St. Patrick’s Day

The Feast of Saint Patrick

Patrick’s own account, with his Letter to Coroticus, is the only firm source for his life. Raiders took him to Ireland at about sixteen; he escaped, and later returned as a bishop. His dates are disputed: the Catholic Encyclopedia gives 387 to 493 and adds that some sources say 460 or 461. The Confessio is built from Scripture and holds “one God in a trinity of the sacred name.” It does not mention snakes or the shamrock, and it never names Rome or the pope. He calls his father a deacon and his grandfather a priest. It records no feast. This is Background, not an observance.

I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers.

An Irish calendar in verse, a quatrain for each day of the year, keeps Patrick on March 17 and asks that he be “the shelter of our wretchedness.” Its editor, Whitley Stokes, holds that Oengus wrote it about 800; others date it to about 830. It is the first sure record found of Patrick’s day kept in the church’s calendar, some three centuries after his death. Stokes notes that Bede’s martyrology, of the 8th century, also enters Patrick at March 17. The commemoration is the church’s own, not something Patrick or any apostle asked for.

The flame of a splendid sun, the apostle of virginal Erin, may Patrick, with many thousands, be the shelter of our wretchedness.

A gunpowder account of the town’s Spanish garrison records that residents processed through the streets in honor of the feast of San Patricio and that cannon were fired from the fort. The historian who found it, J. Michael Francis, speaks of the procession as in 1601, and the entry is in the accounts for 1600-1601. It is the earliest known celebration of the day in what is now the United States, more than a century before Boston’s first parade in 1737. An Irish priest in the town, Ricardo Artur, likely brought the devotion. The day came to America as a church procession, long before the parades.

Pope Urban VIII names Wadding in 1629 to a commission to reform the Breviary, and through it Patrick’s feast is entered in the universal Roman calendar on March 17. Before that it was kept in Ireland and by the Irish, but was not on the calendar of the whole Western church. Patrick Comerford, a Church of Ireland priest and historian whose page is cited here, gives 1632 for the entry; 1631 appears elsewhere, and no decree has been found. The sources for the year are popular and heritage writers, not a primary text.

An article asks whether St. Patrick was a Protestant. It notes that Irish Protestants claim him as well as Roman Catholics, that his father was a deacon and his grandfather an elder (the Confessio says a priest), and that his Confessio and Epistle show a creed held in common, with no emphasis on the Virgin Mary and no knowledge of the pope. Armagh’s two cathedrals, one Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland, both claim him.

March 17 falls on a Friday in Lent. Canon law lets a bishop lift the Friday abstinence or give another penance in its place. The National Catholic Register counted 125 of 176 dioceses doing so a week before. Some, including Chicago, did not.

Jimmy Akin answers the Protestant claim: Patrick was a Latin-speaking Roman noble, a bishop who served on a papal mission to Ireland, and that his Letter and Confessio assume bishops, priests, monks and penance. The two articles reach opposite answers from the same writings.

Patrick was a Romanized Briton, taken as a boy to Ireland as a slave. After he escaped, he came back as a bishop to the people who had held him. March 17 is the traditional day of his death. His dates are uncertain (H1), and the stories told about him need to be kept apart from what he wrote.

Patrick’s own writings (H1) are humble. He calls himself a sinner and quotes Matthew 4:19 to explain his mission. Later lives, from the 7th century on, made him a wonder-worker: he defeats the king’s magicians at Tara, drives out the snakes, and shows the Trinity with the shamrock. The Catholic Encyclopedia tells the shamrock story of Tara with the words “is said to have.” Britannica calls the snakes a legend and notes that Ireland never had snakes. The Confessio mentions neither snakes nor the plant, and no early source for either story was found. These are legends, not records.

The feast itself is much younger than the man. Irish churches kept his memory on March 17 by about 800 (H2). It came to America with Spanish Florida in 1600 (H3), and was put on the calendar of the whole Roman church about 1632 through the work of an Irish Franciscan (H4). Emigrants, especially in the United States, then made it, in Britannica’s words, “a largely secular holiday of revelry and celebration of things Irish.”

Roman Catholics

The Church of Ireland

Irish diaspora and civic bodies

Presbyterians and other evangelical Protestants

Many Reformed and Baptist churches

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland

The Churches of Christ

Mass and “St. Patrick’s Breastplate”

Churches hold Masses and services, often singing the Breastplate. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 took it for Patrick’s own, but it is not one of the two writings that same article calls “of unquestionable genuineness,” the Confessio and the Letter to Coroticus. Keep it apart from what Patrick surely wrote.

Lenten dispensation

March 17 always falls in Lent. In 2023 most U.S. bishops lifted the Friday fast so Catholics could eat the corned-beef dinner (H6).

Pilgrimage

Patrick is honored with pilgrimages to places tied to him, but the best known is not on his day: the climb of Croagh Patrick, in County Mayo, falls on the last Sunday of July.

Wearing the shamrock

Tied to the Trinity story told of Patrick at Tara. His own writings never mention the plant, though the Confessio does hold “one God in a trinity of the sacred name.”

