How Did St.Patrick use the shamrock in his teachings?
Patrick is famous for using the shamrock (a three-leaf clover) to explain the Trinity. Saint Patrick was born about 385 in Scotland. His parents, Calpurnius and Conchessa, were Catholic Romans living in Britain in charge of the colonies. At the age of fourteen, raiders captured Patrick and took him as a slave to Ireland, a land of Druids and pagans. Patrick learned the Irish language and customs. While a slave, Patrick’s faith in God grew and he wrote “The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was raised, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same.” “I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain.” When Patrick was twenty, he had a dream in which God told him to leave Ireland by going to the coast. He escaped and found a boat that took him back to Britain and his family. Later Patrick dreamed that Irish were calling, “We beg you,
St. Patrick’s Blue, not green, was the colour long-associated with St. Patrick. Green, the colour most widely associated with Ireland, with Irish people, and with St. Patrick’s Day in modern times, may have gained its prominence through the phrase “the wearing of the green” meaning to wear a shamrock on one’s clothing. At many times in Irish history, to do so was seen as a sign of Irish nationalism or loyalty to the Roman Catholic faith. St. Patrick used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish. The wearing of and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a ubiquitous feature of the saint’s holiday. The change to Ireland’s association with green rather than blue probably began around the 1750s.
