The last twenty years has seen a surge of interest in Celtic Christianity. A number of books have been written on the subject and their authors have been invited to give lectures and lead seminars. I first became interested in Celtic Christian spirituality, reading Esther DeWaal’s The Celtic Way of Prayer, Michael Mitton’s Restoring the Woven Cord: Strands of Celtic Christianity for the Church Today, and Ray Simpson’s Exploring Celtic Spirituality: Historic Roots for Our Future in the late 1990s.
The ancient Celtic Church in Ireland was not an episcopally organized church, but a monastic church with no organized center. A similar Christian Church existed in Britain, and was not transformed into an episcopal Church for centuries.
The monastic communities that comprised the Celtic Church formed loose networks based upon who founded them. Celtic monastic communities were founded in a number of ways. Two of the most common were that a Celtic “saint”—a Christian known for his holiness and godliness—would attract disciples and they eventually would form a monastic community. A team of two or more monks from an existing monastic community would leave that community and travel to an area that had no monastic community and would start a new monastic community in that area.
During the heyday of the Celtic Church the monastic communities that comprised it were not the cloistered communities of monks living apart from the world under religious vows that monasteries were in the East and eventually would become in the West. Celtic monastic communities contained men, woman, and children. Some monks were married; others were celibate.
The Celtic Church did not require celibacy in its clergy as well as its monks. St. Patrick’s father was a deacon and his grandfather was a presbyter.
The Celtic Church, however, did place a strong emphasis upon personal holiness and godliness. Celtic Christians practiced Scripture reading, meditation, prayer, fasting, and the other spiritual disciplines. Among these disciplines was the practice of selecting an anamchara, or soul friend, to serve as an accountability partner, confidant, guide, and mentor. A number of the most noted Celtic “saints” had a woman for their anamchara.
While a circular earthen wall enclosed Celtic monastic communities, the purpose of the wall was not to separate the community from the world but to set apart the site where the monks built their wattle and daub huts and wooden and later stone churches as a holy place, dedicated to God. The monks did not cut themselves off from the surrounding pagan communities. Rather they interacted with the pagans in the nearby communities, and extended their hospitality to them.
The Celtic monks interspersed periods of engagement with periods of solitary isolation, withdrawing to a remote spot such as an uninhabited island in order to be alone with God. They would return from these times of private retreat, spiritually refreshed and reinvigorated to carryout God’s mission in the world.
To read more, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment