A young slave in Ireland was sleeping by his sheep when a voice came to him in a dream, “Very soon you will return to your native country.” Again, a voice said, “Look, your ship is ready.” So the sovereign God prepared a 22-year-old man named Patrick for a lifetime of ministry among his former captors. Patrick, who described himself as “a sinner without learning,” “a simple country person,” and “the least of all believers,” left a legacy that has arguably brought more people to Christ than any Christian since Paul. Yet it all started rather inauspiciously.

Early Life

Patrick grew up in Roman Britain, in a hamlet named Bannavem Taburniae (location unknown). Patrick’s father was a church deacon, but that outward form of religion was lacking in spiritual power, at least in the life of young Patrick.

Patrick was near his home when Irish raiders struck, “and that is where I was taken prisoner,” he later wrote. “I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments.”

This sudden captivity abruptly interrupted Patrick’s education. Patrick always felt embarrassed by his lack of learning. When, at the end of his life, he felt compelled to finally put pen to paper in his brief “Confessions” (only 62 paragraphs long, and somewhat disorganized), Patrick admitted, “today, I blush and am afraid to expose my lack of experience, because I can’t express myself with the brief words I would like in my heart and soul.” He added, “my speech and words have been translated into a foreign language [Latin], as it can be easily seen from my writings the standard of the instruction and learning I have had.”

But God does not need an Ivy Leaguer to accomplish his purposes. Patrick knew one book, Holy Scripture, and that living document stirred a fire in his soul that no amount of opposition could quench.

Conversion and Escape

Even before he learned much Scripture, Patrick saw the first sparks of religion flame up during his captivity. “After I arrived in Ireland, I tended sheep every day, and I prayed frequently during the day,” he recalled. “More and more the love of God increased, and my sense of awe before God. Faith grew, and my spirit was moved, so that in one day I would pray up to one hundred times, and at night perhaps the same. I even remained in the woods and on the mountain, and I would rise to pray before dawn in snow and ice and rain. I never felt the worse for it, and I never felt lazy — as I realize now, the spirit was burning in me at that time.”

It was in this season of fervent prayer that Patrick received the message in a dream that his ship was ready. “It was not nearby, but a good two hundred miles away. I had never been to the place, nor did I know anyone there. So I ran away then, and left the man with whom I had been for six years,” wrote Patrick. “It was in the strength of God that I went — God who turned the direction of my life to good; I feared nothing while I was on the journey to that ship.”

But escaping slavery was not as smooth as all that. “The day I arrived, the ship was about to leave the place,” Patrick narrated. “I said I needed to set sail with them, but the captain was not at all pleased. He replied unpleasantly and angrily: ‘Don’t you dare try to come with us.’” Perhaps he did not wish to be chased down by Irish pirates.

“When I heard that, I left them and went back to the hut where I had lodgings,” Patrick continued. “I began to pray while I was going; and before I even finished the prayer, I heard one of them shout aloud at me: ‘Come quickly – those men are calling you!’”

Sometimes, God turns a heart in an instant. He could have prepared the captain’s heart before Patrick arrived, but the way it actually happened kept Patrick dependent on God in prayer.

Even then, Patrick’s troubles were far from over. “After three days we made it to land, and then for twenty-eight days we travelled through a wilderness,” he recalled. Here Patrick’s storytelling leaves questions unanswered. Where in the British Isles could this ship have landed, where sailors could land and walk for four whole weeks without reaching civilization? It takes about two weeks to walk across the entire island from west to east.

Whatever the details, Patrick and the pagan sailors who rescued him were in desperate straits. “Food ran out, and great hunger came over them. The captain turned to me and said: ‘What about this, Christian? You tell us that your God is great and all-powerful — why can’t you pray for us, since we’re in a bad state with hunger? There’s no sign of us finding a human being anywhere!’” Evidently, Patrick had already begun evangelizing, even among his pagan traveling companions.

Patrick told the men to pray for food, and “A herd of pigs appeared in the way before our eyes!”

Call to Ireland

After much wandering, Patrick finally returned home to parents who were quite glad to see him. “They pleaded with me that, after all the many tribulations I had undergone, I should never leave them again,” Patrick said, but this was not to be.

Much like Paul receiving a vision of the Macedonian (Acts 16:9), Patrick received a vision of an Irishman. “I saw, in a vision in the night, a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it were from Ireland with so many letters they could not be counted,” he recalled. “He gave me one of these, and I read the beginning of the letter, the voice of the Irish people. While I was reading out the beginning of the letter, I thought I heard at that moment the voice of those who were beside the wood of Voclut, near the western sea. They called out as it were with one voice: “We beg you, holy boy, to come and walk again among us.”

And so, Patrick returned to Ireland. Details are sketchy; Patrick does not describe how or when he went, or what preparations he made. In fact, history has not even recorded the exact dates of Patrick’s life (sometime from the late fifth century to early sixth century). A later reference to a desire “to go to Gaul to visit the brothers” suggests that Patrick may have traveled to modern-day France, perhaps to receive theological training in a monastery there.

However it happened, Patrick left Britain for Ireland, and he never returned. “I could wish to leave them [the Irish] to go to Britain. I would willingly do this, and am prepared for this, as if to visit my home country and my parents,” he reflected. “God knows what I would dearly like to do. But I am bound in the Spirit, who assures me that if I were to do this, I would be held guilty. And I fear, also, to lose the work which I began.”

What powerful inner conviction Patrick felt, that he would not even leave the mission field to take a sabbatical or visit his family. The work was too important and too delicate.

