By Rev. Todd R. Lattig
Read Acts 17:22-28
ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“For through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see…” (Colossians 1:16 NLT)
Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.
Part 3: Celtic Cross. The Celtic Cross looks familiar enough at first glance: a cross with a circle embracing the center. Some see it as simply “Irish decoration,” a piece of jewelry or a tattoo. Others have questioned its origins, noting the circle’s resemblance to ancient sun symbols, and wondered if it is too tied to paganism to be fully Christian. But to stop there is to miss the subversive genius of Patrick.
Patrick knew that the Gospel was not about erasing culture but inhabiting it. The circle already carried deep meaning for the Irish people—cosmic order, eternity, the sun as source of life. Instead of destroying those associations, Patrick proclaimed Christ as the true center of creation. The circle around the cross became a symbol of heaven and earth united, eternity embracing history, God’s love holding all things together. This was not compromise but incarnation: God meeting people in their own symbols and showing how Christ fulfilled them.
The same is true of the Celtic knotwork so often carved into crosses, manuscripts, and artwork. Long before Christianity, these endless interlacing designs spoke of cycles, continuity, and the eternal weave of life. Patrick and his followers did not forbid them; they baptized them. The knots came to symbolize eternal life in Christ, the unbroken mystery of the Trinity, and the interconnection of all creation held together in God. What was once a pagan pattern became a Christian proclamation, a visual catechism of faith.
We forget this today. Too often Christianity has taken the Roman road—demanding conquest, drawing boundaries, colonizing culture. It’s the approach we see in voices like Charlie Kirk, Franklin Graham, John MacArthur, and James Dobson. Their posture treats faith as a weapon in a culture war, as though the goal of the Gospel is to dominate rather than to dwell, to erase rather than to redeem. It is the old imperial instinct, baptized and rebranded.
Patrick shows us another way. And he is not alone. Desmond Tutu embodied it in South Africa, proclaiming justice with joy, enculturating faith into liberation rather than letting empire define it. St. Francis of Assisi embraced poverty and preached even to the birds, revealing Christ in simplicity and creation. Pope Francis became a global voice for mercy, dialogue, and encounter—meeting cultures where they were, not erasing them. And Patrick himself baptized the very symbols of the Irish, turning their cosmology and knotwork into catechism without burning their traditions to the ground.
This is the subversion of the Celtic Cross. What was once a pagan sign became a Christian one. What could have been rejected as “unclean” was instead redeemed as holy. The same is true of many symbols we take for granted today—Christmas trees, Easter eggs, wedding rings. Once pagan, now Christian, not by conquest but by Christ’s inhabiting.
And here lies the challenge for us. Too often we live in a black-and-white world: if it’s “Christian,” it must be good; if it’s “secular” or “pagan,” it must be bad. We treat culture as something to fear, to conquer, or to wall ourselves off from. But Patrick’s witness—and the witness of Tutu, Francis, and so many others—is that Christ is not threatened by culture. Christ enters in, transforms from within, and shows us God’s glory even in places we once dismissed as foreign or unclean.
The danger today is flattening the Celtic Cross into mere Irish décor or heritage branding, forgetting its radical message. To wear it as jewelry is fine, but to live it is far more demanding. It asks us: will we try to dominate the world with our faith, or will we let Christ dwell within the world’s symbols, speaking the Gospel in a language people can hear?
THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The Gospel doesn’t erase culture—it redeems it.PRAYER
God of creation, you are not bound by our lines or limits. Forgive us when we try to conquer rather than to love, when we fight culture wars instead of proclaiming Christ crucified. Teach us the subversive genius of Patrick: to see your presence even in unexpected places, and to trust that your Spirit is big enough to redeem what we cannot control. Amen.
Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).
