Leonardo: Laurence, this year, the John Main Seminar, will be on the theme ‘INTEGRAL CHRISTIANITY: The Vision of Celtic Christianity for the Crisis of the 21st Century’ . So can we reflect on why this theme is important for us to discuss this year in this seminar?
Fr Laurence Freeman: Yes, it’s important because the world is in crisis, as we know. And we don’t know the way out of this crisis. It’s too complicated. We have the environmental crisis. We have the political crisis. We have a social crisis. And, we have a spiritual crisis at the root of it all. And I think Christianity with the other, faith traditions, has a very, very important role to play in showing us how to go through this crisis and through this dark night and how to keep hope alive as we go through. So the church itself is in some crisis and needs to be renewed. And if we want to understand the future and what that might look like and what we should do next, we have to understand the present. We have to understand where we are now and to understand the present, we have to have some understanding and inspiration from the past. The Celtic expression of Christianity is a wonderful source of inspiration for many people. It will be a new discovery that Christianity could be lived, so richly, deeply, imaginatively, in this way, in the way that the Celtic, tradition did for many centuries.
So I think it’s very important that we remember and we reconnect to that Celtic Christianity, and we will find it will help us to understand where we are now and what we should do next is tremendous amount of inspiration in that form of Christianity.
Leonardo: Okay. Can you highlight 1 or 2 elements from the this tradition, the Celtic tradition that can bring this inspiration?
Laurence: I think one is the understanding and the a deep appreciation of nature. Celtic monks and the Celtic poetry, during this period, celebrate the beauty and the wonder of the natural world, of the wind and the sea and the clouds and the and the plants and the trees and the animals. It sees this light. The Psalms, like the Bible does, as something wonderful, as an expression of the divine imagination and the divine presence. So they often said, God wrote two books. He wrote the book of creation, and then he wrote the book of the Bible. And, so to be able to read the Book of Creation, is very important for us today because we face, the environmental crisis. I’ll be leaving, tomorrow to go to Rome for the Rising Hope Conference with other young people from our community to participate in the raising of consciousness, about the the sacredness of creation. So the Celtic vision, has this and it probably has it so strongly because its origins in pre-Christian spirituality was the best of that connection was carried through and, into the Christian the new Christian order, for the conversion of Ireland.
That’s one thing. The other thing is the idea of how the how the church as an organization, because of course, it needs organization. How the church is an organization can be structured. And we have today a very hierarchical structure, actually based on the Roman Empire system and, very hierarchical from the top down.
The Celtic model is monastic and monastic life centers around community. You have a hierarchy, of course, you have the abbot and you have, people fulfilling certain roles and responsibilities. But the model of the Celtic church was a village, a monastery with concentric circles. And each circle represented, a different kind of participation. But all the members of the village of the monastery were called monks.
There were those who were ascetics who devoted themselves to what we might think of as the essential monastic life. But this was deeply interrelated with the other forms of Christian life, like marriage and different forms of single life as well. And the model here is more of a family, local, structure, deeply rooted in the land and in a sense of belonging, very different from the hierarchical and clericalized church that to that we’re familiar with.
So those are two examples of, there are many more. The other, of course, is art. And then wherever human beings are deeply religious, they will also produce great works of art. And we know the, the art of the Celtic culture and the Celts were not an empire, they were a civilization that spread all over Europe and especially, of course, in Ireland. But they were a civilization and at the heart of that civilization was high levels of learning. And, culture and art and beauty in all.
Leonardo: You mentioned the aspect of community, why this year’s seminar is in Balally Parish (Dublin). What’s the significance of this parish?
Laurence: It’s a wonderful example of how an an institution can be awakened and the renewed from within by making contact with its own essential spirit and meaning and purpose. And this is what’s happened with Fr Father Jim Caffrey, who is a deeply spiritual man, and very dedicated priest who also spent a number of years as a monk. And he has understood that parish community needs to be a contemplative community. And that’s the church of the future. So he has built a wonderful spirit of unity. I found whenever I visit there, the parishioners are fully behind him, and, he’s inspiring them. They have, time, a short time of meditation after every mass in the parish, they have a contemplative mass, every every week.
And in one of the evenings of each week, they have, meditation and morning prayer and evening prayer every day in the John Main Chapel at Balally and so it it’s a place of prayer. It’s also, of course, a place of service. And, they do what a parish should do. They look after people in need and welcome them.
They console them, they inspire them. The children come in regularly to the church. And I’ve been there, meditated with them many times, and I’ve seen how deeply affected the children are, how much they love those those times of meditation in the church. So and yet it’s very alive, friendly, warm and human community.
So I think it’s very appropriate. We put it there, we should have it there. And, the parish is fully behind it. Parish is hosting it. And, I think we’re very lucky and privileged to we also, it’s going to be significant that Father Jim and the Parish leader will be making the final oblation to the WCCM community.
At the end of the, seminar and actually right to the end of the seminar, we will be having a pilgrimage for those who can come on the Sunday afternoon to the cathedral in Kildare, which one of the sacred places of Ireland where the Saint Brigit, one of the great saints. The sort of the counterpart to Saint Patrick, Saint Brigit, is associated with that place.
Leonardo: Can you just finish with a general invitation to our global community for join, either online or in person?
Laurence: If you can’t come in person and certainly join online and of course, the talks and so on will be recorded and you can watch them later. If you can’t watch them in your own time zone. But, there’s something very special, as we all know, about being in ‘3D reality with each other’ and to be in close physical proximity and engaging with the experience with other people opens up a whole new depths of ‘what’s the meaning of the experience?’ I think in whatever way you can participate, I would really encourage you to feel connected to it because it’s a unique event and I think a unique source of hope and imagination and insight into where we are now and where the spirit is calling us to be.
