The Example Set By St. Patrick

Dear Readers, I have recently been reading and discussing with a few others at my church the book ZEALOT. It was a best-seller of 15 or so years back written by Reza Aslan, a professor and sociologist-historian specializing in religion. The book examines the two centuries on either side of the birth of Jesus, in trying to decipher what the actual life of Jesus in Gallilee and Judea must have been like. (Aslan says he is trying to examine the life of “Jesus the Man” instead of “Jesus Christ, Messiah.”) I highly recommend the book for its insights into the political and social pressures of those times, for its insights about who Jesus was and how He understood Himself, and also for its remarkable documentation and ease of reading for lay people like me. In any case, the book has piqued my interest again in what was going on in the early church, and where all those apostles went whom Jesus sent out with his command to “make disciples of all nations,” resulting in a very rapid growth of this religion into almost all regions of the world (as known by the Roman Empire at least).

We will commemorate the life of St. Patrick, an early Christian missionary, on March 17. Scholars are pretty certain that St. Patrick, though not one of the original apostles, was already converting pagans to Christianity in Ireland in the late 300s or early 400s AD. In his own autobiographical writings, Patrick says he was born into a Christian family with its origins in Rome, but spent his childhood living in a Roman military town on the coast of Britain. There he was kidnapped into slavery by a group of pirates who took him to what is now Ireland, and after being freed several years later, he became a fervent believer in Christianity and studied for the priesthood, so he could be a missionary to the Irish.

What of the earlier diaspora of the original apostles, into the world beyond Palestine/Judea? Where did all those earlier missionaries preach? Based on the writings of St. Hippolytus, a church leader whose life spanned the 100s and 200s AD, Paul worked in Greece, Italy, and Spain; Peter focused on what is now Turkey in Asia Minor and ended in Rome where he was crucified; Thomas roamed from Asia Minor all the way to India, where he was martyred, perhaps at times in company with Bartholomew, who is also said to have preached in India, but was crucified and is buried at Parthia, now in southern Turkmenistan. Matthew is supposed to have reached Spain and France, and then later to have been martyred in Ethiopia. James also preached in what is now France before returning to the Holy Land where he died. Philip and John preached in Central Turkey, and both ran afoul of Emperor Domitian, who crucified Philip and banned John to the island of Patmos, where he died after writing the Book of Revelations.

Perhaps these travels of the apostles are owed to the famous network of roads the Romans built, but roads did not make travel THAT much easier for these people who spread the Good News to the Gentile world. They would still largely have traveled, when not at sea, by foot. Imagine walking, village by village, through Asia Minor from what is now Israel all the way to India! It’s a journey of years, for sure. If they were spared from bandits, that was probably only due to the apostles’appearance of relative poverty and spartan living.

And yet today, Christianity has 2.4 billion adherents, about 31% of the world’s population, according to the PEW Research Center. (Islam is the next largest religious group, with 25%.) That this religion could spread so far beyond the tiny area where Jesus lived and taught is truly incredible, and that it would last for over 2,000 years, still more amazing. Some historians and philosophers believe that the reason Christianity spread so quickly is because the early Christians cared for the poor, nursed the sick and dying, and tried to be kind even to people they did not know or get along with. I’m not sure about all that, but it might not hurt for us to try some of that on one another in this day and age as well!

So this St. Patrick’s Day, dear readers, please think about what you can do to make life better for others, just as St. Patrick tried to do, preaching the Good News to a people who had kidnapped and enslaved him. It won’t hurt to spread kindness and goodwill, and especially in this year of so much news of war, death and destruction, of political acrimony and discord. The lives of all will be better for it, even (or especially?) the life of that someone who smiles kindly at the stranger in our midst.

Finally, an Irish Blessing to one and all, whether Irish or not: “May the road rise to meet you; may the wind be always at your back; may the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again, may the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand.”