Saint Claude de la Colombière

Claude La Colombière SJ, sometimes named "De La Colombière", was a French Jesuit priest best known as the confessor of Margaret Mary Alacoque. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. He was born in 1641 in the city of Saint-Symphorien-d'Ozon, then in the ancient Province of Dauphiné, the third child of the notary Bertrand La Colombière and Margaret Coindat. The family soon moved to the nearby city of Vienne, where he began his education, before attending the Jesuit school in Lyon for his secondary studies. In 1658, at the age of seventeen, Colombière entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Avignon. He did this despite what he recorded as "a terrible aversion for the life embraced". When he completed the two-year novitiate, he started his higher studies in the same city. He was professed there and completed his studies. After this he spent the next five years of his regency teaching grammar and literature at the same school. Colombière was sent to Paris in 1666 to study theology at the College de Clermont. He was also assigned to be the tutor of the children of the Royal Minister of Finances, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. After completing his studies there, he was ordained a priest in 1669 and initially assigned to teach at his former school in Lyon. He then was assigned to join the preaching team of the Jesuit community, through which he gained notice for the clarity and soundness of his sermons. In 1674, after 15 years of life as a Jesuit, Colombière did his next period of probation known as the tertianship, which was to prove decisive in his life. As a result of this experience of the Spiritual Exercises, he made a personal vow, as a means of attaining the utmost possible perfection, to observe faithfully the Rule and Constitutions of the Society under penalty of sin. Those who lived with him attested that this vow was kept with great exactitude.