June 9 — The Life of Saint Columba of Iona: The Exile Who Lit a Nation

The Life of Saint Columba of Iona — Saint of the Day June 9 — the Irish monk who left his homeland in penance for a battle he helped start, crossed the sea to a windswept island off the coast of Scotland, and spent thirty-four years turning that exile into the conversion of a nation. Born on December 7, 521, in Gartan, County Donegal, Columba was a man of royal descent who received his education at the finest monastic schools of Ireland, including those of Finnian of Moville and Finnian of Clonard, and founded the monasteries of Derry and Durrow before the age of forty. Entangled in a dynastic dispute that led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561 and the deaths of thousands, he accepted penance and exile, crossing to Iona on May 12, 563, with twelve companions in a hide-covered currach. From that small island community he evangelized the Scots of Dalriada, traveled to the fortress of the Pictish king Bridei near Inverness, consecrated Áedán mac Gabráin as king of Dalriada in 574 in what is recorded as the first known Christian inauguration of a king in the British Isles, and built a monastic school that would later produce the Book of Kells. On the evening of June 8, 597, he transcribed the thirty-third Psalm and stopped at the verse "Those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing." He died before the altar of his church at Iona in the early hours of June 9, 597, at the age of seventy-five. His relics were divided in 849 between Scotland and Ireland. The community at Iona endures to this day. On this June 9 — Saint of the Day, Saint Columba of Iona reminds us that a life interrupted by failure is not a life ended, that God can gather even our worst decisions into his purposes, and that the island we never intended to reach may be the very place we were always meant to be. --- SOURCES: Adomnán of Iona, Vita Columbae (c. 697), ed. A.O. and M.O. Anderson (1991) Bede, *Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum*, Book III (731) Richard Sharpe, Adomnán of Iona: Life of St Columba (Penguin Classics, 1995) Máire Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry: The History and Hagiography of the Monastic Familia of Columba (1988) Butler's Lives of the Saints, June 9 Catholic Encyclopedia, "St. Columba" (newadvent.org) --- BIOGRAPHIES OF THE SAINTS — A documentary series on the lives of the saints. \#SaintColumba #SaintOfTheDay #CatholicDocumentary