The Path of Celtic Prayer E-Book

Calvin Miller

• Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 205

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Discover an ancient way of prayer that leads us to new union with God."Long ago," Calvin Miller writes, "when the Celts built their own rustic kingdom of God in what would later be the British Isles, their fervor in prayer washed their world in a vital revival." In uncertain and dangerous days of high infant-mortality rates, leprosy and plagues, the Celts breathed candid prayers out of the reality of their lives: Desperate prayers for protection. Praise for the God who was king over all creation. Honest prayers of confession. In these pages, Miller introduces us to six types of Celtic prayer that can connect us to God more deeply by helping us pray out of the circumstances and uncertainties of our own life."This book proposes a kind of prayer that can end our amputated feelings of separateness from God," says Miller. What was true for the Celts is still true for us: "Hunger for Christ keeps us talking to God till our separation is swallowed up in our unending togetherness with him." As rich as the faith they describe, these pages lead us on an ancient path that gives guidance for present and future prayers, until the day the Celts longed for, when all separation is gone and we live forever in the presence of God.

Leseprobe

The Path of Celtic Prayer

An Ancient Way to Everyday Joy

Calvin Miller

www.IVPress.com/books

InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2007 by Calvin Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a student movement active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version® . NIV ® . Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from Where Three Streams Meet by Seán Ó Duinn, ©2000 is used by permission of Columba Press.

Excerpts from Journeys on the Edges by Thomas O’Loughlin (New York: Orbis, 2000) are reprinted with permission of Orbis Books and Darton, Longman and Todd.

Excerpts from Celtic Spirituality by Oliver Davies, ©1999 by Oliver Davies, Paulist Press, Inc., New York, Mahwah, N.J. Used with permission. www.paulistpress.com

Excerpts from A Welsh Pilgrim’s Manual by Brendan O’Malley (Gomer Press, 1989) are reprinted with permission of Gomer Press.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for materials quoted in this book. The author will be pleased to rectify any omissions in future editions if notified by copyright holders.

Design: Cindy Kiple

Images: Nikolaevich/Getty Images

ISBN 978-0-8308-6675-5 (digital) ISBN 978-0-8308-3574-4 (print)

Contents

To the Reader

Introduction

1. Trinity Prayer

2. Scripture Prayer

3. Long, Wandering Prayer

4. Nature Prayer

5. Lorica Prayer

6. Confessional Prayer

Afterword

Notes

Praise for The Path of Celtic Prayer

About the Author

About Formatio

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

To the Reader

I am not a groupie. I am not a celebrant of any new form of “hula-hoop” theology. I did not take up my current interest in Celtic theology because it has achieved a popular fascination. It’s just that something happened to my worldview when I stood on the decks of a ferry crossing from Oban to the Isle of Iona. Call it romantic nonsense if you will, but there are epiphany moments, in which new revelations seem to summon us from a contentment with who we are to new spiritual adventures. These epiphanies enable us to cast off our dull religious comforts in favor of a riskier pilgrimage.

As I stood there surveying Iona, I asked myself, Why in the name of all that is Oklahoma in my origin was I on the rough waters that separate endless islands of the Hebrides archipelago? So I opened up to the possibilities that I was not through learning all about prayer that God wanted me to know.

In the distance across the waters, I could see the Abbey of Iona, not a notable structure when compared with the great cathedrals of Europe, but the late medieval vestige of people who had lived on the island a thousand years before and, who in talking with God in the wild wind and sea, had formed a view of God that sent missionaries around the known world. This fire that burned in the century after Rome had burned was a flame fueled by an ardor that most Western Christians have never known. I wanted to find the flame again. For it is sometimes by looking at the past that the present amends its dead soul, and there dawns a hope that the future will be born with new vitality.

I have since learned I am not alone in the quest.

This book is not a history or cultural examination of the Celts but a book on prayer. From my limited studies of the Celts, I have discovered certain practices and ideas that have enhanced my worship and prayer life. In this book, I hope to offer you some aspects of Celtic spiritual practices as a springboard that might enable your prayer life to reach new heights.

