(Short Version)
November 23: Saint Columban (Columbanus), Abbot—Optional Memorial
543–615
Patron Saint of motorcyclists
Invoked against floods
Pre-Congregation canonization
Columban (Columbanus in Latin) was born in the Kingdom of Leinster, on Ireland’s southeast coast, a century after Saint Patrick brought the Catholic faith to the island. As Columban grew, he guarded himself carefully from sin through prayer and Scripture study. Deciding to enter a monastery, he ended up at the monastery in Bangor where he would spend the next fifty years.
At age fifty, Father Columban sensed God calling him to become a missionary. After barbarian tribes from the north and east had invaded the fallen Roman Empire in the late fifth century, the Church in today’s Europe was struggling. Monasteries and the clergy needed reform, political instability was common, theological disputes from heresies lingered, and pagan practices had been reintroduced. The Church in Ireland had stability due to its isolation from the rest of the Roman Church; Father Columban wanted to extend that stability to the people of Europe.
Father Columban and twelve other monks set sail for Gaul, modern-day France. They landed in Saint-Malo, where the ruler was Good King Gontrand. After a life of fleshly indulgence as a young man, remorse led the king to a radical conversion. He was regarded as a holy man who cared for his subjects as a father. His penitential life drew him into deep union with God, and miracles were attributed to him during and after his life. After death, by popular acclaim, he was declared a saint.
King Gontrand found in the Irish monks a depth of fervor that was lacking within his kingdom. He gave them an ancient Roman fortress in Annegray for their first monastery, near the border of modern-day northern Switzerland and southern Germany. The monks restored the fortress, turning it into a school. Two expansions followed. People were drawn to the faith-filled, ascetical, wise, and pastoral monks. The envious local bishops began to pick fights over minor matters of difference between Irish and French practice. Eventually, it seems the monks embraced the local culture.
During the rest of his years in France, Father Columban wrote a foundational monastic rule called the Regula Monachorum. This “Rule for the Monk” articulated the daily life of monasticism, including the monk’s prayer, communal life, obedience, manual labor, and strict austerity and asceticism, which was far stricter than the Rule of Saint Benedict that became the normative rule for monks in the West. Father Columban wrote a guide for Confession, emphasizing the importance of imposing penance proportional to the sin. He also wrote a collection of instructions that gave practical advice on morality, humility, charity, and love of God, as well as sermons, letters, poetry and hymns.
After Father Columban chastised King Theuderic II, a successor to Good King Gontrand, for living in an adulterous relationship, he
