Do you like bike riding? Have you ever thought about the patron saint of motorcyclists’? Do not be astonished, there is a saint whom you can pray to before you go for a ride. The Catholic Church gives patronage to Saint Columbanus to those who ride motorcycles. Columbanus was one of those roving Irish monks who wandered up and down Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries. This love of the open road inspired the Rev. John Oliver, an Anglican bishop, and biker, to suggest St. Columbanus as the patron of motorcyclists.
Columbanus was not a young one who sunk into religious life. He was born in a powerful, well-to-do family; he was well-educated and very good-looking, which attracted the attention of the young women of Ireland. He had the kind of life most young men dream of. But one day a holy woman told him that his freewheeling ways put the salvation of his soul at risk. Columbanus, perhaps for the first time in his life, examined his actions. Ultimately, he decided to give up all the pleasures he loved and become a monk.
His decision to become a monk made an uproar in his family. They considered it a wrong decision of a promising young man who should withdraw from the world. But Columbanus would not be dissuaded. On the day of his departure, his mother made one last attempt to stop him by physically blocking the door. Somehow, he escaped from there and headed for Bangor Abbey in County Down. According to legend, about a century earlier St. Patrick and his companions had a vision of angels on the future site of the monastery. By the time Columbanus became a monk, Bangor was renowned for its music and scholarship.
He had taken vows to spend his entire life in the monastery. But the Irish monks overlooked that tradition. The barbarian invasions destroyed what was left of Greco-Roman civilization in Western Europe, so Irish monks set out for what is now Britain, France, Germany, and the Low Countries, bringing both the Catholic faith and classical civilization to the barbarian tribes. At the age of 42, Columbanus asked his abbot to send him as a missionary to the pagan tribes in Gaul. The abbot selected 12 monks and sent them along with Columbanus.
The monks converted thousands in Burgandy including the king. They founded several monasteries, all of which wanted Columbanus to serve as abbot, but Columbanus realized he was not born for a sedentary life. Over the next 30 years, he made missionary journeys through Germany and Switzerland, then crossed the Alps into northern Italy where he finally settled down at Bobbio. There he rebuilt a dilapidated church dedicated to St. Peter and built a new monastery beside it. Even then he found it hard to stay put, so he retired to a cave near the abbey where he spent his old age living as a hermit. At his death, St. Columbanus was buried in his abbey church. His relics are there still, beneath the altar in the crypt.