Date of St Patrick's Day 17th March.
Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and St Patrick's Day became a public holiday in Ireland
due to the Bank Holiday (Ireland) Act 1903. It is also a bank holiday in
Northern Ireland, the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean and a provincial
holiday in the Canadian province of Newfoundland.
About St Patick
What is certain is that St Patrick was a Briton was
born in Bannavem Taburniæ in 387 according to his Confession. Although no
one is certain where this is historians believe it is what is now called Kilpatrick,
near Dumbarton, in Scotland. (others believe he was born in the Welsh town of
Banwen). He died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland on the 17th March 461. His birth
name was Maewyn Succat and his parents Calpurnius and Conchessa were Roman
citizens.
As a boy of 16 he was captured during a raiding party
by pirates who sold him as a slave in Ireland where we was used to herd and
tend sheep.
After 6 years he escaped after having a dream from God. From 412 - 415 he studied at the monastery on
the island sanctuary of Lerins, off the Cote d'Azur. This was followed by
further studying at the monastery of Auxerre, under the guidance of St
Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre who ordained him in 417. Patrick then spent a
further 15 years as a disciple of Germanus. In 432 Pope Celestine consecrated
him as Bishop and he was given the baptismal name of 'Patricius'. He was then sent
to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433.
Legends about him include of course one saying he
charmed all the snakes in Ireland and led them to the sea to drown and that Patrick
used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity to the pagan King
Laoghaire resulting in the shamrockbeing associated with him and the Irish ever since.
After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring
much suffering as he spread the christian word to the Irish he died March 17, 461. He died at Saul, where he had built the
first church. St Patrick is believed to be buried under Down Cathedral in Downpatrick, County
Down. One cannot be certain of the exact spot of his burial, but the Memorial Stone, put in position by the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club in 1900, traditionally marks his grave. It is a slab of granite from the nearby Mourne Mountains. Today he is one of the three patron saints of Ireland. The other patron saints
are St Brigid of Kildare and St Columba.
For most of Christianity's first thousand years,
canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level. Relatively soon
after the death of people considered to be very holy people, the local Church
affirmed that they could be liturgically celebrated as saints. St. Patrick has
never been formally canonised by a Pope although when the Roman Catholic Church
established the first list of Saints (the first official saint was Ulrich
canonized in 993), Patrick was on it.
St Patrick Day Parades
The first Irish St Patrick day parade took place in
1931 in Dublin while the first recorded parade anywhere in the world was in Boston USA in
1737. The largest parade today is not in Ireland but actually in New York where
St Patrick Day parades have been recorded since March 17, 1762.
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