Celtic Christian Mission

10/15/2026

Many of our Celtic Christian Mission teams have served with the Ark Community Gardens in Newcastle. The folks at the Ark are great people who have a profound impact upon their community!!

09/25/2026

https://www.genealogyexplained.com/fb/blog/19-forgotten-irish-christmas-traditions/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAUiqkpleHRuA2FlbQEwAHBkb2YBZmRpZBZQ8Zrk6bQpYKJoOqS_CvQD8PzC2AShYWRpZAAAL9FrIfZAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQKNjYyODU2ODM3OQABHrk3-zP-iCeXxddpCHssLIn-4wR-NhgKuU2KG6sVU5enFh3sYlxFN-JjBS23_aem_f7u1uEZyPj1CVLqF7o8OiA&utm_medium=paid&utm_source=fb&utm_id=52576490973576&utm_content=52576490973776&utm_term=52576490974576&utm_campaign=52576490973576

Your great-grandmother's Christmas looked nothing like yours.

09/17/2026

08/23/2026

06/29/2026

This prayer is older than the printing press, the Reformation, and most countries on Earth.

"Be Thou My Vision" traces back to an Old Irish poem believed to date to roughly the 6th to 8th century — making it over 1,400 years old. Tradition has long associated it with Saint Dallán Forgaill, an early Irish monastic poet, though scholars debate exact authorship given how oral and manuscript traditions evolved over centuries.

For most of its existence, it wasn't a "hymn" in any modern sense at all — it was a Gaelic devotional poem, passed through Irish monastic communities, in a language and form completely disconnected from the English-speaking hymn tradition that would emerge a thousand years later.

It wasn't until the early 20th century that the poem was translated into English prose by scholar Mary Elizabeth Byrne, then versified into singable verse by Eleanor Hull in 1912. It was later paired with the Irish folk melody "Slane," giving it the form most Christians recognize today.

That means the words being sung in modern churches every Sunday are older than the English language as we currently speak it, older than the Church of England, older than the Catholic-Protestant split, and older than virtually every hymn tradition that followed it.
A monk's prayer from before the Viking Age is still being sung in churches that didn't exist for another thousand years after he wrote it.
Share this with someone who loves how deep church history actually goes.

"Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart."

06/21/2026

CELTIC CHRISTIAN MISSION would like to wish everyone a blessed and happy Father’s Day!!!