Children’s Sermon: Saint Patrick Loves His Enemies

Use this Saint Patrick’s children’s sermon to teach kids to do good to those who wrong them.

Scripture: Luke 6:27-28

Needed: picture of a leprechaun

Children’s Sermon

Ask students, Who can tell me what holiday it is today? (St. Patrick’s Day!)

Can anyone tell me anything about St. Patrick?

(Show your picture of a leprechaun.) St. Patrick was a very short man who lived at the end of the rainbow, and if you found him, you could take his pot of gold.

No, that’s not right.

St. Patrick was a regular person who lived in England. But when he was a teenager, he was kidnapped by some people from Ireland, and they made him be their slave!

How would you like to be a slave?

How would you feel about people who kidnapped you and made you be their slave?

I wouldn’t like to be a slave. I would probably be pretty angry at, and maybe even hate, someone who kidnapped me and made me be their slave.

Well, six years later, Patrick escaped. He went back to England, and he studied how to be a priest, or a pastor. Then, do you know what he did? He went back to Ireland and to the people who had kidnapped him, and he told them about Jesus!

Even though they had done something bad to him by kidnapping him and making him their slave, he did something good to them by telling them about Jesus.

And that’s what God wants us to do too. When people do wrong things to us, God wants us to do good things to them. We never do bad things back to people. We follow St. Patrick’s example by doing good to everyone, even people who have done bad to us.

(Read Luke 6:27-28.)

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

And St. Patrick was so successful in getting the people of Ireland to believe in Jesus, that eventually most of the people in the country became Christians.

Closing Prayer

Lord, help us to be like St. Patrick. Help us to do good to people who wrong us. Help us to share your love with everyone. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

You can also find this children’s sermon for Kindle or in print in my book, Holy Days: Children’s Sermons for the Holidays.