Читать книгу 366 Celt: A Year and A Day of Celtic Wisdom and Lore - Carl McColman - Страница 35

The great achievement of Christianity in the Celtic world came not from how it triumphed over the pagan spirituality that existed prior to its arrival, but—on the contrary—how it more or less seamlessly integrated the earth-honoring traditions of the pagan Celts into its singular vision of faith. Celtic Christianity is nature Christianity. Nowhere is this more clearly set forth than in the Lorica of Saint Patrick, a poem-prayer that invokes Divine protection:

I bind unto myself today

The virtues of the star-lit heaven,

The glorious sun’s life-giving ray,

The whiteness of the moon at even,

The flashing of the lightning free,

The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,

The stable earth, the deep salt sea

Around the old eternal rocks.

(Translated by Cecil F. H. Alexander)

The entire poem is primarily about protection in Christ (as befits a Christian poem). But as the above stanza clearly shows, the grace of Celtic Christianity is mediated as fully through nature as through church or word or sacrament.