Opposition

For Patrick faced widespread opposition in Ireland. He mentioned “twelve dangers which threatened my life,” but omits the details, wrongly afraid that they would bore the reader. To gain the freedom to preach the gospel among the various Irish tribes, Patrick had to pay a fee (one might call it a bribe, or extortion money) to the local chieftains. He estimated that “I gave out not less than the price of fifteen persons” in this way, another reference to the prevalence of slavery in that pagan land. “I’m not sorry I did it, nor was it even enough for me. I still spend, and will spend more. The Lord is powerful, and he can grant me still to spend my very self for the sake of your souls (a possible allusion to 2 Corinthians 12:15).

Patrick did briefly describe two other imprisonments. During his account of his first escape, he interjected, “It happened again after many years that I was taken a prisoner. On the first night I was with them, I heard a divine answer saying to me: ‘You will be with them for two months.’ This is how it was: on the sixtieth night, the Lord freed me from their hands.”

Later, he related that one Irish chieftain “took me and my companions prisoner” despite the fees he paid, “and very much wanted to kill me, but the time had not yet come. They stole everything they found in our possession, and they bound me in iron. On the fourteenth day, the Lord set me free from their power; all our possessions were returned to us for God’s sake, and for the sake of the close friendship we had had previously.”

What other adventures might be told of Patrick’s life, which this zealous servant of God was too humble to include? They are lost to history, known only to himself, the other participants, and God.

In addition to the expected opposition from pagans in Ireland, Patrick’s mission also faced opposition from professed Christians in Britain. “There were many who forbade this mission. They even told stories among themselves behind my back, and they said: ‘Why does he put himself in danger among hostile people who do not know God?’” Patrick described gifts being offered to him to induce him to stay. “But, with God guiding me, I did not consent nor acquiesce to them,” Patrick wrote. “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.”

Even after Patrick traveled to Ireland, he faced further opposition from Britain, and of a most painful type. A dear friend, “one to whom I entrusted my very soul,” betrayed a confidence, and Patrick’s religious superiors confronted him with some sin (which he does not name) which he had committed before his conversion, decades earlier.

“They came and put my sins against my hard work as a bishop,” he said. “This hit me very hard, so much so that it seemed I was about to fall, both here and in eternity. But the Lord in his kindness spared the converts and the strangers for the sake of his name, and strongly supported me when I was so badly treated. I did not slip into sin and disgrace. … My defense was that I remained on in Ireland, and that not of my own choosing, until I almost perished.”

Missions

In the face of so much opposition, what motivated Patrick to keep going? He articulated two reasons: God’s word and God’s grace.

First, Patrick’s rationale for evangelizing the Irish cited Scripture repeatedly. “It is right that we should fish well and diligently, as the Lord directs and teaches when he says: ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’ [Matthew 4:19],” he wrote. “And again, he says through the prophets: ‘Behold, I send many fishers and hunters, says God’ [Jeremiah 16:16], and other such sayings. Therefore, it is very right that we should cast our nets, so that a great multitude and crowd will be taken for God.”

Scripture calls not only for preachers, but “also that there should be clerics to baptize and encourage a people in need and want,” Patrick continued. “This is what the Lord says in the gospel: he warns and teaches in these words: ‘Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the age’ [Matthew 28:19-20].”

In the same paragraph, Patrick also quoted Mark 16:15-16 (evidently his Bible included this later addition to the text), Matthew 24:14, Acts 2:17-18, and Romans 9:25-26. Each passage speaks of the gospel going forth to all nations before Christ returns. Patrick’s point in piling up text after text was likely to convince a skeptical audience in late Roman Britain that his mission to Ireland was just what God had intended.

Beyond this biblical support, Patrick also felt a deep personal obligation to evangelism, based in God’s grace. “He guarded me before I knew him, and before I came to wisdom and could distinguish between good and evil. He protected me and consoled me as a father does for his son,” Patrick wrote. “That is why I cannot be silent — nor would it be good to do so — about such great blessings and such a gift that the Lord so kindly bestowed in the land of my captivity. This is how we can repay such blessings, when our lives change and we come to know God, to praise and bear witness to his great wonders before every nation under heaven.”

Later, Patrick repeated the same sentiment, “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.”

These words clearly communicate the vitality of Patrick’s Christian faith, and they underscore the zeal with which Patrick bucked the apathetic, “cultural” Christianity of his homeland.

Legacy

In this, Patrick remains a model for Christians today. How many Christians can claim to have such spiritual fervor, such zeal for saving the lost? If we lack it, and we want it — here I exhort myself as well — we cannot do better than to begin where Patrick did, with constant prayer informed by a deep dependence on God.

Patrick did prove to be a model. His missionary labors in Ireland produced a distinctive strain of Celtic Christianity that always maintained an urge to evangelize. When much of the Western Roman empire was invaded by pagan barbarian tribes, Celtic Christians were among the missionaries who re-evangelized Britain, Gaul, and the Rhineland.

Celtic Christianity eventually established contact and blended together with other strains, but the emphasis on missions that began with Patrick remained a part of the heritage of Christianity in Great Britain, where it eventually birthed the Modern Missions Movement and carried the gospel to the other side of the globe.

Such a legacy would startle Patrick, if he were alive to see it. “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,” he reflected. His desire simply was, “If I have ever imitated anything good for the sake of my God whom I love, I ask that he grant me to be able to shed my blood with these converts and captives — even were I to lack a grave for burial, or my dead body were to be miserably torn apart limb from limb by dogs or wild beasts, or were the birds of heaven to devour it.”

“I declare with certainty that, if this were to happen, I would have gained both my soul and my body,” Patrick professed. “There is no doubt whatever that we will rise on the appointed day in the brightness of the sun, that is, in the glory of Christ Jesus our Redeemer. We shall be like children of the living God and co-heirs of Christ and to be fashioned in his image, since it is from him and through him and in him that we are to reign.”