Probably of all the well-known, so-called saints, the one that I have had the most trouble with is St. Patrick. Part of it is that Ireland is now the home of the person whose betrayal has hurt me the most deeply in my life. Part of it is that I don’t like snakes or even snake-related stories, and the fact that the tradition of Patrick’s driving all the “snakes” or serpents out of Ireland refers to his killing or banishing all the druids (one of their symbols being the serpent, and I do like druids or at least what I know of them), only makes Patrick less appealing to me. And part of it is that I have never really felt any connection with shillelaghs, leprechauns, or green beer.

Frankly, Patrick has always loomed like some kind of excuse for drunken revelry combined with an intractable austerity: ergo, a mass of contradictions.

Yet one thing in Butler’s retelling of St. Patrick’s life resonates with my own experiences: when Patrick was called to serve the church as a minister, his family was not supportive. In my own case, my mother was forcefully against my becoming a minister (they didn’t send me to Duke University to be just a pastor, plus I’d be living in a fishbowl, etc. etc.–the real reason was that I wouldn’t have been providing her the opportunity to live vicariously through me). And with other family members, it was very unpleasant to otherwise meet with tepid support at best and disinterest at worst. Patrick similarly found his own family suggesting that a different pursuit than his would be more lucrative, and they “endeavoured to affright him by exaggerating the dangers to which he exposed himself” out in the mission field of his day.

Butler writes that, as a result, Patrick “forsook his family, sold, as he says, his birth-right and dignity, to serve strangers . . . .” It is this last part–“to serve strangers”–that represents something that I can affirm in a huge way with respect to Patrick. What an amazing step to take: to decide to dedicate oneself to stepping forth from the known and into the unknown, with only a resolve to serve those whom you should encounter, whether they welcome you or not.

There is a peace that is possible, then, in going to a new job, a new school, a new setting, even a party where you will not know anyone, if it is with the attitude that you will serve those whom you meet. I don’t take this to mean that you will be some kind of doormat (first, Patrick clearly was no doormat, whatever one might say about him; secondly, I am not convinced that anyone’s interests are ever served by one party being a doormat). I take this to mean that you will meet people where they are, learn their stories, be sensitive to their needs, and make yourself ready and willing to use your abilities to improve the quality of their lives.

If you do this, not everyone will like it–specifically, those who have the most to gain from keeping the people you help unhappy. While working as an attorney, I had a boss who actually upbraided me for so visibly being supportive of the (largely African-American) administrative staff in our office, because of how it made other attorneys (himself included) appear. I was gobsmacked by this blatant classism and racism, and it took me until today to realize that my boss was upset because of the threat to his own power that resulted from my treating administrative personnel as peers rather than inferiors–it disrupted his own strategy of consolidating power by divide-and-conquer methods; it created the possibility of questions being raised about and even to himself and other attorneys regarding their own conduct; and it made visible the oppression in an office that liked to think of itself as progressive and working o the side of the angels. Alas, I ended up being the snake driven out of that island.

So, while this isn’t for me a day to say “Éirinn go Brách” (that’s the original Irish), it is worth another thought or two about Patrick and about saying Yes to the service of others.