St. Columba of Iona

Columba is one of the great national saints of Ireland, and his story is broad, forceful, and full of movement. Born of royal stock in Donegal, he was formed in the famous Irish schools at Moville and Clonard, learned to love books intensely, became a priest, and then spent years preaching and founding monasteries across Ireland, above all at Derry, Durrow, and Kells. The darker traditional turning point also belongs to his story: the dispute over a copied manuscript, the quarrel with King Diarmaid, the battle that followed, and the later sense that Columba needed to do penance and win for Christ as many souls as had perished. Whether one stresses that motive or not, the result is the same. In 563 he left Ireland with twelve companions and landed at Iona, which became the center of the rest of his life.

From there his missionary labor reached the Picts, the famous meeting with King Brode near Inverness, journeys through the Highlands and islands, and even a return into Irish public life when major synods and political questions called him. He never stopped being monk, missionary, scholar, and leader at once. The sharpness of his temperament in youth mellowed in age. By the end, the strong, demanding founder had become a very gentle spiritual father, still austere, still prophetic, still copying books, but full of peace. His death while working on the Psalter and pausing at the line "they that love the Lord shall lack no good thing" gives the life a particularly beautiful close.