THE CONFESSION OF SAINT PATRICK

ALL PRAISE TO SAINT PATRICK

I decided  to honor the  Great saint's special day by looking up and  reporting Saint Patrick's actual words written and  published in his life time.  Thanks to the Royal Irish Academy and the scholar David Kelly I found ONLINE the amazing CONFESSION that Patrick wrote in his old age.

Patrick was a tumultuous man who lived in tumultuous times. His experience of slavery, from which  few escaped alive, marked him deeply and turned him naked and  hungry back to God. In a time of married clergy Patrick's father was a deacon and his grandfather was a priest. They were upper class Roman-Britons living under the  protection of Rome. Patrick's childhood had been an indulged one in a wealthy and privileged house hold. His capture by slavers off the coast of England, and his years of enslavement in  Ireland  hit him with the reality of the lives of others around him. He was especially shocked by the  abuse of female slaves, and when he escaped and regained the protection of his family, he decided  not to remain with them. Instead he vowed to return to Ireland and help the Irish.
Fifteen hundred years later the Irish wherever they are on the globe express their gratitude and love of the Saint who never abandoned them.

Patrick’s Confessio

The Latin term confessio can be understood in three basic ways within the Christian tradition — confessio peccatorum (confession of sins), confessio fidei (confession or testimony of faith), and confessio laudis (confession of praise) — and a perusal of Patrick’s writing reveals the presence of all three of these modes.

 The opening line of the Confessio  announces who the writer is and how he evaluates himself

 Ego Patricius peccator rusticissimus (C 1), ‘My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person.’ Referring to his slavery in Ireland and his lack of faith at the time, he says: ‘It was there that the Lord opened up my awareness of my lack of faith. Even though it came about late, I recognised my failings. So I turned with all my heart to the Lord my God’ (C 2)

"For that reason, I give thanks to the one who strengthened me in all things, so that he would not impede me in the course I had undertaken and from the works also which I had learned from Christ my Lord. Rather, I sensed in myself no little strength from him, and my faith passed the test before God and people. (C 30)"

"I am greatly in debt to God. He gave me such great grace, that through me, many people should be born again in God and brought to full life. Also that clerics should be ordained everywhere for this people who have lately come to believe, and who the Lord has taken from the ends of the Earth. (C 38)"

"One time I was put to the test by some superiors of mine. They came and put my sins against my hard work as a bishop. (C 26)"

The charge brought against Patrick referred to something which had happened in his past and which had been disclosed through a betrayal of confidence on the part of a close friend:

"They brought up against me after thirty years something I had already confessed before I was a deacon. What happened was that, one day when I was feeling anxious and low, with a very dear friend of mine I referred to some things I had done one day — rather, in one hour — when I was young, before I overcame my weakness. I don’t know — God knows — whether I was then fifteen years old at the time, and I did not then believe in the living God, not even when I was a child. In fact, I remained in death and unbelief until I was reproved strongly, and actually brought low by hunger and nakedness daily. (C 27)"

Patrick felt the pain of his friend’s betrayal long afterwards, and the memory of it was still fresh with him as he wrote his Confessio:

"But I grieve more for my very dear friend, that we had to hear such an account — the one to whom I entrusted my very soul. I did learn from some brothers before the case was heard that he came to my defence in my absence. I was not there at the time, not even in Britain, and it was not I who brought up the matter. In fact it was he himself who told me from his own mouth: ‛Look, you are being given the rank of bishop’. That is something I did not deserve. How could he then afterwards come to disgrace me in public before all, both good and bad, about a matter for which he had already freely and joyfully forgiven me, as indeed had God, who is greater than all? (C 32)"

Patrick was conscious of his own shortcomings in undertaking the task of writing the testimony of faith that is his Confessio, but his dogged perseverance and trust in God’s help kept him going and emboldened him to proclaim what the Lord had done for him:

"So I am first of all a simple country person, a refugee, and unlearned. I do not know how to provide for the future. But this I know for certain, that before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure. (C 12)"

 Patrick is convinced that his humiliations have been the fertile seed-ground for the effective working of God’s grace in his life. He goes on to challenge his critics in these words:

"So be amazed, all you people great and small who fear God! You well-educated people in authority, listen and examine this carefully. Who was it who called one as foolish as I am from the middle of those who are seen to be wise and experienced in law and powerful in speech and in everything? If I am most looked down upon, yet he inspired me, before others, so that I would faithfully serve the nations with awe and reverence and without blame: the nations to whom the love of Christ brought me. His gift was that I would spend my life, if I were worthy of it, to serving them in truth and with humility to the end. (C 13)"

"In the knowledge of this faith in the Trinity, and without letting the dangers prevent it, it is right to make known the gift of God and his eternal consolation. It is right to spread abroad the name of God faithfully and without fear, so that even after my death I may leave something of value to the many thousands of my brothers and sisters — the children whom I baptised in the Lord. I didn’t deserve at all that the Lord would grant such great grace, after hardships and troubles, after captivity, and after so many years among that people. It was something which, when I was young, I never hoped for or even thought of. (C 14-15)

This spiritual journey upon which Patrick embarked provided the inner strength for his mission to Ireland. It was a mission that had its difficulties, as Patrick makes clear:

"It was not by my own grace, but God who overcame it in me, and resisted them all so that I could come to the peoples of Ireland to preach the gospel. I bore insults from unbelievers, so that I would hear the hatred directed at me for travelling here. I bore many persecutions, even chains, so that I could give up my freeborn state for the sake of others. If I be worthy, I am ready even to give up my life most willingly here and now for his name. It is there that I wish to spend my life until I die, if the Lord should grant it to me. (C 37)"

Although Patrick uses the verb ‘to confess’ (confiteri) a number of times in the opening sections of his Confessio, it is only towards the end that he employs a form of that actual noun:

"Again and again I briefly put before you the words of my confession (confessionis). I testify in truth and in great joy of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason for returning to that nation from which I had earlier escaped, except the gospel and God’s promises. (C 61)"

His closing request at the end of his Confessio appeals to those who believe and revere God:

"I pray for those who believe in and have reverence for God. Some of them may happen to inspect or come upon this writing which Patrick, a sinner without learning, wrote in Ireland. May none of them ever say that whatever little I did or made known to please God was done through ignorance. Instead, you can judge and believe in all truth that it was a gift of God. This is my confession before I die. (C 62)"
I cannot convey to you how profoundly  I was moved to discover that Saint Patrick left behind  this CONFESSION in his own words in his old age. 
 How blessed we are to have these words echoing down the centuries.They should be read from every pulpit.No wonder that SAINT PATRICK is a Saint recognized by both  the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church. He is a Universal Missionary and  a slave who returned to the scene of his own  enslavement to free those who had enslaved him.WHAT A WONDER WORKER
I am left wanting to sing out loud that hymn the nuns taught us:
All praise to Saint Patrick,
who brought to our mountains
The gift of God's faith,
the sweet light of His love.
All praise to the Shepherd
who showed us the fountains
That rise in the Heart
of the Saviour above.
For hundreds of years,
In smiles and in tears,
Our Saint hath been with us,
our shield and our stay;
All else may have gone,
Saint Patrick alone.
He hath been to us light,
when earth's lights were all set,
For the glories of faith
they can never decay,
And the best of our glories
is bright with us yet,
in the faith and the feast
of Saint Patrick's day.