Patrick of Ireland

I was then about sixteen years of age. I did not know the true God. I was taken as a captive to Ireland with many thousands of people, and deservedly so, because we had turned away from God and did not keep his commandments and did not obey our priests, who used to remind us of our salvation. The Lord brought over us the wrath of his anger and scattered us among many nations, even unto the utmost part of the earth, where now my insignificance is placed among strangers.

For I am very much God’s debtor, who gave me such great grace that many people were reborn in God through me and afterwards confirmed, and that clerics were ordained for them everywhere, for a people just coming to the faith, whom the Lord took from the utmost parts of the earth, as he once had promised through His prophets: “To you the Gentiles shall come from the ends of the earth and shall say, ‘How false are the idols that our ancestors got for themselves, and there is no profit in them.’ ” And again: “I have set you as a light among the Gentiles, that you may be for salvation unto the utmost part of the earth.”