Rev. José Mario O. Mandía
jmom.honlam.org
Let us turn our attention to a monk, missionary and writer who had a strong sense of his national identity but at the same time pioneered the idea of Europe’s cultural unity.
As an Irish, Columbanus (his Latin name, from the Irish ‘Colman’ – ‘little dove’) was the first person to write about Irish identity while at the same time recognizing the unity of European culture. He was the first person to use the term ‘European’ and he himself is called ‘the first European.’ Pope Benedict XVI says that “The expression ‘totius Europae – of all Europe,’ with reference to the Church’s presence on the Continent, is found for the first time in one of his letters, written around the year 600, addressed to Pope Gregory the Great (cf. Letters I, 1)” (General Audience, 11 June 2008).
Though impetuous and headstrong, Columban was firm in his adherence to the Pope as the supreme authority. He brought about many conversions and composed a monastic rule that left a mark in Europe.
Saint Columban was born around 543 in Ireland. He received excellent education from tutors who taught him in the liberal arts. After that, he was able to deepen his study of Sacred Scripture under the Abbot Sinell in northern Ireland, where he composed a commentary on the Psalms.
The young Columbanus had to grapple often with temptations of the flesh. A religious woman whom he sought for advice inspired him to become a monk. When he was 20, he entered Bangor Abbey, where he learned grammar, rhetoric, geometry, Holy Scriptures, Latin and Greek. Inspired by the abbot, Comgall, who provided him with an admirable example of virtue and asceticism, Columban faithfully lived the severe discipline in the Abbey and was ordained a priest.
Thirty years later, when he was about 50 years old, Columban asked the permission of Abbot Comgall to bring the faith back to the Continent (the people in the Continent had fallen back into paganism after the arrival of the Germanic tribes). The Abbot reluctantly agreed.
“Welcomed kindly by the King of the Franks of Austrasia (present-day France), they asked only for a small piece of uncultivated land. They were given the ancient Roman fortress of Annegray, totally ruined and abandoned and covered by forest. Accustomed to a life of extreme hardship, in the span of a few months the monks managed to build the first hermitage on the ruins. Thus, their re-evangelization began, in the first place, through the witness of their lives” (Benedict XVI, General Audience, 11 June 2008).
Columban and his twelve companions were admired for their discipline, their preaching, their charitable works in the midst of laxity among the clergy and civil unrest. He and his monks eventually established several monasteries in Europe.
Pope Benedict XVI adds: “With the new cultivation of the land, they also began a new cultivation of souls. The fame of those foreign religious who, living on prayer and in great austerity, built houses and worked the land spread rapidly, attracting pilgrims and penitents. In particular, many young men asked to be accepted by the monastic community in order to live, like them, this exemplary life which was renewing the cultivation of the land and of souls. It was not long before the foundation of a second monastery was required. It was built a few kilometers away on the ruins of an ancient spa, Luxeuil. This monastery was to become the center of the traditional Irish monastic and missionary outreach on the European Continent. A third monastery was erected at Fontaine, an hour’s walk further north.” Columbanus, however, loved the solitary life and he would often go to a cave some 11 kilometers away accompanied by another person who would act as messenger between him and the monastery.
It was in Luxeuil that Columbanus wrote for his followers the Regula monachorum, their rule of life, which he integrated with the Regula coenobialis,which laid down penalties for those who did not observe the rule.
In another work, De poenitentiarum misura taxanda, “Columban introduced Confession and private and frequent penance on the Continent. It was known as ‘tariffed’ penance because of the proportion established between the gravity of the sin and the type of penance imposed by the confessor” (General Audience, 11 June 2008). The practice of individual Confession and penance is of greater pastoral effectiveness because it is able to address the specific needs of every penitent. It is a concrete way of showing that the Good Shepherd will “go after the one [sheep] which is lost, until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:4-5).
Columbanus had his share of the cross. The Frankish bishops had complained to the pope about him regarding his orthodoxy and the Irish customs he practiced, including his teaching on ‘tariffed’ penance. He also reprimanded the king for his adulterous life. Because of this, he was deported back to Ireland, but his ship ran aground. The captain took this as a sign from heaven and returned the monks back to shore. Columbanus and his monks crossed the Alps and settled in Italy, where the king of the Lombards welcomed him. There he established the monastery of Bobbio, which would become a center of culture just like the monastery of Monte Cassino. It was there that he died on 23 November 615.
Follow