Getting to Know the Celts

Celts have often been called the first Europeans or European aborigines. The word Celt is from the Greek (keltos) and can be translated “alien” or “stranger.” Exactly when or where the Celts came from has fostered a long anthropological debate. Some scholars place their beginnings as far back as 1500 B.C. Others say they came from no further back than 500 B.C. Some believe they had their origin in the regions north of India, while others think they were middle European. Whatever their origin, the Celts have come slowly into our awareness with the advance of archaeology. In the centuries before Christ they seem to have been workers in and perhaps owners of Austrian salt mines. We know for sure that Celtic tribes were in England long before the Saxon and Angles arrived to give it the modern name of “Angle Land” or England.

Julius Caesar fought with the Celts (or Gauls, as they were called on the continent) and bragged about killing over one million of them in his attempt to Romanize the barbarians on the northern frontier of his expanding empire. Although we are not sure, it is possible that later Romanization drove the Celts into what is now modern England, Scotland and Wales, and then finally to Ireland.

Seán Ó Duinn, my favorite Celtic scholar and a Benedictine monk, speaks Gaelic (a Celtic tongue) and is as authentic and home grown as Celtic scholars come. Of his Irish heritage he says:

The remains of this once great civilization, which at its height could be felt as a presence in areas reaching from Ireland to Asia Minor, is now reduced to a tiny remnant in six areas of Western Europe—Brittany, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Isle of Mann, Ireland. The Celtic languages still linger on but only as a whisper. In view of the mighty power of Anglo-American culture, it is surprising that Irish and Welsh are still spoken even in such sadly reduced circumstances. It is surely a sign of their tenacity and vigor in the face of such appalling odds.

While death beckons menacingly at the once great civilization, a lingering breath still remains which perhaps could be the breath of life for the jaded victims of the consumer society. For myth is the great strength of the Celts and myth is associated with the hidden powers of renewal.

By “myth” Ó Duinn really means the mystical soul of Ireland, a heritage that is bringing new insight into genuine spirituality for many Christians.

In Ireland these ancient people met the missionary Patrick, whose evangelistic zeal led thousands of Celts to faith in Christ. There are many popular books that discuss the historical aspects of Patrick’s missionary crusade. These books include Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization (see also Timothy Joyce’s Celtic Christianity, Paulist Press’s Celtic Spirituality, and Philip Freeman’s St. Patrick of Ireland). It may be that the subjects I cover in this book will increase your own hunger to understand the Celtic ways. If so, I will be more than satisfied to have stirred you to consider this new way of bringing vitality to your walk with Christ.

I have written this book for two reasons. First, I want to address the way the Celtic people related to God to keep their devotion centered on the Savior. But I also want to demonstrate how these ancient lovers of God were able to strip away institutional business and empty religiosity that can separate Christians from Christ.

Many Christians suffer from historical nearsightedness. They seem to believe that all real spiritual vitality began with the Reformation or with the Great Awakening or with Charles Haddon Spurgeon. And yet all through history there have been great men and women of God who loved Christ and pursued an ever-deepening relationship with him. It is wholly reasonable to seek among these brothers and sisters of ours a spiritual vitality and a way of life that we seem to have mislaid. Celtic spirituality may be able to breathe its “right now” life into our feeble discipleship.

Within this book I present six principles of prayer I have put to work in my life. I hope that they may be put to work in your life as well. Then Christ will find a living center of praise within the both of us.

The Stowe Missal (an ancient prayer book) was written sometime between A.D. 790 and 820. It is not Celtic in its origin but is Celtic at its heart. If in these pages I can bring you toward the God of the Stowe Missal, we will both find much that we need to bring us into conformity in Christ. The missal calls to us in this way.

Father, all powerful and ever-living God,

we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks through Jesus Christ our Lord.

