Every year millions of people celebrate St Patrick. He is Ireland’s most famous ambassador. Yet, what do we really know about him, about his spirituality, his mission, his vocation? Can we really only say that he was no friend to snakes?
Few people know that Patrick’s own writings have survived to the present day. Fewer still understand the connection between Patrick and the Church Fathers. Ironically, it is perhaps his universal popularity and connection to generations of Irish immigrants that has set him apart from his peers and obscured his very real contribution to the Church.
To the broader world he is more famous than Augustine and more recognisable than Paul, but unlike them his writings and spirituality have been neglected. In The Spiritual Journey of St Patrick, Aidan Larkin SCC brings the academic rediscovery of Patrick to a lay audience, passionately arguing the case for recognising and engaging with Patrick’s spiritual legacy to the Church. Uncovering the wealth of references to the Fathers of the Church in Patrick’s own writings, Larkin encourages us to reframe Patrick as a religious thinker in dialogue with the Church’s past and future.
Patrick’s vocation him brought him to the Irish, and the Irish brought him to the world. Now The Spiritual Journey of St Patrick retells that great story in the history of Christianity in a way that restores Patrick’s own voice so that he can speak to us and guide us in this synodal moment in the life of the Church.