Insatiable Love

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

One of my favorite saints is Patrick. If you are not familiar with his story, here is a short video on his life.

Patrick, only sixteen, lived in Roman-ruled England during the 4th century. He was taken by Irish raiders and made a slave for six years in Ireland before God made a way for his escape. Though not a person who considered himself committed to the faith, his father and grandfather were leaders in the church. I struggle to imagine being sixteen, taken to a foreign land as a slave and all alone, but for Patrick it was during that time that God became real to him.

It profoundly moves me that in the midst of a very dark time in Patrick’s life he did not implode within himself and become vengeful or angry at God. He didn’t spend his time plotting against his enemy or feeling sorry for himself. I am sure he had those moments, but according to his journals, he experienced the tender care of God in an intimate way. This is quite humbling to me.

His escape, miraculous in its own nature, was not the end of the work God was doing in his life. Upon returning to England he could have gone about his life trying to forget the trauma, he could have sought revenge on the Irish or even gotten retribution. That is what our nature is inclined to do.

Knowing Patrick’s story awakens a sentiment in which I can relate; that of needing a companion in the loneliness of feeling afraid and forgotten. Instead of working up some grit within himself to overcome his circumstances, he did what is not common in this world to do– surrender to a higher, mysterious power for help.

We remember St. Patrick not for his willpower to change, but for his humility and deep compassion that began formation in a point of desolation and obscurity. In darkness, his spirit began to awaken through prayers which likely felt like pleas into the emptiness around him. In the quiet, solitude a longing and hunger developed within him that he couldn’t quite explain as a young person, but he felt he must say yes to the nudges stirring and the more he said yes, the more he saw God provide, care and guide him, first back to England and then back to Ireland.

The spiritual journey for each of us is a lot like that. We often find that in desolate moments we awaken to God’s presence and though we don’t quite see God or know where we should follow, we simply make small choices toward inklings of his movements within our hearts or circumstances.

Patrick’s time as a slave was the beginning of a life-long love affair with God that would influence the rest of his life. Through a difficult time, an understatement, God became real to Patrick for the first time and he surrendered to that Love because he trusted God would be his rescuer. I have never suffered like that of Patrick, but perhaps like me your suffering has been an inner struggle with self or small hurts. It has been in my small hurts that God has been becoming more real, more lovely, more desirous and because of that, how can I say no to the one who loves me so passionately in my darkest moments? I think that was Patrick’s motivation too.

When we begin to know this great Love in our lives, logic seems to be thrown out the door. I don’t mean wisdom, but there is a certain absurdity that comes with following Christ. There is a reason Christians were called fools in the Bible. The way Jesus talks, loves, gives, receives, lives, teaches and dies is absolutely absurd to our finite, earth-bound way of thinking and living. It is difficult to wrap our minds around and understand it in a rational manner. Patrick is a prime example of an illogical way of life. He could have returned to England pursued a career, gotten married, lived a ‘normal’ life, but he didn’t. God’s loving nudges didn’t stop because he’d been rescued, they only continued to gnaw at his spirit.

Why would a person captured and enslaved, poorly treated, secretly escaped, return to his captors to love and serve them? Why would a royal king choose to live in a slum of death among those who want to kill him in order to love them, know them, endure torture and die for them?

Divine Love is powerful. Once it captures our hearts there is no turning back. It plunges us into the unreasonable. God’s love is beyond our basic understanding of how life on earth works. It is beyond how we love others on earth. It is better, wilder, more vast than our minds can fathom. We can’t even begin to know the power of love without first being loved and knowing the One who loves us the most. The One who meets us in captivity, as slaves, alone, in darkness and says. I Am. I Am here.