Evangelization of Ireland

The Evangelization of Ireland represents one of the Greatest Evangelistic Triumphs ever in the history of Christ's Church. It was largely the work of Saint Patrick, the Catholic Bishop and Patron Saint of Ireland. The Evangelization of Ireland, and Christ's Great Triumph in the Emerald Isle, was largely completed by the 5th Century A.D. Up until very recent times, Ireland remained a very staunchly Catholic Christian country, which shows the legacy of Saint Patrick's Evangelization was at least 15 Centuries of a Country becoming and then remaining Christian. Perhaps the most remarkable example in Christian History of how great a difference, for a whole Nation and its descendants, stretching across 1 and a half Millenia, the example and life and apostolic zeal of one single man and one solitary life, can make. The Irish also sent many Missionaries to foreign lands and helped in the Evangelization of other nations. [1]

Early Life

"Patrick was born in Britain of a Romanized family. At age 16 he was torn by Irish raiders from the villa of his father, Calpurnius, a deacon and minor local official, and carried into slavery in Ireland. He spent six bleak years there as a herdsman, during which he turned with fervour to his faith. Upon dreaming that the ship in which he was to escape was ready, he fled his master and found passage to Britain. There he came near to starvation and suffered a second brief captivity before he was reunited with his family."

St. Patrick's Confessio and Missionary Journeys

"He relates in his "Confessio" that during his captivity while tending the flocks he prayed many times in the day: "the love of God", he added, and His fear increased in me more and more, and the faith grew in me, and the spirit was roused, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same, so that whilst in the woods and on the mountain, even before the dawn, I was roused to prayer and felt no hurt from it, whether there was snow or ice or rain; nor was there any slothfulness in me, such as I see now, because the spirit was then fervent within me...

Amid all these scenes, however, Patrick's thoughts turned towards Ireland, and from time to time he was favoured with visions of the children from Focluth, by the Western sea, who cried to him: "O holy youth, come back to Erin, and walk once more amongst us."

Pope St. Celestine I, who rendered immortal service to the Church by the overthrow of the Pelagian and Nestorian heresies, and by the imperishable wreath of honour decreed to the Blessed Virgin in the General Council of Ephesus, crowned his pontificate by an act of the most far-reaching consequences for the spread of Christianity and civilization, when he entrusted St. Patrick with the mission of gathering the Irish race into the one fold of Christ."