trusted online casino malaysia
Realizing the presence, promise, and power of the Kingdom of God.
Celtic Legacy

Facets of a Rule

Living by rule meant loving God and neighbors.

Living by Rule (3)

In this lies the heart of the rule: to love Christ, to shun wealth, to remain close to the heavenly king, and to be gentle towards all people.

                                                - The Rule of Comghall

A rich deposit
The monastic rules surviving from the period of the Celtic Revival (ca. 430-900 AD) are not many, but they offer keen insights to the heart of this movement. We owe a debt of gratitude to Uinsean Ó Maidín for assembling and translating many of these rules in a single volume, The Celtic Monk. As we look more closely into these rules we can discern core aspects of the wisdom and discipline that fueled the fires of revival, renewal, and awakening during this period.

Unlike Columbanus’ Monks’ Rule, the rules collected by Uinsean Ó Maidín appear to have been written rather late in this period, certainly later than the names to which most of them are ascribed. Nevertheless, we can assume that these rules represent a faithful reflection of the most important principles and practices which Celtic Christian leaders believed to be most important, and which they labored to inculcate and preserve. They constitute a rich deposit of spiritual and historical insight to what were the driving forces of the Celtic Revival.

In these rules we some common facets or components. As the rules are intended to provide order and structure for monastic life, they are necessarily limited in their focus. However, when we recall that the members of a monastic fellowship conducted ministry among the larger surrounding community, they must certainly have brought into that work the vision, disciplines, and outcomes learned and submitted to within the monastic enclosure.

We may discern four facets common to each of these rules: The Purpose of the Rule; The Ends of Community Life; The Essential Disciplines; The Structure of the Community. Not all the rules in The Celtic Monk contain each of these facets in equal measure; nevertheless, by looking carefully we can create a kind of composite understanding of all four of these facets as they were practiced throughout the period of the Celtic Revival.

We will consider each of these in turn, beginning with The Purpose of the Rule.

The purpose of a rule
The rules in The Celtic Monk are in agreement with Columbanus. The purpose for constructing a rule to guide the life of a community of spiritual brethren is to nurture love for God and neighbors:

In this lies the heart of the rule: to love Christ, to shun wealth, to remain close to the heavenly king, and to be gentle towards all people (The Rule of Comghall).

Love God with all your heart and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as you would yourself (The Rule of Colmcille).

This is the path which leads to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus, the all powerful: Let all people love God in heart and deed. To love God with all your heart is not, as is obvious, a matter of sorrow. You are also to love your neighbor as yourself…The love of God is to be the only real and lasting love of your heart… (The Rule of Carthage).

These excerpts are representative of the thrust and tone of all the rules and other writings in The Celtic Monk, even if these two great commandments are not explicitly spelled out in each one. Let’s have a closer look at the purpose of monastic rule as we see that purpose revealed in these three excerpts, and certain others.

The monks’ vision

We note that love for God and Christ is expressed in terms of the Kingdom of the Lord. This is the ultimate reality, “the only real and lasting love” men ought to pursue. Love for the Lord meant remaining “close to the heavenly king”, seated with Him at the Father’s right hand (Eph. 2.6), abiding in Him (1 Jn. 3.12-16), following Jesus in the path of holiness (1 Jn. 2.1-6). Thus, nurturing and sustaining love for God depended on seeking the Kingdom of God as the framework for our sojourn with Him. Conversely, loving God and Christ “is the path which leads to the kingdom” of the Lord.

The vision of Celtic monks was thus a vision of the Kingdom of God. Love for God would grow as love for His Kingdom – His “Rule” – became the defining motif of a person’s life and calling. And the experience of the Kingdom would increase as love for the King increased as well.

Thus, the better we understand love for God and His Kingdom, and the more fervently we seek these, the more we can expect to realize our reason for being. As we saw with theMonks’ Rule of Columbanus, all the other facets of these monastic rules were designed to foster improvement in this overarching purpose of monastic life.

Love for God also meant fearing Him, as is proper: “It is no error, and certainly no heresy, to say that the love of God demands fear of him” (The Rule of Cormac Mac Ciolionáin). “Love God and everyone will love you. Fear God and you will be revered by all…Those who wish to encourage the fear and love of God within themselves are to call upon and beseech the Lord of heaven and earth since a person normal remains in the state of mental laziness until the fear of God takes hold of his heart” (The Alphabet of Devotion).

And we also note that this is the way true joy and happiness: “To love God with all your heart is not, as is obvious, a matter of sorrow.” Loving God can be difficult, even painful; but it brings the joy of knowing the Lord and His pleasure, no matter how severe the trial.

Celtic monks expected hard lives of spiritual and physical labor, and even danger at the hands of enemies. They were only able to take up such efforts and endure such hardships because the love of God and neighbors, fixed soundly in their souls, gave the joy they needed to persevere in the face of deprivation, difficulty, and even death.

It’s not too much to believe that learning to live by such rules today might help our generation of the followers of Christ to know the love of God that surpasses mere knowledge and leads to daily revival and community renewal in the exceeding abundant power of the indwelling Christ.

T. M. Moore

T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
Books by T. M. Moore

Subscribe to Ailbe Newsletters

Sign up to receive our email newsletters and read columns about revival, renewal, and awakening built upon prayer, sharing, and mutual edification.