22 November 2020 – Neil Millar
Over the past five weeks we’ve been exploring different aspects of Celtic Christianity – its history and theology, the Celtic experience and understanding of the world. We’ve touched on their commitment to prayer and poetry, their appreciation of the physical world, and of life’s pattern and flow. This morning, in the final reflection of this series, I want to draw out four more significant aspects of Celtic spirituality – dimensions of their practice of faith that seem to me fruitful to bring into conversation with our own.
When you read the writings of Celtic saints, the theme of penitence is hard to miss. While the hagiographers tended to portray them as superhuman wonder workers, they themselves were modest and contrite. ‘My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person,’ is how St Patrick begins his Confessio … I am ‘the least of believers… looked down upon by many.’ In a similar vein, in the poem Adiutor Laboratorium, Columba describes himself as ‘a little man, trembling and most wretched, rowing through the infinite storm of this age’. There was a strong sense of the holiness of God in Christianity and with it, ‘fear’ of God; fear in the sense of reverence and awe, but also fear of judgment and damnation. These saints were acutely aware of their weakness and capacity for sin, and in response, they sought wholeheartedly to purify their living. Penitence was for them the path to this purity of life, and by the fifth century, the church had a complex system of penances by which errant Christians might obtain remission for their sins. So much so, that Penitential Manuals – long lists linking specific sins with suitable penances – are ‘the largest single category of document surviving from the early centuries of indigenous Christianity in the British Isles’ (Bradley 2018.97).
These documents can look coldly formulaic and legalistic to our eyes, but they were rooted in a number of insights about God and the human condition. The sense that for every sin there is a remedy conveys the liberating truth that divine mercy has no limits, that all things can be reconciled. We tend to think of penance as punishment, but for these Celtic Christians primarily it was about restoration – ‘healing the soul through a process of true repentance, confession and forgiveness’. These Penitentials were often ordered around the ‘eight terrible temptations’ or ‘evil thoughts’ (from Evagrius, desert father) (gluttony, fornication, greed, pride, despair/despondency, wrath, vanity and sloth) and they worked on the principle of curing by contraries. So, for example, a person guilty of gluttony would be directed to a program of fasting, and someone guilty of talkativeness and gossip, to practise regular silence. Penance was viewed as medicine, medicine for the soul, and every bit as important as medicine for the body. I really think there’s something in this, something largely lost in our age and spirituality. Something, I hope we might explore further in the coming year.
There was nothing mechanical or magical here. Penitence was understood as a practice; a remediating process, a journey of steps into holiness, maturity, wholeness – like pilgrimage. And in this regard, interestingly, when I walked my first pilgrimage, I heard it said that everyone must make their own Camino, but that no one could make it alone. In the Celtic context, the same could be said for penitence. It was a deeply personal journey, no one could do it for you, but neither could you or were you expected make it alone, without support. A distinctive and inspirational feature of Celtic Christianity was that the monks (and many of the laity) had an anamchara, a soul-friend to assist their way. A soul friend journeyed alongside their penitent as a mentor, confessor, spiritual guide, and companion in adversity. It was a noble task; and responsibility. The eight-century Rule of Tallaght prescribes that a soul friend must be ‘learned in the rule of conduct laid down in Scripture and in the rules of the saints. Their role was ‘to correct all impiety’, but without harshness, ‘with humility and with laughter’. ‘You do well to correct’, it enjoins, but not to reprove; ‘the mind rebels against reproof’ but is ‘humble at being corrected.’ To be sure, it’s unlikely that every lay Celt had an individual soul friend in the manner of the monks, and this may explain why large numbers of them made pilgrimage to places like Iona, to see men like Columba, when they felt burdened or defeated by sin. For all its demand, the Celtic penitential system displayed remarkable pastoral sensitivity, which proved to be profoundly liberating for many at that time.
Which leads me to a second feature of Celtic responsiveness – praise. Words of praise echo through the poems, prayers, liturgies and lives of the Celtic saints. Praise of God, praise with God’s creation. Praise the Maker, praise the Maker’s Son, praise the Spirit, praise the three-in-one. Praise in the morning, praise in the evening; the continuous praise of God and of God’s wondrous acts was central to the life of Celtic monasteries, and constantly enjoined by the Psalms in which they were steeped. Being a Christian wasn’t primarily a matter of belief – subscribing to a set of doctrines; it was about joining with others, and indeed the whole creation, in praising the sovereignty of God and acknowledging dependence on God’s provision and mercy. ‘Only a fool would fail to praise God in his might, when the tiny mindless birds praise him in their flight’, an early Irish poem begins. The Saltair na Rann, or Psalter of the Verses, so-called because it’s divided into 150 verses (like the biblical psalter), opens with a magnificent praise of God as king, actively engaged in the creation of the world. ‘My own King, King of the pure heavens’, it begins; ‘without pride, without contention, who didst create the folded world, my King ever-living, ever victorious.’ On and on it goes, in a manner totally appropriate to the theme of Christ the King. The ‘King who hewed gloriously, with energy, out of the very shapely primal stuff, the heavy, round earth with foundations, length and breadth’. The ‘King who shaped… the circle of the firmament, the globe, fashioned like a goodly apple, truly round…’. There’s a quality of joyousness in this praise poetry – ‘all fire and air, praise and prayer and dedication of the heart’, is how Robin Flower describes it (in de Waal 2019.62) and there’s plenty more like it.