You (O Father), with your only begotten Son and the Holy Spirit are God. (You are) God, one and immortal;

(You are) God, incorruptible and unmoving;

(You are) God, invisible and faithful;

(You are) God, wonderful and worthy of praise;

(You are) God, strong and worthy of honour;

(You are) God, most high and magnificent;

(You are) God, living and true;

We believe you;

We bless you;

We adore you;

And we praise your name forever more.

(We praise you) through (Christ) who is the salvation of the universe;

through (Christ) who is the life of human beings;

through (Christ) who is the resurrection of the dead.

Through him the angels praise your majesty;

the dominations adore;

the powers of the heaven of heavens tremble;

the virtues and the blessed seraphim concelebrate in exultation;

so grant, we pray you, that our voices may be admitted to that chorus, in humble declaration of your glory;

I invite you therefore to walk with me by the glow of an old lamp whose light burns new in this generation.

Calvin Miller

God shall not

refuse or reject

whoever strives to praise Him

at the beginning and end

of the day.

A WELSH POEM

In my study of the years following the heroic age of the beginnings of Celtic Christianity I discovered that while some characteristics and practices did change, many of the original features of Celtic Christianity endured. . . . [T]he basic vision endured: creation is graced by God and by the immanence of this God; creation is filled with God’s presence and with the presence of those who have died and are now in the bosom of God. The Celtic propensity for intense religious longing endured. A mythic and imaginative stance toward the world continued to be expressed in the great outpouring of literature and art. . . . No matter how things were changing around them, however, there were still many people living an intense Christian and Holy life.

TIMOTHY JOYCE

Introduction

Human beings are innate believers. While agnostics are sometimes celebrated for their unsure notions about God, atheism isn’t likely to take hold in any permanent way. Why? Because we are so needy, helpless and insecure that we remain obsessed with something or Someone greater than ourselves. Not only are we needy, we hurry our lives deathward in a dead heat with that great universal clock that is destined to outrun us. We live face to face with our temporariness. And while we are trapped in the busy, empty now, we are convinced there must be—or must have been—a day when God seemed nearer and more accessible.

Our discontentment with our present affairs keeps us looking backward, hungering for times in our lives when we experienced God as clearly present. Even our casual reading tastes have found us out. The recent rash of novels about Christ’s second coming may be popular because they hold forth a kind of promise that when Jesus comes again, all the pain of our empty age will be swallowed up in the warm presence of God. But at the foundation of such hope lies a reality much greater than current popular fiction. We—at least in our searching moments—want Jesus to come again. Why? We are eager for union with Christ. The second coming promises an end to our roller-coaster relationship with God.

Yes, we are inebriated with a yearning after God. We are like earthly junkies needing our “God fix” to live. “The Celt was very much a God-intoxicated man,” says John McQuarrie. This narcotic state of heart is indeed intoxicating. For when we have drunk deeply of the nature of God, there is born within us a God thirst that can never be slaked by any lesser stream. The Celts of the sixth century also believed that Jesus was coming soon, and their expectation of the second coming created a faith of great vitality.

While later Christians in the Celtic lands did not follow Patrick in viewing the end as imminent, they did believe they were living in the final times. This is what Adomnán wrote in the preface to his Vita Columbae: “In these final times of the earth, (Columba’s) name shall be a light to the oceanic island-provinces.” Slightly later an anonymous Irish preacher wrote: “Our Lord Jesus Christ has announced this to us . . . that the end of this world is coming closer every day. . . . I hope his coming will be in the very near future and that he will judge the whole universe with fire” (In nomine Dei summi, homily 2). This is an alien notion to Christians today, for we think of time as just rolling on, day after day, and while we may measure time as “AD” all this means is that we are using a Christian (or convenient) reckoning system; we no longer place the emphasis where these Celtic writers did, on “the year of the Lord.”

Our failure to perceive Christ’s imminent return as our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) has contributed to our feelings of separateness from God. The problem is not so much that we seldom think about his coming but that we are no longer excited by the prospect. Paul says there is a crown laid up for all those who love his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8). But do we love and anticipate his appearing? What of our blasé contentment with things as they are, Christless and self-managed? Many of us are secular captives, separated from God and content with the divorce.

