Throughout Lent I have been blessed enough to work on a project with my friend Gilbert Márkus, a faculty member in the department of Celtic and Gaelic at the University of Glasgow. Gilbert can often be found in our Celtic Christianity Facebook group, generously sharing his expertise and resources with the rest of us.
At the beginning of Lent, Gilbert shared his translation of Oratio Brandani (Prayer of Saint Brendan) in the group files. This eighth century prayer is attributed to Brendan the Voyager, but was actually written a couple centuries after the historical saint lived. It’s also a little misleading to call it a prayer, as it is quite long, comprising a number of different prayers and petitions. I would call it a liturgy of personal devotion instead.
I used it as my morning prayer one day and fell in love with it right away. Being the nerd that I am, I instantly started marking up the page, dividing the text into headings, adding little embellishments like the sign of the cross, pontificating about the theology and cosmology it contains. The more I pulled it apart and put it back together, the more I wanted to share it with the world – and now I am happy to do just that.
Gilbert’s translation of the text with notes, as well as the introduction we worked on together, makes the whole thing 20 pages long. You can download it as a free pdf by clicking HERE.
It takes approximately 45 minutes to pray the whole thing, with an invitation to do some journaling and self reflection at the end. It would be fitting to pray it on Good Wednesday, which commemorates Judas’ betrayal of Jesus during Holy Week, for reasons we explain in the introduction.
In its historical context, the Prayer of Saint Brendan would have been sung or chanted. If that feels prohibitive, reading it out loud is a good option as well. As I have been saying this prayer throughout Lent, I have mostly read it out loud – but I was particularly captivated by the Prayer for Illumination, so I spent some time experimenting with various ways to chant it.
The Prayer for Illumination is based on Mark 7:31-37 where Jesus heals a deaf and mute man by sticking his fingers in his ears, spitting on his tongue, and saying ephphatha or epheta, the Greek form of an Aramaic word meaning ‘be opened.’
I have been singing this short prayer while practicing the prayer of the heart, opening the hidden wealth of nature, invoking the presence of Wisdom, who lays dormant in every soul, waiting to be revealed. The prayer is sung three times in a row, making the sign of the cross after each one. Imagine rivers of living water pouring out from the springs of life in your heart center, flowing through your body and soul, eventually returning to the source from which they came.
In the following video, I go through the first page of the prayer, demonstrating two different kinds of chant. Learn them if you like, change them if you feel inspired, add to them as you grow in the practice. Singing a prayer such as this is not about getting it right so much as creating a sacred space and expressing your deepest longings. So sing with freedom and spontaneity, lifting your voice as an offering to God.
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