St. Patrick of Ireland

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I am not a Catholic, but I long to be one day. I really am not real familar with alot of Catholic norms, so I may sound pretty silly about asking about St. Patrick. But I was just curious about how Catholics view St. Patrick. Do you view him as being genuine? Is St. Patricks day a day that is celebrated by Catholics?
 
yes, I believe that St. Patrick was a real person. But just like a lot of the early Saints there are a lot of legends about him. A made for TV movie was aired last year and this year too. I think it was very good.
Yes, I think Catholics venerate him. Unfortunately, many Irish and Catholics think honoring St. Patrick is to drink “green beer” on his feast day. In Ireland, it is a holy day of obligation.
 
Hi Copland. A very good question. St. Patrick did indeed exist. St. Patrick is credited with bring Christianty to Ireland in the 5th Century. He is that patron saint of Ireland.

We Americans of Irish decent commemorate St. Patrick’s Feast Day of March 17th as a celebration of our Irish Catholic heritage. Until recently St. Patrick’s Feast Day was not celebrated the same way as it has been here in America.

I’m sure our friend from Northern Ireland Hawkeye can fill us in on how the Irish keep St. Partick’s Feast Day.
🙂
 
Sure St. Patrick is real. Read How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Patrick Cahill.

JimG
 
****Naomh Pádraig / St. Patrick **
part one

Patrick** (Magonius Sucatus Patricius, Pádraig) (385-461), Patron saint of Ireland and one of the most beloved of all saints.

He was a Roman citizen, born in Roman Britain, near Bannavern Taburniae (an unknown location, but likely in the region of the lower Severn, in North Wales; close to the Welsh/Scottish border), the son of Calpernicus, a deacon, and a grandson of Potius, a priest (it was then not uncommon for a priest and or a deacon to be married) and his mother who was a Briton (Celtic) noblewoman.

Captured at the age of sixteen by Irish raiders, he was taken to Ireland and sold into slavery. He tended flocks in County Antrim (although tradition places him “beside the Wood of Voclut, which is near the Western Sea,” near Killala, in County Mayo). During the sixteen years he spent in servitude, he underwent a profound religious transformation, and in the summer of 407 was commanded in a dream to escape.

He journeyed some two hundred miles to board a ship transporting Irish wolfhounds to the Continent. Upon landing in Gaul, which was then under assault by the Germanic and Gothic hordes, Patrick came into the spiritual care of the monastic institutions of the region; one of his most notable teachers was St. Germanus of Auxerre.

He took to his training, making possible the fulfillment of his absolute longing for an Irish apostolate. As he himself noted, " The voice of the Irish…cry out as with one mouth: ‘We ask thee, boy, come and walk amongst us once more.’" In his “Confession,” he declares his vocation to be a mandate of the Divine and founded not upon human learning and so his preparation for a return to Ireland was a spiritual one.

He admitted freely his lack of learning, writing, “I blush and fear exceedingly to reveal my lack of education…” Nevertheless, he mastered the essentials of the faith and grew very familiar with Scripture, although scholars have long questioned where exactly his education was conducted. Some agree that he spent time in Gaul, but others prefer Britain as the place of his learning. Regardless of his length and location of learning. He proved a brilliant missionary.
 
Naomh Pádraig / St. Patrick
part two

He was not the first missionary bishop appointed to bring Christianity to the Irish. Palladius was named to the post in 431 by Pope Celestine I (r. 422-432), but he either died, or as seems likely, he met with little success and went to Scotland some time after 423. In his place was appointed Patrick, who was consecrated a bishop and sent to the Irish mission.

For the next twenty-nine years, he traveled across the five kingdoms of the island and won the conversion of virtually the whole of the Irish people. It is likely that in his later years he established Armagh as the primatial see of Ireland. He wrote before his death that, “Hence, did it come to pass in Ireland that those who never had a knowledge of God…have now been made a people of the Lord, and are called Sons of God…”

His two primary achievements were the promotion of a native clergy and the careful integration of Christian faith with native Irish-Celtic culture. He used a simple, sincere, biblical style of preaching that won both hearts and minds. Unfortunately, details of his life and labors are fraught with questions owing to the large body of legends, which sprung up about him and the general unreliability of the main source available, including the “Life of St. Patrick” by Muirchu, the “Irish Annals,” and the “Brevarium Tirecham.”

He himself was the author of “Confesio” ( a moving testimony of his personal faith) and the “Letter to Coroticus,” a troublesome chieftain.

Legends about him abound, perhaps the expulsion of the snakes from Ireland.

National holidays in his honor are held in numerous countries, including Ireland, the U.S.A., and even Russia. Feast day: Mar. 17.

Information: Our Sunday Visitor Encyclopedia of Saints; British Orthodoxy Website; Irish Catholicism - Roman and Celtic (Fr. O’Riordan); and others.

******Slán,

Donnchadha mag Eochadha, PsyD, AOH, KofC,
‘an t-Aithríoch’
 
Patrick did excist, he was a Welsh shepard boy as far as I know, he was a captive on a boat bound for Ireland (a slave) now I’m working from memory here but I think he escaped his captors.
Anyway he had a dream back in Wales to go to Ireland to preach to the pagans, druids, he did pick up a little plant from the sod to explain the Trinity, the Shamrock.http://www.irelandseye.com/paddy/images/shamrock.gif
We have a place named after him in Northern Ireland, DownPatrick, in County Down obvious, over in the west nearer to Belfast. Patrick is buried there.
Every Saint Patricks day people say " I wonder will Saint Patrick turn the stone" Apparently a druid was performing a pagan thing, and they did pray to the moon :whacky: and it rained.
Saint Parick rebuked him and lifted up a stone turned it over and the weather improved.
There is a mountain named after him down in the west coast of Ireland, called CroaghPatrick, in County Mayo, people climb it all the time in memory of Patrick.
I climbed it once, it took me 3 hours both ways, coming down was just as hard as going up, my legs where like jelly.
There is a Chapel on top of it, and I heard that ot took 3 years to build and the only way to get materials up there was by donkey, by another route.
Most of the Irish go to Mass and then in my town there is a parade, and all over Ireland, Dublin is the biggest parade here.
Unfortunately people do go to the bars after it and the call it drowning the Shamrock, it’s a break from lent as it occurs in the season of lent.
Whether it’s right or wrong for people to get blocked out of their heads at this time is not for me to say, but there are a lot of small bands that setup in bars and people do go and enjoy the music.
Anyway ironic or what ? but the biggest parade is in New York, ok that’s as much as I know.
croagh-patrick.com/thumb/aerial.jpgcr%between%oagh-patrick.com/
croagh-patrick.com/faq.html

croagh-patrick.com/thumb/walkers.jpg
croagh-patrick.com/faq.html

anu.ie/reek/virtual.html

irelandseye.com/paddy/croagh_pat.html

visitdownpatrick.com/
 
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