Monday morning: The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Celtic Roots
One could almost say that the stage had been set.
The Roman legions have conquered Europe.
The Celtic people having migrated from east to west across Europe and into the British Isles.
Jesus is born in Bethlehem.
Thirty three years later Jesus is crucified; Risen/Ascended/Glorified; Pentecost.
The church spreads from Jerusalem across the Empire.
In 43AD the Roman Legions cross the channel.
The Celtic people are forced by the Roman legions into the fringes of the British Isles (Wales,Scotland, the Hebrides and into Ireland).
What Jesus taught:
Read Matthew 5: 1-12
Rome didn’t welcome this new religion because its members gave greater allegiance to Christ than to the Emperor.
We need to recognise the radical nature of what Jesus taught.
In Chapter 4: 23-25, Matthew tells us that Jesus went throughout Galilee and news about him spread as far as Syria.
Why?
Because in word and deed he preached the Good News of the kingdom.
‘He healed every disease and sickness among the people.’
‘People brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon possessed, the epileptics and the paralytics and he healed them.’
(Matthew 4: 23-25)
So, when in Matthew Chapters 5 – 7 we read that Jesus began to teach the people, we need to remember he was standing among those whom he had healed, among those who had been made whole. They had already experienced what the Good News of the kingdom was all about. Jesus was standing in the midst of a crowd of people whom he had touched.
When Jesus taught,
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’
He is saying, in the words of Dallas Willard:
‘Blessed are the spiritual zeros – the spiritually bankrupt , deprived and deficient, the spiritual beggars without a wisp of religion – when the kingdom of heaven comes upon them.’
(The Divine Conspiracy, Page 114-5)
‘The poor in spirit are called ‘blessed’ by Jesus, not because they are in a meritorious condition, but because, precisely in spite of and in the midst of their ever deplorable condition, the rule of the heavens has moved redemptively upon and through them by the grace of Christ.’
(The Divine Conspiracy, Page 116-117)
That’s very radical teaching ready to turn the world upside down!
As Alison Morgan writes:
‘Jesus is telling these first disciples that the happiness of this world is ultimately an illusion, and that its value system is hollow. In giving it up they will give up something which seems solid, and yet which has a nasty habit of turning to dust just as their fingers reach out to grab it. He is asking them to embrace different values instead and asking them to believe that it is here, and in the eternal relationship with God which they will find as they do, that true happiness lies.’
(The Wild Gospel, Page 116)
This was the new reality that the early Christians were called to live out in a hostile Roman Empire.
They faced persecution yet the church grew and multiplied.
They met in homes, secretly in catacombs.
Used the sign IXTHUS as their ‘password’ (Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour).
Then a dramatic change:
Emperor Constantine, before a crucial battle, saw a vision of a cross and words: ‘In this sign you will conquer’. (His wife Helena was a Christian.)
Painted crosses on the shields of his legions.
Defeated Maxentius, attributed victory to the cross.
From Edict of Milan in 313AD Christians were no longer persecuted but favoured.
Constantine and Helena promoted the rebuilding of Jerusalem and building of churches at sacred sites.
The cross replaced the IXTHUS as the Christian symbol.
Bishops and Priests were granted Roman privileges.
Church leaders took on civic duties.
Church grew in wealth and status.
It became socially and professionally advantageous to be a Christian.
People flocked to join the church.
(Were they coming to Christ or to the Church?)
Numbers of Christians in the Empire increased from 6 million at beginning of 4th Century to 30 million at the end of 4th Century.
But the church did not have the resources to pastor/disciple the new converts.
Now, instead of the Gospel being spoken into the culture of the Empire, the culture of the Empire swamped the church.
By 400AD there was little difference between a Christian and his/her pagan counterpart.
A contemporary writer wrote:
‘With the passing away of the apostles, the multitude of believers began to lose their fervour and especially as crowds began to flock to faith in Christ from foreign nations of all sorts……so the primitive rigour of the faith became attenuated, both among the people and its leaders. Their fervour cooled, many combined their confession of faith with wealth.’
(Cassian, 5th Century)
Numbers of Christians became convinced that the Christian life could not be lived in such a secularised church.
There began a drift of Christians from the urban centres to the perimeters of society.