This book proposes a kind of prayer that can end our amputated feelings of separateness from God. I believe that God’s seeming remoteness can be partially healed by looking backward to a distant, vital day. Long ago when the Celts built their own rustic kingdom of God in what would later be the British Isles, their fervor in prayer washed their world in a vital revival.

The Celts found God no casual diversion. They were too needy to talk about spiritual things over tea cups and pastries. As with much of Europe, the world was always falling down around them. Infant mortality was as high as life was short. Leprosy was common. The plague, pandemic. Medicine was unknown and hospitals were centuries in the future. Their todays were unsteady and their tomorrows obscure.

In desperate times, living becomes an altar where you pray and sing because the only good news of the day is that God lives longer than you do. And God promises you that even if your days are few, your dying is not a wall, but a set of gates. Beyond this portal lies a reason to esteem your life. God stirs the ashes of your old hopes when you have faced the fact that your lifespan, like that of the Celts, is short. But your prayers endure forever. None of them die. They live in the air about us and they move us like the breeze of Pentecost. They may appear dead, but they sometimes lay like an ember in the dull, gray ash of the present moment. Then the Spirit blows, the coals flare and the fire burns hot. Even now, the Celtic embers of spirituality are catching fire all around us.

But a blazing church is not what most people find when they go to a typical worship service today. Disinterest, sparse attendance, boredom: these are more common perceptions. British writer Ian Smith berated the church for its lack of spiritual vitality:

When little is demanded from members, little is given. If commitment requires no more than occasional attendance at Communion, it is not surprising that the average level of participation among members is low. There are large numbers who belong and believe, but contribute very little. In order to grow—indeed, just to stand still—it is essential that the church starts to tap and to mobilize these underutilized resources. The important thing is not only regular attendance at worship but involvement in church activities during the week. How can this level of commitment be achieved? The answer lies in inverting the first principle: when much is demanded from members, much is given.

Such spiritual lethargy was not the nature of Celtic trust. Vitality—flame and gale—was the heart of the Celtic faith. This is both the practice and the hope of all that is being born in current Celtic revival. Early in the fifth century Patrick (c. 390-c. 460) brought a living faith from Britain to Ireland, then in the sixth century Columba (c. 521-597) brought it to Scotland. These two rustic missionaries were like a spiritual wind, driving its warm advance across a cold and Christless world. From the Spirit’s breath a new kind of worship is once again rising out of ancient devotion. The Celtic way born long ago in the cold, dank Hebrides Islands stirs anew.

The Celtic Forms of Prayer

The Celts’ way of devotion was so rich and varied that it is foolhardy to limit them to a mere six types of prayer. Yet this is precisely what I want to do—in order to allow us to get some practical handles on their devotion. Thinking of it in this limited way will allow us to grasp the significant aspects of their devotion that are transferable to our age.

The Celts prayed in ways that were most natural and contextual in their society. Like all “unmissionized” people, the Celts were not just idly waiting for someone to bring them a theology. When the first missionaries arrived, the Celts had their own pantheon and natural theologies. They, like Israel in Exodus with its Baals and icons, lived outside a lot. They worshiped their own gods they had drawn from the natural world. Because nature is too vast for humans to grasp, the pre-Christian Celts looked to the gods of sea and forest for help. They thought these outdoor deities could be manipulated with prayers and incantations. A dry cow, a sick sheep, a toxic well, a fevered child, the advance of plague: all of these things had to be dealt with. So they appealed to their pantheon of gods with songs and prayers and incantations that they believed would bend divine favor in their direction.

Into this mix of nature and faith, the good news of Christ, brought by Patrick and Columba, swelled like new music among the natives of Ireland and Scotland. Patrick and Columba were saints in the best sense of the word. We sometimes get the feeling that saints are heavenly minded Christians who fast and pray until they are interrupted by someone needing a miracle. After performing the miracle, they go right back to praying. But in truth, Patrick and Columba were pastors in touch with the communities they served. They lived among the unconverted and preached evangelistically. They shaped their cultures with the passion of Christ’s original apostles.

