The man we know
today as St. Patrick was born in Britain in the late 300s, about the time that
the Roman Empire was constricting and Britain was being abandoned. He was born
into a landowning if not noble or upper class family living in northwestern
Britain, not far from Hadrian’s Wall. We know he had a sister. And we know that
when he was 16, raiders swooped in and carried him and others off, eventually
selling him into slavery in what is now Ireland.
Only two of his
writings have survived. One is the Epistle
to Coroticus, written to a British chieftain and his subjects, seeking the
release of Christians they had captured. The other is his Confessions, which explain, in his own words, how God favored him
and used him to accomplish God’s work. We have a biography said to be written
by one of Patrick’s converts, but created some 200 years after Patrick. Other
than those documents, we have a wealth of myth and legend about the saint, some
of which may be true and some not (Patrick himself makes no mention of driving
the makes out of Ireland).
Wyatt North Publishing prints a whole
series of short works on both Catholic and Protestant subjects, including
Mother Teresa, St. Anthony, Pope Francis, C.S. Lewis, the life and times of
Jesus, and other subjects. In a succinct publication, St.
Patrick: His Life and Prayers separates what we know and what we don’t
know about the saint. But it’s not necessarily “scientific” to dismiss the
myths and legends; some of them are likely to founded in some fact or facts,
while others are likely to have been derived from an oral storytelling
tradition.
This volume by
Wyatt North also includes three of St. Patrick’s prayers, “The Prayer for the
Faithful,” “The Prayer for God’s Protection and Christ’s Presence,” and the “Lorica
of St. Patrick,” a kind of adoration to begin each day.
St. Patrick is an easy-to-read, short summary introducing
us to the saint, his life, and what he accomplished.
Top photograph: A stained glass panel of
St. Patrick at Christ the Light Cathedral, Oakland, California.
1 comment:
St Patrick portrait in stained glass looks so good. I bet this will look a lot better with stained glass restoration. It`s not that pricey and you always can try to do it by yourself
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