Why Do You Wear Green Today?

(This is from my blog last year - I decided to re-post!)

Today is March 17th. Saint Patrick’s Day. Those who don’t want to be pinched will don their green attire. The Chicago River will be dyed green. There will be many celebrations tonight. I personally will be wearing my favorite green sweater, and shamrock earrings - not just because my parents decided to name me and my brother Irish Names: “Kelly” and my brother “Shawn Patrick”!

But, why??? Today, I celebrate “Saint Patrick’s” Day differently than most. March 17th is about a man. A humble, godly man. St. Patrick was born to Christian parents, around year 385. At age 16 He was captured and sold into slavery and sent to Ireland. Although he ignored the faith that his parents brought him up with, those seeds his parents planted came to fruition during his time as a slave, where he began to pray around 100 times a day while spending lonely days as a sheepherder.

After a dream gave him a plan to escape, he spent the last 30 years of his life evangelizing, preaching the gospel - saving many souls from a bleak eternity, and planting churches.

Because of this man’s love for the Lord, love for people, and a desire to see people set free and know real truth, Ireland was fully converted into Christianity and was the only country in Europe to Christianize peacefully.

Here’s an excerpt from Saint Patrick’s “Confession of St. Patrick”: I am greatly God’s debtor, because he granted me so much grace, that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon after confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the earth, just as he once promised through his prophets: ‘To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, “Our fathers have inherited naught but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.”’ And again: ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth.’

Wow. St. Patrick isn’t just a small man wearing short green pants dancing a jig on the cover of a Lucky Charms cereal box! But he is a man that we can model ourselves after, that gives us inspiration.

I will wear my green today in remembrance of the same gift, the same call that God gives to all of us.