For years, I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day like most of the world—with rainbows, clovers, and a green outfit for the day. But the real story of St. Patrick is so much more than luck and leprechauns. It’s the story of a man shaped by gospel hope in suffering who then shaped the world through the gospel. I’m sharing three powerful truths St. Patrick teaches us about suffering.

The real St. Patrick

Fun fact: St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. He was actually born in Roman Britain in the mid-400’s, in the area of Wales. He grew up on a farm and though his father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest, Patrick was a self-confessed unbeliever.

When he was 16, Irish pirates landed on the British coast. They raided his farm while the rest of his family was away and took young Patrick captive. “In the slavery business, no tribe was fiercer or more feared than the Irish,” ​notes historian Thomas Cahill​. Sailing back to Ireland, they sold Patrick as a slave and for six years, he tended sheep, virtually forgotten in remote Northern Ireland. Completely isolated and suffering, he prayed a hundred times a day, and was converted to Christ.

At 22, Patrick escaped and walked 200 miles to the sea. Making his way through France and across Britain, he finally found his way home. Once reunited with his family, though, Patrick felt God’s strong call to return to the very place he’d been enslaved. It was a missionary call to bring the gospel to the tribes of Ireland, immersed in pagan, Celtic worship without Christ.

Patrick returned to Ireland and immediately faced the hostile Celts. Despite numerous, serious threats to his life, Patrick continued to share the gospel, planting churches across the whole of Ireland. By his death 33 years later, it’s said that almost the entire island had converted to Christianity.

3 powerful truths St. Patrick teaches us about suffering

God works suffering for our good.

If we got what we wanted, we’d order a mountaintop life that goes from peak to blessed peak. But God does so much in valleys of suffering. Suffering is often the catalyst to see God in ways we never would otherwise, to let go of things of this world, and to set our affection on God. Patrick’s faith and his complete dependence on God was formed in the crucible of suffering.

God brings purpose out of suffering.

Suffering highlights not only our desperate need for God, but the desperate need of others as well. After escaping, Patrick could have easily lived out the rest of his days in a safe Welsh farmhouse. But he returned to share with Ireland the same mercy he’d found there. Like Joseph, Patrick could look at his captors and declare, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20, NIV)

God works suffering for his glory.

Trusting God in the storm glorifies him and praising him in the storm magnifies him. When we follow God even through suffering, it glorifies God. (e.g. John 17:1-2) Suffering speaks, a friend used said to me in my deep grief after Dan died. I think she meant that when life empties, when pain persists, when life has upended, the world is able to see our authentic faith with the living God who meets our needs and cares for us.

Patrick of Ireland was changed through suffering and changed the world because of his suffering. Surely, in his suffering, St. Patrick found the truth he penned in The Breastplate Prayer of St. Patrick:

I arise today Through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s host to secure me…

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise… May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

(Find the full prayer here.)

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