Every St. Patrick's Day, some people insist on repeating "surprising" facts about Ireland's patron saint. One of the most common is: "Did you know St. Patrick wasn't Irish? He was English!"
I wince whenever I hear this, not only because there were no "English" back in Patrick's day, but also because part of the reason Patrick is a saint is that he became Irish. In Ireland, he took up the Christian struggle between two biblical injunctions: "do not conform yourself to the world" and "go therefore into the world."
Patrick knew he wasn't from Ireland, as we can see in both his Confessionsand in his condemnation of slavery The Letter to Coroticus: "I am a stranger and an exile living among barbarians and pagans." But he wasn't just a stranger and exile when he wrote these words. He was a man in love with the Irish people. Moreover, this love wasn't blind. He had experienced the cruelty of the Irish pagans as a child slave. Yet he returned to live as a stranger among them "because God cares for the Irish." He returned to preach because he loved the gospel, but also because he loved those people, at that time, and in that place. And in loving them, he became one of them.
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