When Patrick, Columba and other Christian missionaries brought the gospel to Ireland and Scotland, the Celts ceased being insecure pagans and became secure Christians. And because they remained rural peoples, they came to see the Christian God as the King of nature. Having made the world and all that was in it, God had displayed himself in every aspect of his creation. This invocation typifies Celtic devotion:

Thou King of the Moon

Thou King of the Sun

Thou King of the Planets

Thou King of the Stars

Thou King of the Globe

Thou King of the Sky

Oh! Lovely thy Countenance

Thou Beauteous Beam

Celtic spirituality is filled with nature runes (poems or incantations) extolling the virtues of the triune God as he fills the natural world. The Celts sometimes struggled not to confuse God and nature; God is always greater than and separate from his creation. Nonetheless, we have much to learn from the way in which they allowed nature to inform their spirituality. For example, in this rune, we see Jesus, who they understood as being one with the Father, as the “Lightener of the Stars.”

Behold the Lightener of the Stars

On the crests of the clouds,

And the choralists of the sky

Lauding Him.

Coming down with acclaim

From the Father above,

Harp and lyre of song

Sounding to Him.

Six Forms of Prayer

At the heart of Celtic devotion was a force called the neart (sometimes spelled nirt). The neart was the spiritual energy behind all living things. “In St. Patrick’s Breastplate [an ancient Celtic prayer], the person rises up and binds himself with the neart or creative power coming from the Trinity, from the acts of Christ’s life, from the angels and saints and from the elements—the forces of nature: sky, sun, moon, earth, sea, rock.” When we pray to the triune God, we tap into the neart. In our pursuit of this spiritual energy, this power of passion, we will examine the following six forms of Celtic prayer.

1. Trinity praying. God, for the Celts, is always triune—the Three-in-One—and they served this great paradox well. They never allowed the Father and the Son and the Spirit to become separate. Celts thought of God as “the three of my love.” While they held an adoring view of the Trinity, their perception was never either too syrupy or too formal. A strong trinitarian formula pervades the whole of Christian Celtic literature. Consider this simple prayer for grace:

I am bending my knee

In the eye of the Father who created me,

In the eye of the Son who died for me,

In the eye of the Spirit who cleansed me.

This inclusion is an example of what I call “Trinity praying.” It entails praying to the full Godhead. Generally speaking, the God who creates and pervades the natural world is never separate from the Son who redeems, nor the Spirit who indwells each believer.

The Trinity, for the Celts, orders all of life and pervades all of nature. The triune God, for the Celts, was not so austere or grand he couldn’t take care of ordinary concerns. There are many runes and prayers that these ancients recited to free themselves of daily aches and pains. One of these many trinitarian prayers was for clearing a mote from one’s eye:

In name of Father,

In name of Son,

In name of Spirit.

Triune, all alike in might holy,

Triune, all alike in power of wondrous works,

Triune, all alike in righteousness and love.

My trust is in the Being of life.

The mote that is in the blind eye,

That the true King of my devotion,

Will gently place it hither on my tongue.

The Celts also prayed to the Trinity to protect them from the slurs of speech by which others directed their venom of hate toward them, and another prayer to the Trinity to protect a newborn babe from epilepsy:

In the name of Father,

In the name of Son

In the name of Spirit,

Three just and holy.

While they prayed, they wound a straw rope around the baby’s body three times. Then the rope was cut into three equal lengths. On and on go these prayers offered to chart the simple course of everyday life. No need was too miniscule for the Trinity to help with.

In looking at their trinitarian entreaties, we might wonder at their naive simplicity in calling all of heaven to meet their need. But they did not see such praying as unreasonable. Simple or not, there was something beautiful in their utter dependency on God. He was, after all, their Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, and definitely on their side in every issue of life.

2. Praying the Scriptures.