St Columba of Iona

Columba is one of the great national saints, and the life he gives him is broad, forceful, and full of movement. Born of royal stock in Donegal, Columba is formed in the famous Irish schools at Moville and Clonard, learns to love books intensely, becomes priest, and then spends years preaching and founding monasteries across Ireland, above all at Derry, Durrow, and Kells. It also keeps the darker traditional turning point in view: 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 leaves Ireland with twelve companions and lands at Iona, which becomes the center of the rest of his life.

From there This life follows him into missionary labor among the Picts, into the famous meeting with King Brode near Inverness, into journeys through the Highlands and islands, and even back into Irish public life when major synods and political questions call him. He never stops being monk, missionary, scholar, and leader at once. It also preserves the sharpness of his temperament in youth and its mellowing in age. By the end of this life the strong, demanding founder has 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.