Saint Patrick and the Shamrock

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About the year 441 a.d., St. Patrick, who has since been called the Apostle of Ireland, went over there bent upon carrying out his long-cherished plan of converting the Irish to Christianity. On one occasion, when preaching before one of their petty kings, he spoke of the Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as being not three Gods, but Three Persons in One God. The king listened in amazement, and at length interrupted him, to ask in the words of one of old, ‘How can these things be?’ St. Patrick stooped and picked a leaf of the shamrock, with which the ground was there carpeted. Then, holding it up, he said, “Do you see this leaf, O king?” “Certainly I do,” replied the king. And now, touching each lobe of the trefoil in succession, Saint Patrick asked the King,

“What is this?”
“A leaf.”
“And this?”
“A leaf.”
“And this?”
“A leaf.”
“As, then, O King, you see and confess that this leaf consists of three leaves, and yet nevertheless is but one leaf; so God the Blessed Trinity consists of Three Divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and yet is but One Lord—God Almighty.” The king saw the force of the illustration, believed in and confessed the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and was baptized into the faith. From the use thus made by St. Patrick of the shamrock in illustrating the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, this leaf has ever since been employed as the national emblem of Ireland.

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