Closely allied to this disposition towards praise was a practice of blessing and benediction. The lives of the Celtic saints are full of instances where they bless people, animals and even inanimate objects. Admonán describes Columba blessing a fruit tree, a block of salt, a pail of milk and a small round stone from the river, as well as his monks, the island of Iona, and its inhabitants. Celtic liturgies frequently focus on blessing, and there are descriptions of people coming to Irish and Welsh monasteries not just for counsel and to be prescribed penance, but also to have a word of blessing spoken over them.
A third feature of the Celtic Christian response was poverty – understood in both material and spiritual terms. ‘In what manner are we to imitate Christ?’ asks the fifth century tract, ‘On Riches’ (attributed to Pelagius). ‘In poverty, if I am not mistaken, not in riches; in humility, not in pride; not worldly glory; by despising money, not coveting it’.
Poverty was a favourite theme in sermons and theological writings from this time, and with it a call to be generous and hospitable to those in need. ‘Let us share with the poor’, Columbanus preached, ‘For to whom belongs to the kingdom of heaven save to the poor?’ In the Rule of Columbanus, the monks are specifically enjoined to ‘avoid greed’ and ‘things surplus to their needs’ and even ‘to desire them’. ‘While they shall have much in heaven, they should be satisfied on earth with the bare minimum’, he writes, ‘knowing that greed is leprosy for monks’. For the disciples of Christ ‘it is betrayal and ruin’.
This material attitude was very much aligned with the cultivation of spiritual poverty. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’, Jesus said (Matt 5), and the monks heard in this a call to lowly service. The Irish Life of Columba portrays the saint removing the sandals of tired monks in order to wash their muddied feet, bringing their share of corn in from the fields on his own back, and grinding it for them. Humility was related to its root sense of staying close to the earth – the humus. ‘God lives also amongst the pots and pans’, Teresa of Avila once quipped, and in this tradition, Celtic Christianity affirmed the value of contentment with ‘little things’ – hidden acts of humble sacrifice. ‘Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou mine inheritance now and always. Thou and thou only though first in my heart, High King of heaven, my treasure thou art.’
And finally, the linked virtues of patience and perseverance were much lauded in the writings of Celtic Christians. Patience was an essential attribute of faith and was connected with waiting and acceptance. ‘Whatever happens to me – good or ill – I ought to accept with an even temper and always give thanks to God who has shown me that I can trust him without limit or doubt’, Patrick wrote in his Confessio. And the story of Brendan’s voyage to the promised land of the saints could be taken as an allegory extolling the virtues of perseverance (that’s him on the inside page of your service sheet). Before setting out he and his companions completed a 40 day fast in three-day periods. Their journey across the ocean, visiting many islands and having many encounters, including with the sea monster Jasconius, took over seven years. It reminds me of the Odyssey, and the importance of sticking with and learning from the experiences, the frustrations and failing that shackle and slow, and yet also constitute our way.
So here we are – and what a journey this six week series has been for us! Today also marks the final Sunday in the church’s year – and what a year it’s been – raging fires and smoke, storms and hail, and then Covid … Like Brendan, Columba, Patrick and Ninian, we too have had to practise patience and perseverance, to accept a kind of exile from our church building and many familiar activities. Their commitment to persevere was never just about doggedly carrying on despite it all. There’s a warmth and responsiveness, a sense of trust, a desire to grow; to become more true – dealing with sin, caring one for another; praisingthe larger life of God and God’s wild, mysterious, beautiful and at times threatening world. They related to the life of faith as an adventure – a peregrinatio of the spirit; moving towards the God who is always moving towards them – always coming.
Next Sunday, Advent begins. And we begin again, repeating the pattern of the church’s year, a pattern designed to draw us deeper into the love of God. The adventure continues. Inspired by the witness of our Celtic forebears in the faith we go on, praying that our lives too may bear witness to the transforming grace that creates, recreates, and calls us home. Amen.
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