By Joseph L. Campos, Jr.
The holiday of St. Patrick’s Day may have come and gone, and many around Orange County did what they probably always do year after year to celebrate the occasion like gather up food, plan parties and festivals, and of course gather up booze to usher in the Irish festivities. Still, many people within today’s modern society do not even understand, know, or remember the true purpose, and meaning of the sacred Christian holiday.
The true origins of St. Patrick’s Day trace back to the man himself, who was born in 385 A.D. His name was Patricius Maewyn Succat. The name Patricius is ancient Latin for our modern English name of Patrick. The reason for this is because Patrick was actually born in Great Britain, not Ireland. Patrick’s last name, Succat, means “warrior-like.” Britain was militarily occupied by the Romans back then. Patrick was born into a very devout Christian family, and came from a long line of preachers. Both his grandfather and his own father were lead pastors within a local church.
One day while playing by the beach by himself, a 16-year-old Patrick was captured and kidnapped by pirates. These pirates turned out to be druid devil worshipers. They would take Patrick and other captured children to Northeastern Ireland, where they were forced into torture, manual labor, and even brutally killed or sacrificed. The druids held Patrick captive as their slave for a total of six years, and had him work mostly in their farming fields, and shepherding their animals in their great green grassy plains. They would further torture the young Patrick and would force him to even work in horrible conditions like strong winds and icy rain for hours on end. During this time Patrick grew stronger in his Christian faith, and would rely on it for survival. He also learned the ancient Irish language of Gaelic. This is best exemplified within Patrick’s personal memoir entitled “The Confession,” which reads, “The love of God and His fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was rosed, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same. I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow, or ice, or rain.”
One night while still trapped in a jail cell under the druids’ rule, a strange light appeared before him. Out of this light, Jesus Christ stepped and specifically told him to, “run to the edge of the island, I have prepared an escape for you. There will be a ship ready. It is time for you to go home.” After this encounter with God Himself, Patrick wound up fighting off some prison guards that night. He snatched away one of their key-rings and escaped the prison camp. He ran through 200 miles of wild wilderness until he got to the edge of the foreign Emerald Isle. There he recognized the loading dock by the ocean where he had been dropped off as a slave. Patrick climbed down the edge of the cliff down to the beach site, and hijacked one of the druid ships, and sailed back to Britain. Jesus Christ had finally answered his prayers! “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).
Patrick finally crash landed in Britain, and would eventually find his family. He was obviously no longer a teenager, but a grown man. He learned more about his faith in Jesus Christ from his grandfather and father. A few years later, Patrick was officially ordained as a pastor. After this crowning achievement, Patrick was visited again by Jesus Christ in a divine apparition. Christ commanded Patrick to fulfill The Great Commission of spreading the holy gospel to all nations on earth. Patrick’s portion of helping other saints was for him to sail back to Ireland, the place of his enslavement, and get redemption by ridding the country of its lucifarian governmental rule under the druids, and freeing the slaves who were still trapped there. His other objective was to Christianize the nation itself, and rid it of druid Satanism.
So after this divine encounter with God, Patrick packed his things and set off by ship to Ireland behind enemy lines once again. Patrick crash landed on the Emerald Isle, and explored the forests and great grassy plains of the European nation primarily in its northern and western regions. Patrick was not only a great Christian preacher, but a great warrior as well. He did as Christ ordered him to do, and freed the slaves in Ireland. He would fight off the druids and would force them to the ocean, thus ridding the island of them through wars, rebellions, and uprisings.
He would preach, and convince not only the slaves he had liberated to come to believe in Christ, but also lower and middle class peasant druids that had no choice but to follow the satanic religion of the elites who ran their country at the time. Conveniently, the kings and queens of the druid kingdoms would never offer up their own sons and daughters as satanic blood sacrifices, but only the children of their serfs and peasants. Therefore, thousands of these druid peasants jumped at the chance to learn the holy gospel as an alternative to the brutal druid pagan religion.
Patrick later taught the fellow slaves he had liberated, and the converted druid peasants, about the Holy Trinity of the Gospel by utilizing a lucky traditional Irish plant called the three-leaved clover. The main idea was to illustrate them in a visual effort a more simpler teaching, and example of the Father being at the top, the Son being at the basis or stem, and the Holy Ghost or sacred dove with its wings outstretched wide from each pillar’s leaves’ side from right to left.
Patrick also explained to them also that Christianity is a monotheistic religion meaning that they serve only one God and is not a polytheistic religion, a religion that serves multiple gods.
Over the next 40 years, Patrick would convert and baptize thousands of liberated slaves and druid peasants. He would build them hundreds of churches, schools, and other infrastructure. Patrick would also establish law and order within Ireland under the Ten Commandments of the Holy Bible, along with appointing hundreds of new pastors, bishops, and deacons to help establish new Christian jurisdictions within the country. He helped to establish better and safer communities and law enforcement. Patrick spearheaded the effort of turning Ireland into a more modernized western European society.
St. Patrick passed away on March 17, 493, at the age of 108, and was buried beneath the Holy Ground of Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, Ireland. The Irish people then placed his name amongst other great Irish Patron Saints like St. Columba and St. Brigid. He would leave behind a legacy of piety, generosity, charity, humility, and the never-ending thirst to uphold justice. Eventually a Catholic priest from the Franciscan Order named Luke Wadding fought in the Vatican to push for St. Patrick to get his very own Holy Feast Day and holiday. His dream was realized in the 17th century when the holiday was made official. Now St. Patrick’s Day is officially recognized and is celebrated by various different types of Christians around the world. Many different groups unite to celebrate the Holy Day as devout brothers and sisters.
With this being said, St. Patrick’s Day is more than what we have made it today. it is a valuable day that is supposed to represent the fact that with faith in Jesus Christ, patience, perseverance, determination, and the tenacity for redemption, any man or woman can go out into the world and make a difference when it comes to fighting for what is truly right.
