Saint Patrick of Ireland: Did you know he was a prophet too?

By David Jones

I am writing this on Saint Patrick’s Day, but being a Friday in eastern Oklahoma, where there is no special dispensation, during Lent it means the corned beef and cabbage will wait for Sunday.

Call it an extra Lenten exercise in deferred gratification. As our deacon remarked to us this week, “When Saint Patrick finds out so many bishops were going to grant permission for meat this Friday, he is not going to be happy.”  We would rather count on his assistance, as one of those special denizens of heaven we call saints, so Sunday it is.

Saint Patrick was a stickler for obedience, among other non-politically correct traits. His model was Jesus, his manual the Gospels; his employer, the Church; his people, the Irish. In order to evangelize and convert such a bunch, it takes a strong personality, someone sure of his faith and his mission.

That was Saint Patrick.

So much of religious history has been watered down here in the early 21st Century that few people I encounter know much more of the founding Irish bishop other than he drove out the snakes from Ireland (actually there were none there), used the shamrock to explain the Trinity (true) while converting the Irish to Catholicism (true). That’s about it. An admiringly mile-wide liking for Patrick, and an inch-deep knowledge of his life and accomplishments.

This is unfortunate because there is a wealth of information that has survived the centuries. There is a document that purports to be his autobiography, and at least two more-or-less contemporary biographers also penned works detailing his life and works. There are, in the biographies, some exaggerations that have tended, in this more cynical age, to persuade critics to dismiss the accounts of the miraculous.

In my view, that’s their problem. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that Patrick’s enthusiastic followers may have embellished a credit or two, but that’s because they were proud Irishmen.  However, can there be any doubt that this man of God was not without spiritual prowess when you consider the fruit of his work?

Saint Patrick was bigger-than-life in the sense that his relationship with the Almighty was so strong, his faith so iron-clad, that he wielded many of the same spiritual powers promised by Christ to, and exercised by, the Apostles themselves. But Saint Patrick also was bigger-than-life because he embraced life as an opportunity to do the Lord’s work. He was a man of passion, of education, of great courage, and a man accustom to the occasional defeats, which included suffering, deprivation and captivity.

I would direct your attention to the online encyclopedia “New Advent” where A FASCINATING ARTICLE details the gist of Saint Patrick's life .  That article does more justice than anything we could print here today.

But I would like to touch upon one aspect of Patrick’s legacy that bears some thought for those of us living today: his prophetic gifts.

Did you know that, after much prayer and fasting on a mountain now known as Croagh Patrick, in a region called Lough Derg, or Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, Saint Patrick in Jacobean fashion wrestled with angels until he won concessions for the Irish people?

Here are the concessions: (from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XI)

·  many souls would be free from the pains of purgatory through his intercession;
·  whoever in the spirit of penance would recite his hymn before death would attain the heavenly reward;
·  barbarian hordes would never obtain sway in his Church;
·  seven years before the Judgment Day, the sea would spread over Ireland to save its people from the temptations and terrors of the Antichrist; and
·  greatest blessing of all, Patrick himself should be deputed to judge the whole Irish race on the last day.

The last two bear special notice. The saint was assured that the Irish would not be required to face the tribulation and the Antichrist because “the sea would spread over Ireland” fully seven years before the Judgment Day.

My youngest son, who is almost 15, had a problem with it.  “This is how God rewards Saint Patrick’s prayer and fasting?  Is this what Saint Patrick asked for when he prayed? How is it a good thing?”

All good questions, of course. From a 21st Century point-of-view, it’s not exactly “beam me up, Scotty,” is it?  It lacks the tidy, pain free solution of a “rapture,” a late 19th Century solution popularized by some Christian sects. It grates harshly against the “God is Love” template of the last 50 years that more or less denies the concept of divine justice.

But I explained to my son that, in terms of the Big Picture, and the nature of spiritual reality, Saint Patrick negotiated a good deal for his flock. “The time of the Antichrist is not going to be a picnic for anyone, especially Christians,” I told him. “There will be some whose faith will not be strong enough. The ones who die first in faith are the lucky ones. And then they get to be judged by Saint Patrick at the end, so that’s cool.”

Besides that, I told him, what’s so bad about crossing into Heaven?  Just because we haven’t been there yet, doesn’t mean we can’t take Christ at His word.  There was more discussion, and I was pleased to see that he understands that what appears calamitous or unjust from human eyes can be, in God’s Divine Will, the perfect move for all concerned.

Thinking of this today, I realized that most people are not familiar with the prophecy or the related prophecies of Catholic mystics over the centuries that may reinforce its authenticity.