St. Patrick's Day

Since I did a pretty good job on St. Patrick's Day a couple years ago with a post on a book about the man, I'm going to leave well enough alone and just link back to that.

But another thing: I ran across the phrase "the luck of the Irish" today and although I'd never given it any thought before, it suddenly hit me as odd that the Irish would be known for good luck, so I wondered if that was originally an ironic remark referring to their BAD luck. Looked it up and turned out my suspicion was right. Funny how things can get so completely turned around backwards.

But they had some good luck at least on the day Patrick came to them bringing the gospel of Christ.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. He deserves a celebration.

And OK, I do feel obliged to mention that Patrick was NOT a Roman Catholic! I said that in the other post but I have to say it again. He belonged to the Celtic church in England in the 5th century, which preceded the takeover by the Roman Church. He was a bishop in that church which was nothing like being a bishop in the Roman Church, and as an evangelist he and his missionary friends lived in extremely rough conditions. He never wore anything like that ridiculous costume of robes and pointed fish-head thing on his head he's now shown as wearing.