Saint Columba
AD 521 to 597
Columba, secondary Patron of Ireland and of the Diocese of Derry, the greatest and earliest of our missionaries, was born at Gartan on 7 December 521. His parents Feidlimid and Eithne were born of royal descent, Usually designated in Irish Colum Cille ("dove of the church"), he was given his early education by Cruithnechan, a priest who lived near Kilmacrenan. His mother, a princess from Leinster, where Christianity was comparatively well established, was doubtless the inspiration for her son's early identification with the Church. He became one of the pupils of Finnian of Clonard and was himself called to the priesthood. He also studied with Mobhi of Glasnevin. It was from Glasnevin that he returned north in 546 to found the monastery of Derry. He is credited, too, with establishing another major Irish foundatiuon at Durrow.
In 563 Columba and twelve companions sailed from Derry via Moville to Iona to establish a base for the conversion of the heathen part of Scotland. Adomnán, his biographer, gives Columba's reason as a wish to be "a pilgrim for Christ". Iona is a small island south-west of the larger Mull about eighty miles north of Country Antrim. In Columba's time it lay within the Irish territory of Dál Riata, which was divided by the North Channel. Using Iona as a base Columba set up other foundations with the support not only of the Dál Riata but also of Pictish chieftains with whom he established good relations. Some authorities suggest that he founded thirty establishments in the Hebrides and along the west coast of Scotland, including monasteries on Hinba, Tiree and Skye.
For Columba personal sanctification took precedence even over preaching the gospel. Monastic life in Iona was identical to that at home in Ireland; work, mortification, prayer, and copying took up a large amount of the day. Columba was known to be a calligrapher. The Cathach probably issued from his pen. He certainly wrote Latin hymns. As well as miracles and visions his name is associated with prophecies.
Because of Columba's position and temperament he was major figure in the political life of Dál Riata. He certainly played kingmaker in 574 on the death of the king of Dál Riata. His attendance at the important convention of Druim Cett, near Limavady, in 575 was as a senior authority on Dál Riata affairs. This assembly not only rationalised relations between the two parts of the territory but regularised at home the position of the filid, the learned class who composed poetry and preserved oral history and genealogy.
By the time the saint died in his seventy-seventh year, on Sunday 9 June 597, his work of preaching Christ to the Picts was well in hand. The monastery at Iona had become the supreme Christian centre in Scotland. Columba's disciples, too, were to play an important part in the evangelising of Britain through the foundations in Lindisfarne and Whitby.
Columba represents the early Irish church better than any of his peers, in his steadfastness, energy, piety and humanity. Columba was a man of outstanding gentleness and empathy. He was a kindly individual with a practical concern for people. He helped the unfortunate: interesting himself in the plight of a hostage; rehabilitating a reformed robber; curing a nun with a broken hip; assisting a woman in the pangs of child-birth with his prayers; providing destitute men with the means of feeding themselves; and even as his death approached comforting others rather than seeking to be comforted. He had a profound sense of the worth of homan beings and of the contribution they were making to society. He was in harmony with nature; for instance, the old monastery pony could mourn his approaching death and he revived a crane which had been driven onto the beach at Iona in a storm.
Like all genuine followers of Christ, Columba could see through hypocrites and never tolerated evil-doers but invariably welcomed and reconciled the truly repentant. And so we find him castigating miscreants and yet welcoming the sincerely contrite. Above all Columba was a man of prayer. Coming as he did from a princely background and having a commanding and practical personality, he was bound to make an enormous impact on the affairs of his generation. His real greatness, however, was that he was able to combine the advantages given him by temperament and birth with the ambition of sainthood.
In the Diocese of Derry, Columba is remembered with particular affection in Derry City. There are modern church dedications to him in the parishes of Long Tower, Waterside, Ballinascreen, Moville, Iskaheen and Doneyloop. St Columb's College, Derry, and St Colm's High School, Draperstown, bear his name as do thirteen primary schools throughout the Diocese. St Columb's Hall in Derry and St Colm's Hall in Draperstown are dedicated to the saint. Adomnán, his biographer, is revered in Errigal (Garvagh) and Cruithnechan, his foster-father, is remembered in the parish of Desertmartin.
Rev John R.Walsh. PP
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