Lucky?--An Essay

Here is a miniature essay I wrote recently in honor of today. (If you are not wearing green, give yourself a pinch for me! ;) )

“Lucky” is a word you often hear on Saint Patrick’s Day but I doubt that Patrick himself would have appreciated it. Kidnapped from his home in Great Britain and taken to Ireland to serve as a slave is not my definition of “lucky”. I think the 16 year old Patrick would agree. He had grown up in a religious family but until he was left alone in the Celtic country side to herd sheep he did not have his own love for God. Not much is really know about Ireland’s patron saint except that sometime, during these hard six years he met the Lord. After escaping and returning to England the young man became an ordained bishop and returned to the land of his slavery as a missionary. His life there was still not comfortable. The superstitious Irish, he was beaten, robbed, put in prison. Reportedly Patrick used the three leaved shamrock to illustrate the Trinity. He did eventually make some converts but when he died his memory was soon forgotten. Years after his death he was made a “saint” and began to be honored in many ways. One of these was in dedicating a holiday to him which is celebrated on March 17 in remembrance of the traditional day of his death. I think, if Patrick were alive today, he would be disappointed to find us celebrating magic, leprechauns, three leaved clovers and all the other things so commonly associated with the holiday. He would wish the true story to be put forth; the story of what he was beaten, robbed, and imprisoned for: the story of the One, fully God and fully man, who came to earth and died so that we might go to heaven and live.  Lucky? I don’t think so. Blessed with infinite and unfathomable grace? Now that is more like it.