Sought to live out an authentic Christian lifestyle away from the cities.
‘But those who kept the fervour of the apostles, recalling that former perfection withdrew from their cities and from the society of those who thought this laxness of living permissible for themselves and for the church, to spots on the edges of towns, or more remote places, and there practised privately and in their own groups the things which they remembered the apostles had instituted for the whole body of the church.’
(Cassian 5th Century)
The flight of Christians from the urban societies then further intensified and a movement of Christians to the Egyptian desert began.
There was a twofold impetus to the pilgrimage to the desert:
Firstly, the desert was seen as the place of confrontation with the powers of darkness that were engulfing the church; and
secondly, Christians saw the secular church in the Roman Empire as a ‘sinking ship’ which they had to abandon both to confront Satan in the wilderness, as Jesus had done, and so that they could live an authentic Christian life.
The Banner Team prepared a beautiful set of banners
These hermits lived alone in simple cells but in loose associations and communities. They lived a radical aesthetic lifestyle and some of the well known hermits of the Eastern desert were Anthony, Symeon and Pachomius.
‘Pachomius from his monastery of Tabena had seven thousand men and women living in various congregations under his rule; there were five thousand monks on Mount Nitria.’
(The Desert Fathers, Page 14)
It was a movement of the laity.
People of God seeking the dynamic and committed lifestyle of 1st Century Christians.
Focus on prayer, fasting, waiting on God and spiritual warfare.
Many came seeking counsel and spiritual direction:
Henri Nouwen writes:
‘Who were the desert fathers and mothers? They were men and women who withdrew themselves from the compulsions and manipulations of their power hungry society in order to fight the demons and to encounter the God of love in the desert. They were people who had become keenly aware that after the persecutions and acceptance of Christianity as a ‘normal’ part of society, the radical call of Christ to leave father, mother, brother and sister, to take up the cross and follow him had been watered down to an acceptable comfortable religiosity and had lost its converting power. The Abbas and Ammas of the Egyptian desert had left this world of compromise, adaptation and a lukewarm spirituality and had chosen solitude, silence and prayer as the new way to be living witnesses of the crucified and risen Lord. Thus they became the new ‘martyrs’, witnessing not with their blood, but with their single minded dedication to a humble life of manual work, fasting and prayer.’
(From Desert Wisdom by Henri Nouwen)
and
‘The words we have from them are responses to their fellow hermits, to their disciples and to their occasional visitors. They are concrete answers to concrete questions.’
(From Desert Wisdom by Henri Nouwen)
A Selection of Sayings from the Desert Fathers:
A philosopher asked St Anthony: ‘Father, how can you be enthusiastic when the comfort of books has been taken away from you?’ He replied, ‘My book, O Philosopher, is the nature of created things, and whenever I want to read the Word of God, it is usually in front of me.’
In Scetis, a brother went to see Abba Moses and begged him for a word. And the old man said, ‘Go and sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’
One day, Theophilis, The Bishop of Alexandria, came to Scetis. And the brothers who gathered said to Abba Pambo; ‘Say a word to the bishop, so that his soul may be benefited here.’ The old man replied, ‘If he is not inspired by my silence, he will not be inspired by my words either.’
Well worth browsing through ‘Desert Wisdom’.
All this is important in understanding the Christianity of the Celts.
Its roots are in the desert tradition and we will see in the Christianity of the Celts the same devotion to Christ, the same depth of prayer, the same seeking out of rugged places to engage in spiritual warfare.
We will see the place of both the monastic communities and the place of isolated hermits, both holy men and women being sought out for their wisdom.
As David Adam writes:
‘Unless we seek to understand the ‘desert tradition’ that runs through Celtic spirituality we will not do justice to understanding their way of life and we may miss out on that which would enrich our lives; in fact the place where we experience our resurrection. The desert of God may be the place of renunciation but it is also where the senses are heightened rather than dulled, where life is not settled but forever extended. The call of the desert is a call to see beyond the obvious, to reach for the invisible and to put our trust in God.
The Celtic Christians withdrew from a world that was blind to the presence and sought to live in the depths and wonder of God.’
(A Desert in the Ocean by David Adam, Page 4)
