(c.516-c.570) Born to British nobility in Scotland, Gildas was associated with several British and Irish saints. He was a monk, a priest, and an abbot who founded churches and monasteries in Ireland and evangelized in England. Gildas was a spiritual director to monks and a miracle worker. He is regarded as the earliest British historian.
Gildas was critical of both kings and clergy, whom he considered to be lazy with the practice of their faith. “Having had a spiritual awakening,” how can we achieve constant vigilance in what we try to accomplish? (Step 12).
“You are drunk with the practicing of constant sins, and shaken by the waves of accumulated crimes that incessantly rush upon you; seek then, as though you had suffered shipwreck, with all the striving of your mind, for the single plank of penitence that can carry you to the land of the living, so that the fury of the Lord may be turned away from you. For in His mercy He said: ‘I do not desire the death of a sinner, but that he may turn and live’” (Saint Gildas the Wise).
Reflection by Brad Farmer