Psalm 87 ~ the city He founded

Living in the internet age is a blessing, when I am not able to put my finger on the Word, I look through pages on sermons & commentaries for the meaning I am looking to express.

St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, the human snakes inciting war & human sacrifice. He did this without a-how-to-book, without a phone call to a spiritual guidance counselor, without visual aids. Patrick had his faith and the word of God. Led by the Holy Spirit of God, his life made a huge impact.

St. Patrick ~ Thomas Cahill, Catholic author of the best-selling book How the Irish Saved Civilization ~ "Some 1,500 years ago a teenage boy from what is now Great Britain was kidnapped and enslaved by marauders from a neighboring country. Not since Paris absconded with Helen of Troy has a kidnapping so changed the course of history.

The invading marauders came from fifth-century Ireland. The teenager they captured eventually escaped, but returned voluntarily some years later. In the meantime, he had become convinced that he was handpicked by God to convert the entire country to Christianity.

Apparently, he was right.

In the process of converting the primitive people of Ireland, however, the former slave experienced a conversion, too. In the years that followed, he not only shared God with the people of Ireland, but also grew in his understanding of God through them. Cahill says, "The early Irish Christianity planted in Ireland by Patrick is much more joyful and celebratory [than its Roman predecessor] in the way it approaches the natural world. It is really not a theology of sin but of the goodness of creation, and it really is intensely incarnational." His use of biblical quotations, Cahill says, "is far more accurate and appropriate than many of the Fathers of the Church."

It's hard to grasp just what an accomplishment that was, says Cahill. When Patrick decided to "willingly go back to the barbarians with the gospel," Cahill explains, "he had to figure out how to bring the values of the gospel he loved to such people. These were people who still practiced human sacrifice, who warred with each other constantly and who were renowned as the great slave traders of the day.

"That was not a simple thing. This was before courses were given to missionaries in what is now called inculturation—how to plant the gospel in such a culture," Cahill says. "No one had ever even thought about how to do it; Patrick had to work his way through it himself.

These two brief documents, Patrick's Confession and his "Letter to Coroticus," are the basis for all we know of the historical Patrick. The uncontested, if somewhat unspecific, biographical facts about Patrick are as follows:

Patrick was born Patricius somewhere in Roman Britain to a relatively wealthy family. He was not religious as a youth and, in fact, claims to have practically renounced the faith of his family.

When Patrick looked back at the end of his life on his service to Ireland, Cahill says, he must have been pleased with his accomplishments. By the time of his death, or shortly thereafter, "the Irish stopped slave trading and they never took it up again." Human sacrifice had become unthinkable. And although the Irish never stopped warring on one another, "war became much more confined and limited by what we might call the 'rules of warfare.'

"I think that though he probably died knowing that he had succeeded in his mission," Cahill adds, "he also died hoping that success would be permanent and not temporary."

In fact, Patrick's success couldn't have been more permanent. Not only had he accomplished what he'd set out to do—convert the nation to Christ—but in the process he'd retrieved from obscurity the primary objective set by Christ for his apostles: the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

And so it was that a young Briton named Patricius died an Irishman named Patrick. And neither Ireland nor Christianity was ever quite the same."

Psalm 87

1On the holy mount stands the city he founded;
2 the Lord loves the gates of Zion
more than all the dwelling places of Jacob.
3 Glorious things of you are spoken,
O city of God. Selah

4 Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon;
behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush —
“This one was born there,” they say.
5 And of Zion it shall be said,
“This one and that one were born in her”;
for the Most High himself will establish her.
6 The Lord records as he registers the peoples,
“This one was born there.” Selah

7 Singers and dancers alike say,
“All my springs are in you.”Selah

John 7:38
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

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