The Voice of the Eagle. The Heart of Celtic Christianity

The first part of the book includes John Scotus Eriugena’s “Homily on the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John”. The author, a sage born and raised in Ireland during the early ninth century, carried to France the flower of Celtic Christianity. His homily, The Voice of the Eagle, is a jewel of lyrical mysticism, theology, and cosmology, containing the essence of Celtic Christian wisdom. He meditates on the meaning and purpose of creation as revealed by the Word made flesh, distilling into twenty-three short chapters a uniquely Celtic, non-dualistic fusion of Christianity, Platonism, and ancient Irish wisdom. The translator’s “Reflections” make up the second part of the book and attempt to unfold some of the life-giving meaning implicit in Eriugena’s luminous sentences. Inspired both by a personal search for a living Christianity and by a sense of the continuity of Western culture, these reflections offer a contemporary, meditative encounter with the Logos, as mediated by both St. John’s Prologue and Eriugena’s Celtic homily. It includes a new foreword by Thomas Moore.