Patrick was born in Britain - the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia says at Kilpatrick near Dumbarton in 387, while Franciscan Media gives a more cautious c. 415. ¹² At the age of sixteen he was "carried off into captivity by Irish marauders and was sold as a slave" to a chieftain named Milchu, and spent six years herding flocks. ¹

He was a teenager, alone, in a country he did not know, belonging to somebody. The faith he had grown up around and largely ignored became, in those years, the only thing he had.

He escaped and made his way home. He then trained for years - at Saint Martin's monastery at Tours, at the island sanctuary of Lerins, and under Saint Germain at Auxerre - and received episcopal consecration before returning. ¹

The return is the part worth stopping on. Having got out of Ireland, he went back to it, deliberately, as a bishop, to preach to the people whose countrymen had stolen him. He landed around 433. ¹

The best-known episode of his mission is the Paschal fire he kindled at Slane on Easter Eve in 433, in defiance of the druidical assembly gathered at Tara, where no fire was to be lit before the king's. ¹ It is the founding scene of Irish Christianity, and it was an act of open provocation.

He died on 17 March 493 at Saul, near Downpatrick, though the 1913 article notes that some sources give 460 or 461. ¹

Patrick wrote his own account of his life, the Confessio, and modern scholars accept it as genuinely his. ¹ That is rare: a fifth-century saint who left a first-person document. Anyone who wants Patrick rather than the legend can simply read what he wrote.

The snakes and the shamrock, it is worth saying, are not in it, and are not in either source cited here.

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. ²³ Franciscan Media also lists him as patron of engineers and of Nigeria. ²

The feast of Saint Patrick is celebrated on March 17, the traditional date of his death. ¹² Franciscan Media's reflection is the useful corrective to how the day is usually spent: "The holiness of a person is known only by the fruits of his or her work." ²

When you found God somewhere you did not want to be. Patrick's faith did not come from his Christian upbringing. It came from six years of slavery. ¹ If the deepest thing in your life arrived through the worst part of it, he understands the arithmetic.

When you are asked to go back. He returned to the country that had enslaved him, as a missionary. ¹ Forgiveness in Patrick is not a feeling he arrived at; it is a boat he got on.

When faith requires a public act. He lit the Paschal fire at Slane knowing exactly whose fire was supposed to be lit first. ¹ There are moments where discretion stops being a virtue, and he chose one deliberately.

When you want the real thing rather than the story. Patrick wrote the Confessio, and it survives. ¹ Almost no other saint of his era can be read in his own words - which means you can meet him directly rather than through what people have made of him.

When your work is being judged by its reception. His feast is now largely a party. His own measure, in Franciscan Media's phrase, was that holiness is known by the fruits of the work. ² What people do with what you built is not the same as what you built.