had to use local influence
(14:39):
to spread, but which transcended, totally transcended the circumstances of
the local divisions and disputes.
Speaker 13 (14:51):
It comes across from his ratings as a very humble man,
a man who knew is freely dark, and of hisself
as a as a great sinner. They called the saints
seem to do and I often think it's like you
come into the sun and you see the dust coming
through a beautiful window in their building. He didn't see
(15:12):
the dust before the sunlight shone through that light. I
don't think of the saints like that, because to you
and I they're not great sinners. But as they came
close to the great Light and are aware of the
Great God, they become more and more aware of their
sin and yet more and we're aware of God's mercy.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Patrick converted thousands to Christianity. He opposed slavers, Irish kings, druids,
and most of all, hostility from his fellow Christians. Here
again is doctor Tim Campbell.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
Patrick went a war, and we just don't know how
that all panned out. He said that he wanted to
spend the rest of his life in Ireland because that's
what God demanded, and therefore we got a guess that
he never did go back.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Patrick died of old age and was buried in northern
Ireland in the year four sixty one on March seventeenth,
the day we celebrate Saint Patrick's Day. Not long after
Patrick's death, the Roman Empire fell and Western Europe drifted
into the Middle Ages. But Patrick's work was not in vain.
Speaker 5 (16:26):
As Christianity established itself. As it became more vibrant, it
became known as the Land of Saints and Scholars, and
that led in turn to a whole proliferation of Christian
missionaries leaving Ireland and flooding continental Europe. Patrick's story began
a chain of events that is quite remarkable in the
(16:48):
impact that it had.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
He wore out many more pairs of sandals and death
than he did in life, and he's still going. People
are still reading his confession and still being interested in
Christianity because he wrote his message down here again is
Chris seton.
Speaker 12 (17:05):
The work of evangelism in Ireland, and the establishing of
those monastic houses contributed to a strong place of learning,
of culture and definitely, of course a strong place of
a spreadboard for evangelism, which down the line for the
re evangelization of Britain and mainland Europe.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
To this day, Patrick's works offer hope for religious reconciliation
in Ireland. Here's Harry Smith from Belfast, director of the
Christian Renewal Center.
Speaker 11 (17:41):
Patrick brought a Christianity that was pre Roman in that sense.
Speaker 12 (17:46):
You know.
Speaker 11 (17:47):
Therefore he produced everything that we would see in this
land as being Catholic or Protestant, and there in a
sense he's an anchor point for us, whether we're talking
about reconciliation in this land of something of a commonality.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
In closing, let us hear Patrick's final words.
Speaker 7 (18:05):
I pray for those who believe in and have reverence
for God.
Speaker 6 (18:12):
Some of them may come upon this writing which Patrick
Sinner wrote in Ireland. May none of them ever say
that whatever little I did or made known to please
God was done through ignorance. Instead, you can judge and believe.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
In all truth that it was a gift of God.
This is my confession before I die.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
I'm Greg Hengler, and from all of us here at
our American stories have a great Saint Patrick's day.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
And great job as always to Greg Hengler, and again
a special thanks to CBN Films for allowing us to
access their movie drama I am Patrick, and we'd also
like to thank the folks at Vision Video for giving
us access to footage of their film Patrick. Check out
the full documentary and nineteen hundred other titles of uplifting,
(19:13):
family friendly videos at vision video dot com. And my goodness,
he was an entrepreneur of sorts, going into a wild,
untamed land with a message that caused him to meet
enemies everywhere around him, converting thousands to his faith, but
in the end lots of enemies too. And those final words,
(19:34):
my goodness. I pray for those who believe in and
have reverence for God. May none of them ever say
that what I did to please God was not done
in ignorance, but to please him. Beautiful words, a beautiful story,
Patrick's story, Saint Patrick's story, and by the way that
he calls himself a sinner is something we can all,
(19:54):
all of us believers or not know that we're all flawed.
And what a beautiful story, what grace he found through
his God. A great story, a great Irish story, a
great human story. Here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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