Celtic Prayer

“After I came to Ireland - every day I  had to tend the sheep, and many times a day I prayed - the love of God and his fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountains; I used to get up for prayers before daylight, through snow, through frost, through rain, and felt no harm, and there was no sloth in me - as I now see, because the spirit within me was then fervent.”                              From St Patrick’s Confessions

A prayer of SIMPLICITY

The Celts read the scripture that said “Pray without ceasing” and set out to do just that. Their prayer was down to earth and practical.

 

A sense of PRESENCE

God is both immanent and transcendent, close and mysterious. Celtic Christians had a strong awareness of God’s close presence. They also had none of the dualism of Greek philosophy that riddled the early church elsewhere, creating a sacred/secular divide in the world. For them, creation was good, and the Creator God is present and interested in the ordinary, everyday things of life.

 

There were prayers for getting up and going to bed, for lighting and keeping the fire, for milking the cow, for rites of passage, a spirituality of home as much as church building. These prayers were handed down through the generations; in the late 19th century Alexander Carmichael collected religious poems, prayers and songs in the Inner and Outer Hebrides - prayers which may have very ancient roots - and published them as Carmina Gadelica

A need for PROTECTION

Their world was hostile and dangerous physically and spiritually...a keen sense of God’s presence brought and awareness of the presence and power of spiritual evil as well.

 

Two kinds of Celtic prayer illustrate this:

 

Lorica, or breastplate prayers, reminiscent of Ephesians 6 in the New Testament, which speaks about putting on the armour of God. Patrick’sBreastplate, is a good example of this.

 

 

Caim, or encircling prayers, reminiscent of Psalm 125:2, which talks about how “the Lord surrounds and protects his people…” In this prayer, one can actually draw a physical circle, by stretching out the right arm and turning clockwise, while praying the prayer. This is not like a magic spell, but is a ritual demonstrating the reality of God’s protection.

An example of a Caim prayer can be found here.