Robert Schuman, one of the founders of what has become the European Union, considered St Columban to be ‘the patron saint of all those who now seek to build a United Europe’. Schuman, born in Luxembourg with German citizenship, became prime minister of France and was the first President the European Parliamentary Assembly which, by acclamation, gave him the title ‘Father of Europe’. Schuman had no links with Ireland, yet he had a far greater appreciation of St Columban than most Irish people have. ‘The most famous Irishman of the early Middle Ages’, as Pope Benedict called him on 11 June in his Wednesday audience talk, which we publish in full in this issue, is a secondary patron of his native country, where the Missionary Society of St Columban was founded 90 years ago, yet is hardly known there.
The Holy Father went on to say in his talk, ‘With good reason he can be called a “European” saint, because as monk, missionary and writer, he worked in several countries of Western Europe. Along with the Irishmen of his time, he was aware of the cultural unity of Europe.’
One of the major themes of the pontificate of Pope Benedict is his great desire for a renewal of the Catholic Christian faith in Europe. He ends his talk by describing St Columban in terms of his impact on that continent: ‘A man of great culture - he also wrote poetry in Latin and a grammar book - he proved himself to be rich in gifts of grace. He was a tireless builder of monasteries as well as an intransigent penitential preacher, spending all his energy to nourish the Christian roots of Europe, which was being born. With his spiritual energy, with his faith, with his love for God and for his neighbor, he truly became one of the fathers of Europe: He shows us even today the roots from which our Europe can be reborn.’
St Columban and his companions respected God’s creation and cultivated the land wherever they founded a monastery. The Pope compares him to St John the Baptist. He was fearless in confronting kings and bishops who didn’t follow God’s law and was prepared to suffer for that. His life and that of the monks he led was focused on God, particularly through the celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass and through the singing of the psalms with Bible readings at appointed times every day and night that we call the liturgy of the hours. Confession as we know it was largely influenced by him, as the Holy Father points out.
Pope Benedict emphasizes that St Columban was an evangelizer, that is, a preacher of the Gospel, the reason the then 36-year-old co-founder of the
Columbans, Fr Edward Galvin, born on the saint’s feast day, chose him as our patron. Modern-day Columbans see caring for the earth as an aspect of living the Gospel. The Pope notes: ‘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’.
St Columban in a sense anticipated by 15 centuries a response to Pope Benedict’s inaugural homily on 24 April 2005, ‘The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert. There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love. There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction. The Church as a whole and all her pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance’.
Ireland is becoming a spiritual desert, which much of Western Europe is already. Some of those bringing Christian life back to it are Filipinos whose faith was nourished by Columban priests and Sisters, many of them Irish. May they, with the help of the prayers of St Columban, show ‘us even today the roots from which our Europe can be reborn’.