Patrick!

I have recently read a psalm that called to mind a date in March, that reminded me of a singular, passionate teenager in old Ireland and his radical conversion to Christ, his irresistible calling to mission, and the evangelistic movement that followed him and reached across a continent.

Patrick (ca. 385-461) was sixteen years old, we are told, when a band of Irish pirates stormed his village in Britain and carried him away to Ireland. He spent the remainder of his teenage years in slavery. [1]

We know very little of these difficult years. They were not so pleasant, I think.

Patrick was born into privilege, the scion of an aristocratic, land-owning family. Perhaps this is why he was targeted. His captors set him to work as a shepherd, Patrick later reported. But God set to work as well. “God worked powerfully in Patrick’s suffering to remake him from the inside out. He freed Patrick from dependence on wealth and his place in society. God rescued Patrick from himself and made his heart captive to the love of Christ.” [2]

Patrick remained a captive, it seems, for six odd years. In his early twenties – maybe he was 22 – he found an opportunity to escape and took it. He returned to his homeland in Britain, now a committed Christian, captive only to the love Christ.

Yet in spite of the comfort that surrounded him again and the inheritance that awaited, Patrick found no peace. He felt himself deeply burdened for the Irish pirates who once held him captive – and indeed for the entire Irish nation. Soon he was plotting his way back again to Ireland, now as an ambassador for Jesus Christ. “The shepherd-boy slave had become the slave of Christ and apostle to Ireland.” [3]

In the middle of March every year we celebrate his story. St. Patrick’s Day falls on March 17.

A psalm, as I say, brought all of this into view. I am thinking of Psalm 84 – and verse 5 in particular.

“Happy are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.”

It was the idea of pilgrimage that caught my attention especially, and made me think of Patrick. The parallel halves of this verse illuminate the meaning of “strength in the Lord” – and it does not mean what we might have thought. It is not about bulwarks or citadels, chariots or armies, carefully laid defenses, aristocracies or wealthy inheritance. It is about “setting one’s heart on pilgrimage.” It is about moving on, pressing forward, diving in, and engaging risk. It is about undertaking the journey, as pilgrims do, while the destination remains beyond the horizon. It is about “setting one’s heart” on things like these. Not on walls and parapets. But on the road.

This was certainly true of Patrick. He called himself a “pilgrim,” in fact. And the young people that followed him (they were mostly young people), he called the “peregrini.” Patrick sent them into the whole wide world to “go pilgrimage for Christ.” And so they did! The pilgrims carried the gospel (or, better put, were carried by it) across the British Isles, onto the mainland and across the continent. They became a mobile, flexible, radically contextual, Scripture-fueled, white-hot missionary movement. They became the most significant missionary movement of their day – and for centuries to come.

It seems so counterintuitive.

Patrick himself was an inexperienced youth, uneducated and poor. Through much of his life, the bishops of the Roman church held him in disdain. He was too untraditional. He didn’t do Latin very well. He didn’t do churchiness, either. And he seemed too friendly with the Celtic unbelievers he yearned to evangelize. This was a threat to the church of his day: he wanted to evangelize the Celts – not to Romanize them.

Yet Patrick knew Jesus.

Patrick’s strength did not come from playing it safe or settling down. It came from “a heart set on pilgrimage” – risking it all for the One who rescued him, that he might be used to rescue others. “I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught,” he wrote in his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, “yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that ‘all that I am,’ I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God. He himself testifies that this is so.” [4]

So when March 17 rolls around this year, maybe you will want to think about Patrick. But don’t be content with things Irish or green. Read Psalm 84. Think about strength in the Lord. And set your heart on pilgrimage.