A Hero of Liberty
I don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by drinking green beer or wearing a green vest. I think about the dedication of a courageous man to human freedom. I learned the story when I read Thomas Cahill’s quite entertaining book How the Irish Saved Civilization, in which Cahill recounts the story of how St. Patrick had been kidnapped by Irish slavers, spent years as a slave, escaped, and later returned to bring the new religion of Christianity to the Irish, in the process eliminating the scourge of slavery from the island. As Cahill writes,
The horror of slavery was never lost on him: “But it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most–and who keep their spirits up despite the menacing and terrorizing they must endure. The Lord gives grace to his many handmaids; and though they are forbidden to do so, they follow him with backbone.”
Raise a toast to a champion of human freedom, St. Patrick, who saved the Irish from the horrors of slavery and who should inspire us to save all of humanity from the horrors of violence and coercion.