{"id":454,"date":"2010-03-17T22:07:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T03:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/?p=454"},"modified":"2010-03-17T22:08:18","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T03:08:18","slug":"patrick%e2%80%94saint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/patrick%e2%80%94saint\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick wasn’t technically irish either…"},"content":{"rendered":"
Last year (in part because of my short adventure in Dublin) i read the book How the Irish Saved Civilization<\/a>. <\/em>I\u00a0thoroughly enjoyed it and came away with some amazing and inspiring information. \u00a0So in honor of St. Patrick, who can be particularly thanked for the saving of civilization due to his teachings and proclaiming of the Gospel on the glorious island, here are a few excerpts from Thomas Cahill’s wonderful book that are specific of Mr. Patrick:<\/address>\n

“Patrick could put himself\u2014imaginatively\u2014in the position of the Irish. To him, no less than to them, the world is full of magic. One can invoke the elements\u2014the lights of heaven, the waves of the sea, the birds and the animals\u2014and these will come to one\u2019s aid, as in the incantation of the \u201cBreastplate.\u201d The difference between Patrick\u2019s magic and the magic of the druids is that in Patrick\u2019s world all beings and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success. And though that success is of an ultimate kind\u2014and, therefore, does not preclude suffering\u2014all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind\u2019s good, teaching, succoring, and saving.<\/p>\n

Patrick could speak convincingly of these things. He could assure you that all suffering, however dull and desperate, would come to its conclusion and would show itself to have been worthwhile. He could insist that, in the end, you too would hear the words \u201cYour hungers are rewarded:\u00a0 you are going home. Look, your ship is ready.\u201d\u00a0 He could speak believably of the superabundance of a God who in response to humble prayer feeds his lost and wandering people with heavenly manna\u2014and a crew of lost and starving sailors with the herd of very earthly pigs.” <\/em>(<\/em><\/strong>How the Irish Saved Civilization<\/em><\/strong><\/a> p. 131)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“The key to Patrick\u2019s confidence\u2014and it is the sort of ringing, rock-solid confidence on which a civilization may be built, an unmuffled confidence not heard since the Golden Ages of Greece and Rome\u2014is in his reliance on \u201cthe Creator of Creation,\u201d the phrase with which the \u201cBreastplate\u201d opens and closes.\u00a0 Our Father in heaven, having created all things, even things that have since become bent or gone bad, will deliver us, his children, from all evil.\u00a0 But our Father is not only in faraway heaven, but lives among us.\u00a0 For he created everything by his Word, which was with him in the beginning, which became flesh in the human Jesus, and flames out in all his creatures:<\/p>\n

I see his blood upon the rose<\/p>\n

And in the stars the glory of his eyes,<\/p>\n

His body gleams amid eternal snows,<\/p>\n

His tears fall from the skies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I see his face in every flower;<\/p>\n

The thunder and the singing of the birds<\/p>\n

Are but his voice\u2014and carven by his power<\/p>\n

Rocks are his written words.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All pathways by his feet are worn,<\/p>\n

His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,<\/p>\n

His\u00a0 crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,<\/p>\n

His cross is every tree.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This magical world, though full of adventure and surprise, is no longer full of dread. Rather, Christ has trodden all pathways before us, and at every crossroads and by every tree the Word of God speaks out. We have only to be quiet and listen, as Patrick learned to do during the silence of his \u201cnovitiate\u201d as a shepherd on the slopes of Sliabh Mis.” <\/em>(<\/em><\/strong>How the Irish Saved Civilization<\/em><\/strong><\/a> p. 132-133)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year (in part because of my short adventure in Dublin) i read the book How the Irish Saved Civilization. I\u00a0thoroughly enjoyed it and came away with some amazing and inspiring information. \u00a0So in honor of St. Patrick, who can be particularly thanked for the saving of civilization due to his teachings and proclaiming of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5,62],"tags":[10,11],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-culture","category-recommended","tag-gospel","tag-the-gospel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5C2eY-7k","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calebripple.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}