St. Columba: A Burning Lantern

Saint Columba was very gifted and very headstrong. At one point, as a young monk and abbot in Ireland, Columba erupted in rage against another abbot – the issue was the ownership of a copied manuscript – and an ensuing bloody battle resulted in more than 3,000 deaths. The church blamed Columba, and he accepted respon­sibility. He was a broken and contrite man. In his shame, he said: “Men lie dead through the pride of a man of peace.” He resolved not to rest until he had “won for God as many souls who have fallen in this battle.”

At age 41, in year 563, he set out to sea with 12 monks. They had no specific destination in mind, only to settle where God’s wind and waves sent them. They landed off the western coast of Scotland, the island of Iona. There Columba and his monks built a monastery which still stands. He trained his monks to be missionaries. Iona became a staging point for the expansion of Christianity throughout the British Isles and western Europe. In our clerestory window medallion, we see Columba and his monks on mission sailing off in a coracle, a long wicker basket. Columba and his fellow monks converted a great multitude to Christianity: princes, and paupers, and people of every kind.

An abbot who succeeded Columba wrote of Columba in his later life, “He was like an angel in demeanor, blameless in what he said, godly in what he did, brilliant in intellect and great in counsel. He could not let even an hour pass without giving himself to prayer.”