Parades

The 1600 procession in St. Augustine was religious (H3). Boston’s first parade, in 1737, and New York’s, in 1762, were ethnic and civic.

Green beer and the dyed river

Blue was the color long tied to Patrick, and is still the color of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin; green is now standard, and Chicago has dyed its river green since 1962. Pubs fill with revelry that has little to do with Patrick.

Holiday spending

The National Retail Federation’s 2026 survey found 60 percent of U.S. adults planned to celebrate and expected to spend a record average of $47.45 each.

The church’s appointed remembrance is weekly, and it looks to the cross

The New Testament gives the church one day and one memorial: the first day, and the Supper that proclaims His death (S1, S2).

The church gathered “upon the first day of the week” to break bread (S1). The Lord Himself gave the memorial: “this do in remembrance of me”, and Paul says what it proclaims, “the Lord’s death till he come” (S2). Apostolic example binds, and a specific appointment excludes other kinds: the church has no warrant to add a yearly memorial of any servant of God to its worship.

The New Testament shows no church keeping a day for Peter, Paul or Stephen. Patrick lived in the 5th century, and his day first appears in a church calendar about 800 (H2), some three centuries after his death. It was the church’s addition, not the apostles’ appointment.

Remember faithful teachers by imitating their faith

Hebrews 13:7 asks Christians to remember those who taught them God’s word and to imitate their faith (S3).

“Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you the word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate their faith” (S3). That is the biblical way to honor a missionary: look at how he lived and died, and follow his faith. The writer speaks of the leaders of that church, not of a calendar.

Patrick’s Confessio is the best memorial he left. A church may read it, and preach what he preached, on any Lord’s Day. The text does not turn the remembrance into a yearly feast, or ask for prayers to him.

Days are a matter of conscience for each believer, not a law for the church

Romans 14 leaves one believer free to regard a day and another free not to, and forbids each to judge the other (S4, S5).

Paul writes of believers who differed over days: “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind” (S4). The days at Rome were most likely Jewish days and fasts, so the passage does not set out to approve a Christian feast. It does give the rule for a believer’s own regard for a day: it is between them and the Lord, and no one may judge them for it (S5).

So a Christian may remember Patrick on March 17, read the Confessio, and enjoy an Irish or civic holiday. What they may not do is make that day binding on others, or bring it into the church’s worship as a holy day (A1).

There is one mediator between God and men. Asking Patrick to intercede takes from Christ’s sole mediation.

Paul’s point is that Christ alone stands between God and men, as the one who gave Himself a ransom (verse 6). Just before it he urges believers to pray for one another (verse 1), so Catholics answer that asking a saint to pray is like asking a brother, not a second mediator. The verse alone does not settle that. What weighs against it is that the New Testament never shows a believer calling on the dead or asking their prayers: its prayer goes to the Father, through the Son. The Félire itself prays to Patrick (H2), so the objection touches the feast as it was kept. But it is a question about the invocation of saints, not the date. A Christian can remember Patrick without asking him for anything, and the case against a feast in the church’s worship rests on the pattern of the Lord’s Day and Supper (A1).

Paul rebukes those who “observe days, and months, and seasons, and years.” A saint’s day is such a day.

Verses 8 and 9 say who these readers were: Gentiles who had once served beings that by nature are no gods, now turning back to “weak and beggarly rudiments.” The Galatians were taking up a calendar as a way to stand right with God (4:21 and 5:4), and Paul fears his labor was in vain. Read in context the text strikes at any day made necessary to please God, which fits a feast imposed as a duty on the church. It does not by itself forbid a believer’s private regard for a day, which Romans 14 allows (S4). It is not cited against a family that remembers Patrick.

Catholics cite “so great a cloud of witnesses,” with James 5:16 and Revelation 5:8, for the communion of saints and their prayers for us. If the faithful dead are near, a day for them is fitting.

The cloud of witnesses is the roll of chapter 11, whose faith is set before us as an example, and the verse draws one command from it: lay aside every weight and run with patience. It does not say they hear us or that we should ask for their prayers, and it sets no day. The text supports remembering examples of faith (A2). It does not make a church feast.

Patrick quotes this verse in Confessio 40 to explain his mission. A man whose whole work was built on the words of Jesus is worth honoring.

He is, and his use of the verse shows what kind of man he was. But the verse is Jesus’ call to follow Him, not a command to keep a day for His followers. The best honor to Patrick is to do what he did with Scripture: read it, trust it, and take it to others (A2).

Study

• Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 11:26 give the church a weekly remembrance of Christ’s death. Is there room beside it for a yearly day for a servant of God?
• Hebrews 13:7 says to imitate the faith of those who spoke God’s word. How would you honor Patrick that way without a feast day?
• Patrick’s Confessio never mentions snakes or the shamrock. Why do legends gather around a person, and what should a church do when a pious story is not in the record?
• Romans 14:5 says “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.” Where does a Christian’s liberty over a day end, and the church’s worship begin?
• Catholics, the Church of Ireland and Protestants in Ulster have each claimed Patrick (H5, H7). Does it matter to the question of the feast which of them is right?

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