Has Saint Patrick had his day?

WIKI has this: "Patrick's father, Calpurnius, is described as a decurion (Senator and tax collector) of an unspecified Romano-British city, and as a deacon; his grandfather Potitus was a priest from Bonaven Tabernia.[31] However, Patrick's confession states he was not an active believer in his youth, and considered himself in that period to be "idle and callow".[32]

"According to the Confession of Saint Patrick, at the age of sixteen, he was captured by a group of Irish pirates, from his family's Villa at "Bannavem Taburniae".[33] They took him to Ireland where he was enslaved and held captive for six years. Patrick writes in the Confession[33] that the time he spent in captivity was critical to his spiritual development. He explains that the Lord had mercy on his youth and ignorance, and afforded him the opportunity to be forgiven his sins and to grow in his faith through prayer.

"The Dál Riata raiders who kidnapped him introduced him to the Irish culture that would define his life and reputation.[32] While in captivity, he worked as a shepherd and strengthened his relationship with God through prayer, eventually leading him to deepen his faith.[33]

"After six years of captivity, he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and then that his ship was ready. Fleeing his master, he travelled to a port, two hundred miles away,[34] where he found a ship and with difficulty persuaded the captain to take him. After three days' sailing, they landed, presumably in Britain, and apparently all left the ship, walking for 28 days in a "wilderness" and becoming faint from hunger. Patrick's account of his escape from slavery and return home to Britain is recounted in his Declaration.[35] After Patrick prayed for sustenance, they encountered a herd of wild boar;[36] since this was shortly after Patrick had urged them to put their faith in God, his prestige in the group was greatly increased. After various adventures, he returned home to his family, now in his early twenties.[37] After returning home to Britain, Patrick continued to study Christianity.

Patrick recounts that he had a vision a few years after returning home:

"I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: "The Voice of the Irish". As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea—and they cried out, as with one voice: "We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us."[38]"

I always find the biographical information - such as it is - regarding these historical figures, fascinating. It is the contrast between their current mythological status, influenced by hundreds of years of political history, and the original person, just making his way in the world, convinced of a spiritual mission. Cornwall is suffused with 'Saint' place names, the surviving remnant of a person, usually coming from Ireland. It was a veritable flood of immigration and new ideas! But what were the cultural ramifications, besides the later emergence of all those magnificent buildings we call churches? 

It was the gradual replacement of the celtic and pagan world view, with a christian one, that is now in turn in obvious decline, replaced by a quasi 'scientific' and atheistic one. In some ways our philosophical and religious era may be viewed as a reversion to a pantheistic and pagan past, through the medium of Hollywood film and computer gaming. People still have a need for miraculous fantasy, whilst rejecting the concepts of God, or of a belief in the ability to connect directly with 'him' or 'it'. 

St. Patrick has morphed into a symbol of patriotic pride and 'Irishness', far removed from his original mission and context of bringing a novel Christian gospel to a society regarded as 'uncivilized' whether they were or not. Of course Patrick came to a post-Roman Britain but where, particularly in western and northern parts, people still clung to their Celtic roots, which pre-dated the Roman civilization and had links to a Mesopotanian past.

It was a new way of interpreting the world and man's place in it. It offered a different explanation for life's trials and tribulations, a life after death, the story of Jesus, of love and forgiveness, from a very foreign and distant land and culture and all the phases of civilization that had gone before. 

It brought with it all the beliefs and rituals that secured the narrative that promised God's in-dwelling and miraculous spirit, changing sinners into saints in the process. A whole new Christian civilization flowed from it. 

What would England, Ireland and the rest of Europe have become without the influence of Patrick and all the thousands of other 'saints' is an interesting and unfathomable question. Perhaps Europe would have been India or China? (TTV)

The longer we live, the more we realise that it is the dead who influence our lives more than the living. The longer we live, the more we realise that life is just an aberration and illusion, into which we are locked for a miniscule period of time, the only purpose of which is to strive to do as little harm and and as much good as we are able, and to spend our lives trying to work out what they are. Success can only be gauged by the degree of inner contentment and acceptance of one's circumstance. Yet struggle and suffering are common to all men, mitigated only by faith and stoicism, knowing that all things must pass, and we too. We cannot escape ourselves or the egocentricity it imposes but we must also comprehend how we are just a tiny fraction of human consciousness and part of an incredible web of life that inhabits the earth, both past and present. We have to learn to sublimate our egos, to rise above the material, to enter a transcendent plane, where time and place lose their meaning and we become again what we were before the universe began. In sublimating the transient, we open the door to the eternal, and become better experientially as a result. (TTV)