Celtic Spirituality (April 2023)

Dear Friends

Recently, I’ve been reminded of the sheer scale of the vision offered by what we often call Celtic spirituality. One great example is ‘St. Patrick’s Breastplate’. This prayer is in the form of an ancient druidic incantation ahead of a journey and originates in fifth century Ireland. It has found its way, in various versions, into our hymn books as ‘I Bind Unto Myself This Day’. The hymn is the translation of Cecil Frances Humphries (1818-1895).

I share it, as far as I know in the full original form of the prayer, as another offering in this month’s newsletter. It is ancient, and thus some of its language and ideas may jar. Here, I just want to dwell upon some of its final thoughts. These may be the most familiar lines: “Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man [sic] who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.”

What has caught me, all over again, is both the depth of assurance here and the sheer universal presence that this prayer encapsulates. April brings us to the end of Lent. We pass on into Holy Week with all that it contains of our remembering of the final days of Jesus. As the lights go out to mark the end of worship on Maundy Thursday, as Good Friday unfolds and Holy Saturday holds its terrible silence, we are travelling with the Son of God into his tomb. But then comes Easter.

St. Patrick’s prayer is loved so much, I suspect, because it manages to say something of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in ways that reach far beyond the cleverest theology. This is a prayer that locates us somewhere. It places us with someone, and we find him to be everywhere we ever can be. Christ is now within our geography, at every point of our compass. His is the invisible yet utterly real presence as close to us as the air surrounding us. He moves with us as we move. He rests with us as we rest. Yet even this is not enough real presence for St. Patrick!

Christ is in those we meet. In the faculties of others as in our own speaking, seeing and hearing, Christ resides. Deeper still. Christ occupies minds and hearts so that the thoughts and feelings of anyone who thinks of us become his home. And, by extension, my mind and heart are equally home to him. My thoughts, my words, my deeds, become venues for the resurrection. Christ is risen in what I say and do. Now that is both the blessing of Easter and the scale of its call upon me!

Thinking about the resurrection can take us in all sorts of directions. But I wonder if there could be anything more intimate and yet more expansive that this prayer’s vision of the one who leaps the tomb, escapes history and settles in ahead, behind, beside, above, below, and within me? That is an Easter vision that I find utterly, gloriously, evocatively, compelling.

Happy Easter! Truly!

Yours in Christ and in celebration of his rising from the dead,

Neil