In How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill paints a picture of ancient Irish culture by discussing Tain Bo Cuailnge, an Irish prose epic. In the story, the hero-warriors Cuchulainn (pronounced koo-hool-n) and Ferdia are foster brothers who love and fight for one another. They trained together under the same master and fight beside one another through epic battles in the dense forests “in foreign lands after the fray.” Cuchulainn refers to their friendship as “fast friends, forest-companions… pupils, two together we’d set forth to comb the forest” of their enemies.
Concerning the hero’s virtue, Cahill writes, “What we can rely on are the comeliness and iron virtue of the short-lived hero: his loyalty to cause and comrades, his bravery in the face of overwhelming odds, the gargantuan generosity with which he scatters his possessions and his person and with which he spills his blood.”
Patricius, who later became known as Saint Patrick (the same Patrick whose life is commemorated each year on the celebrated day named in his honor), was able to evangelize an entire country by addressing these qualities found in their ancient literature. It is Jesus, he explained, who was the one who most epitomizes these virtues, and it was, in fact, the eternity set within their hearts that spurred on such literature, an eternity these men and women knew must by characterized, if by anything at all, by men as alive as Cuchulainn. In their literary heroes their hunger for Christ was given a voice. When Patrick came to bring them the “Godspell,” or Gospel, they listened only because Patrick himself, dead to himself and baptized in the fire of the Spirit of God, was the most loyal, courageous, and generous man they had ever met.
What Cahill writes of Ireland’s ancient fictional heroes is an apt pronouncement on the life of any Christian, that is, the life of Christ lived fully within us. When we allow Him to live through us, imagine what faith (loyalty), hope (courage), and love (generosity) is set loose on the world. We would have a second wave of revival not unlike in style to that of those wild and willing Celts.
The way to save our own civilization, as Cahill says, is not to think about saving our civilization at all. It is to become saints. Then shall we each be saved, not by government, nor technology, nor new (and age-old) ideologies, but by the Kingdom coming through us as we pursue and battle with fierce intention, a Kingdom not of this world, unshakable, peopled by “citizens of heaven” who run fast after the Living God “in foreign lands after the fray.”
(see Matthew 11:12; Philippians 3:20; Matthew 5:14-16; Hebrews 12:28-29; Luke 17:20-21; Mark 1:15; Acts 14; Romans 14:17-18; Hebrews 12:10; Ephesians 4:22-24; 2 Corinthians 7:1)
