St. Patrick’s Day is famous for wearing green and lifting a Guinness while toasting to health: “Sláinte!” (Listen to the pronunciation of sláinte). There are many wonderful traditions and legends surrounding this holiday, but St. Patrick was a real bishop with remarkable accomplishments in Catholic history.

St. Patrick

St. Patrick was born in Roman Britain around 385 A.D. At age sixteen, he was captured by Irish pirates and kept as a slave for six years. It was during this time that he experienced a religious conversion and became Christian. Eventually, he escaped, found his family again, and studied for the priesthood. He returned to Ireland as a missionary after having a recurring dream in which the children of Ireland cried out to him, “Come and walk among us once more.”



The Shamrock and the Trinity

St. Patrick succeeded in converting the Celts to Christianity around 431 A.D. It was the only peaceful conversion of a pagan people. He pointed out the similarities between Christianity and Celtic spirituality, and taught the Celts about the one true God. It is believed that St. Patrick used the shamrock to teach the Irish about the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg

A pilgrimage shrine for St. Patrick is located in Ireland in Lough Derg. This cave is called St. Patrick’s Purgatory. According to The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, by Brian Singer-Towns, legend has it that St. Patrick would take sinners on a three-day retreat, which included fasting and sacramental reconciliation, to the cave “to see the pain and suffering of the souls in purgatory, and thus warn of the evils of sin and the dangers of procrastinating about repentance and reparation.”

St. Patrick and Snakes in Ireland

Another popular legend tells of how St. Patrick drove all of the snakes out of Ireland. To this day, there are no snakes in Ireland, but that most likely stems from the fact that Ireland is surrounded by cold ocean waters that would prevent snakes from migrating to the Emerald Isle.

In his March 16, 2009 National Geographic article, “St. Patrick’s Day Facts: Snakes, a Slave, and a Saint,” John Roach featured Luther College classics professor and author of St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography, Philip Freeman. Roach noted, “Since snakes often represent evil in literature, ‘when Patrick drives the snakes out of Ireland, it is symbolically saying he drove the old, evil, pagan ways out of Ireland [and] brought in a new age,’ Freeman said.”

Bishop and Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, died on March 17, 461 in Down, Ireland.

Saint Patrick’s Breastplate: My Breastplate (”Lorica”) of St. Patrick

“[The Lorica] includes the following verses offered when [St. Patrick] presented himself before the Druids at Tara,” wrote Singer-Towns.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me;
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ in breadth,
Christ in length,
Christ in height,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me,
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the Threeness,
Through confession of the Oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

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