Christ is at the centre of the Celtic understanding and practice of Christianity. Christ is the key, the cornerstone. He is our way into the great mystery of the Trinity, into the protecting and enfolding presence of God which constantly surrounds us. He is the presence that walks with us through life, protecting us from danger and opening our eyes to see him everywhere we look. For Celtic Christians, Christ truly is “the way, the truth and life.” (John 14:6)
St. Patrick’s prayer celebrates the many aspects of the mystery of Christ: his incarnation, his baptism, his death and resurrection, his ascension and his anticipated return. Most of all, however, the prayer glories in the presence of Christ with us. That Christ is present in our world and in each of us is taken as a fact; it is simply the reality in which we live. Christ is here, now, waiting for us to call on him so that he can fill us with his life and love and Spirit.
“We have no need to go searching,
For the phrase that sets the heart burning,
We’ll hear it…
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.”
(Patrick Kavanagh)
Christ is with us, Christ is in us, Christ is all around us, in all who we do and are. St. Patrick and the Celtic Christians knew this because they lived it. The world, for them, is charged with the transfiguring presence of Christ. They understood what St. Paul was saying when he said, “In him we live and move and have our being.” Everything we do, whether we are rising, or sitting, or lying is utterly different because we do it in Christ and with Christ and for Christ.
It is the Lord, in the dawning,
In the renewal, in the arrival, in the new day.
It is the Lord, in the crowd,
In the church, in the conversation, in the crisis.
It is the Lord, in our joys,
In our sorrows, in our sickness, in our health.
It is the Lord, in the stable,
In the humble, in the stranger, in the poor.
It is the Lord, risen and returned,
Alive for evermore, giving me new life, saving me in strife.
It is the Lord.
(David Adam)
Christ, however, is not an idol to be possessed or propitiated. As David Adam says, “the Celtic Church did not so much seek to bring Christ as to discover Him: not to possess Him, but to see him ‘in friend and stranger’; to liberate the Christ who is already there.” We fail to see Christ, not because he is absent, but because we are blind. Thus, Patrick prays that Christ will be in his seeing, in his hearing, in his speaking, in his loving so that all who look upon him will see Christ and all whom he looks upon will be Christ – an extraordinary and mystical vision of Christ in all and through all and for all.
This leads us to live as Christ lives, to love and serve all whom we meet, because “whatever we do to the least of these little ones who are members of my family, you do it to me.” (Matt 25:40) An old Irish rune captures this well:
I saw a stranger yesterday,
I put food for him in the eating place,
Drink for him in the drinking place,
Music for him in the listening place;
And in the Holy Name of the Trinity
He blessed myself and my house,
My possessions and my family.
And the lark said as she sang:
It is often, often, often,
Christ comes disguised as a stranger.
Finally, if Christ is at the centre of Celtic Christianity, so too is the cross which features so strongly in artifacts and manuscripts remaining from this time. The cross is a reminder not just of the redemption Christ has won for us but of the fact that, even in our deepest sufferings and sorrows, Christ is with us. The Irish Celts knew great sorrow as they lived in turbulent times, through invasions and oppression and all the evils that violence brings. Yet their sense of the constant presence of Christ never faltered. In this presence, they found the courage to go on, knowing that, however dark the night, the morning light always comes.
The Christ-centredness of Celtic Christianity presents us with a real challenge and a real opportunity today: can we look to Christ at the centre of our lives and walk with confidence in his all-encompassing presence as they did?
