- Psalm 78.5-7

The advice of a devout sage is a great asset if one wishes to avoid punishment. No matter how much you esteem your strength of will, place yourself under the direction of another.

  - The Rule of Comghall, Irish, 6th century

In spite of our present widespread practice within the Christian community, there is no virtue in being ignorant of one’s heritage.

The tendency today, in living our faith, is to seek out only what is new and innovative and hip. Doctrine is out. Liturgy is out. Pop culture and high tech are in. Postmodern relativism, in the form of tolerance disguised as love, has eliminated the need for discipline. And so forth.

Church leaders today generally tend to ignore or disregard the long heritage of counsel and example from our forebears in the faith. This practice is to be deplored.

We are but the latest link in a chain of belief and practice that stretches all the way back to Abraham, Noah, and Adam, with an abundance of faithful witnesses linked up in between. No, we cannot read every work of every Church father, theologian, or reformer. And we cannot learn to appreciate everything in our vast, rich heritage of Christian culture. Even if we did, we would not be required to agree with all we read or study.

But there is real wisdom to be gained in placing ourselves under the direction of a few trusted advisors from the history of the Church. I find many aspects of the period of Celtic Christianity to be silly, distracting, and even a little absurd. But these do not outweigh the sound instruction, spiritual insight, and reliable examples that are to be discovered among the primary and secondary literature of this period.

You may not gravitate to our Celtic fathers as earnestly as I, but there are many other epochs of Church history, each with its own valuable and devout sages, from which you might draw strength for following Jesus in our time. Our forebears have faithfully recorded and handed down their views, experiences, insights, and conclusions on a great many matters of significance for our day. Let us not be so foolish as to discredit their advice through ignorance, neglect, or willful refusal to be taught.

Petrarch once wrote, “Each famous author of antiquity whom I recall places a new offence and another cause of dishonor to the charge of later generations, who, not satisfied with their own disgraceful barrenness, permitted the fruit of other minds and the writings that their ancestors had produced by toil and application, to perish through insufferable neglect. Although they had nothing of their own to hand down to those who were to come after, they robbed posterity of its ancestral heritage.”

Ouch.

Search out the ancient writers, and let them shed fresh light on your daily struggles and opportunities.