You also can’t miss the fact that they prayed Scripture.  Some evangelicals do it, but not many do it.  For example, the Celts would take the Psalm 119 and they would pray those passages each day.  They had it memorized, because they were largely illiterate.  It’s the longest chapter in the Bible, so it’s quite a feat to memorize.

And then they prayed to be free of sickness.  That doesn’t sound like it’s unique, but these are called the “Breastplate Prayers.”  And these are very common among the ancient Celts.  The lorica was the breastplate.  When Paul says in Ephesians 6 about putting on the breastplate of righteousness he’s talking about the lorica.  In a world where there was no aspirin or doctors, everybody died at 27 with no hope once they got sick.  So these “Breastplate Prayers” became very important to them. 

Another kind is the prayers of confession.  And then the long-wandering prayers.  [The Celts] were always on pilgrimage.  Once they became born again, they began these pilgrimages but they never returned home again.  You know, in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales the pilgrims are all going to Canterbury.  They had their rituals and said their prayers and went on home.  But the Celts were different.  They moved and went out into the world and never came home again.  The shrine was always ahead of them.  It was never behind them, and they never went back.  They believed that while they moved forward, they should talk to God.  And they did it in wonderful ways.  They often broke off the rudders from their ships.  They let the sails go slack and committed their boats to God for him to let the wind push them wherever he would have them go.  So there’s a lot of mysterious trust and wonder about the Celts. 

Do you think that Celtic prayer is the highest form of communication with God?

I think it’s a real way of seeing prayer and not necessarily the highest.  Christian have prayed primarily in terms of intercession.  We all memorize the little outline--adoration, confession, contrition, thanksgiving and supplication—as a five-fold outline for prayer.  But the only book on prayer recently that sold in a big way was The Prayer of Jabez which is totally supplication.  It ignores adoration, it ignores confession, it ignores contrition and it ignores thanksgiving.  It focuses on “Lord, extend my territory,” as Jabez said.  In other words, it’s really a selfish prayer if you look at it.  It’s not that it’s wrong.  Jesus said to ask your Heavenly Father for what you want.  There’s nothing wrong with that, but there are four other things that are great, too.  Like adoration.  Do you adore the Father?  Do you speak to him with this adoration?  And contrition.  Are you sorry for your sins?  Not just as a believer coming to Christ for the first time, but daily in our lives.