When it is said
It comes from a sermon and has no place in any church service. Anyone may pray it at any hour.
Its plea to be woken from the sleep of idleness suits the start of a day, or the moment you sit down to a task you have been putting off.
Where it comes from
Author by tradition
Who was St Columbanus?
Columbanus was an Irish monk, born in Leinster in AD 543. In AD 590 he founded the monastery of Luxeuil, in France. His rebukes of the young King Thierry’s debauched life enraged the king’s grandmother Brunehault. The two of them sent soldiers to ship him back to Ireland, but a storm drove the ship ashore. He made his way to Italy and died at his last monastery, Bobbio, in AD 615.
Where the prayer comes from
It comes from the twelfth of 13 sermons that have come down under his name. That sermon looks back on the earlier ones, which had tried to stir up the listlessness of every heart, the preacher’s own included. After quoting Jesus’s words about the servants their master finds on watch (Luke 12:37), it turns to prayer. The prayer goes on past “give light to others”, asking Christ to light “our lamps” too.
Columbanus, Sermon 12, Latin and English in G. S. M. Walker’s edition (1957), on CELT
Did Columbanus write it?
The sermons survive only in copies made long after his death. The oldest was made in the later 800s and is now in Turin. Since 1885 scholars have asked whether Columbanus really wrote them. In 1957 the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies printed them among his works, and a long study in 1997 took up “the question of their authorship” again.
What the words mean
Why a lamp?
The lamp in this prayer recalls two passages of the Bible. Aaron and his sons were to tend the lamps before the LORD in the tent of meeting from evening until morning (Exodus 27:21). Jesus tells His disciples to keep their lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to come home (Luke 12:35-36).
The Scripture in it
Be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning. Then you will be like servants waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can open the door for him at once. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds on watch when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve and will have them recline at the table, and he himself will come and wait on them.
And you are to command the Israelites to bring you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to keep the lamps burning continually. In the Tent of Meeting, outside the veil that is in front of the Testimony, Aaron and his sons are to tend the lamps before the LORD from evening until morning. This is to be a permanent statute for the Israelites for the generations to come.
No one lights a lamp and puts it in a cellar or under a basket. Instead, he sets it on a stand, so those who enter can see the light.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Latin
Beata vigilia, qua ad Deum universitatis auctorem, omnia implentem et omnia excedentem, vigilatur!
Utinam me quoque, vilem licet, suum tamen servulum, ita dignaretur de somno inertiae excitare, ita illo divinae caritatis igne accendere, quo supra sidera exardesceret suae caritatis flamma, suae nimiae dilectionis desiderium, semperque divinus ignis intra me arderet.
Utinam illud lignum haberem, quo ille ignis iugiter aleretur, pasceretur, succenderetur, et illa flamma nutriretur, quae exstingui nesciret, et augeri non nesciret.
Utinam talis essem meriti, ut mea lucerna semper nocte in templo Domini mei arderet, ut omnibus domum Dei mei intrantibus luceret.
Domine, da mihi, rogo te, in nomine Iesu Christi Filii tui, Dei mei, illam quae nescit cadere caritatem, ut mea lucerna accendi sciat, exstingui nesciat, mihi ardeat, aliis luceat.