Abducted as a minor, he was carried to a foreign place and enslaved to labor against his will for years. When he found a miraculous way back home, he seized the opportunity and was reunited with his beloved family.

I think now of how he might have fared afterward according to my own culture’s standards.

Many people would have, at the very least, harbored awful feelings towards the people group from that foreign place, despising anyone of their ethnicity and every expression of their culture.

Most people would have just wanted to stay home with their family.

Some people would have become hypervigilant about every possible person who could pose a threat to them or their family at any future point.

And a few people would have raised an army to go back and fight the original captors, demanding retribution for all the damage those people had done.

This young man could have understandably declared his hatred for that people. But he chose instead to return to them with love and communicate that love to them through their very own culture.

He certainly had the chance to stay with his family. But he gave it up, leaving his home behind for the remainder of his life.

He could have lived out his days in fear and paranoia. But he chose instead to walk in paths of faith and trust, exuding a calm and strength that only comes in a life when love has smothered fear.

And, if the records are true and he really came from a noble family, he likely would have been able to raise an army to take across the sea so that he might exact justice on human terms. But he did not, choosing instead to let the Spirit ruling over him do the conquering of hearts and minds.

Last week, we noted how Jael dealt a literal blow of justice upon a threatening enemy. And such violent acts are often what we think of when we consider the word “justice.” Death by some form of bloodiness at its most extreme, sentencing by a judge or other authority at a lesser extreme.

We don’t think of dedicating the rest of one’s life to loving the very people who tried to destroy us as justice. Mercy or grace perhaps. Superhuman ethical perspective perhaps. Taking leave of one’s senses perhaps. But not justice.

But what if, in a different line of thinking, the life of Patrick shows us justice lived out in another way?

What if his ability to love his former enemies and even embrace them as his new, own people was built on a foundation of trusting that God knew what justice was yet needing to be done and that God would do it?

Does it take more courage to violently administer justice or to wait and give one’s enemies the chance to turn and seek forgiveness?

When I look at Patrick’s life, I think of another saint’s admonition, written a few hundred years previously: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Indeed, in his calling and his obedience, just as in the life of the Lord he followed, Patrick showed us a different way of honoring justice and ushering in rightness.