St Patrick’s Day - Calling all Saints!
Legend says that Patrick used the three-leafed shamrock to teach people about
God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
On the 17th March, 1965, I and my classmates, with quivering tummies, sat down and started writing the answers for the 11+ scholarship exam. (This was before comprehensive high schools came into being). We all had a piece of shamrock on our desks for good luck, because it was St. Patrick’s day. Beforehand, there had been lots of talk about leprachauns, 4 -leafed clover and everyone wishing each other good luck. Growing up in Liverpool, there was always something happening on St. Patrick’s day. It was part of life.
It wasn’t until many years later that I ever thought about St. Patrick. I discovered that when he was a teenager, in the 5th century, he was captured by Irish pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave. He lived as an animal herder for 6 years till he escaped and came back to England. Amazingly, after becoming a Christian Cleric, he returned to the country in which he had been a slave, spread the gospel in Northern and Western Ireland and later became a bishop.
I marvel at this testimony of a young man returning to the place where he had been enslaved, as a missionary. He wanted to share the good news that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our sins are forgiven and we are born again by the Holy Spirit, if we accept him as out Lord and Saviour.
Thinking about Patrick being called a saint, I was struck by this passage in 1 Corinthians 1:2:
‘To the Church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their lord and ours.’
If we have confessed our sins and have been born again by the Holy Spirit, we are called to be saints together, with all who call upon the name of Jesus Christ. Wow! what a privilege.
Romans 1:7 says:
To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be Saints; grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Again, another verse calling Christians saints. There are many verses in the New Testament referring to people in the different churches as saints. Like most folk, I’ve never really thought of myself, or called myself a ‘saint’. I’ve tended to think of dead people like St. Patrick or St. Paul as a ‘saint’.
In Revelation 5:8 it mentions ‘the prayers of the saints’:
And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the Saints.
Six years after taking my 11+ exam (which miraculously I passed), I became a ‘saint’, a Christian, as I asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and be my Lord and Saviour. That was 54 years ago, the best decision I ever made. If you know Jesus, you also are a saint. If you don’t know Jesus yet, invite him to be your Lord and Saviour and join the church of saints around the world.
Photo by timothy-dykes-unsplash