Page 91 - Demo

Chapter three 91
With the patronage of his kinsmen, King Conal of Alba, as Scotland was then known, one of the Dalriada, who at the time peopled the western part of Scotland, Colm founded his monastery and school, whose fame are still recognized to this day. The monks of Iona devoted themselves for 34 years to the task of evangelizing the Picts of the Scottish main- land, and the Saxons and Britons of what is now mainland England, and it has been said that Colm Cille did for Scotland what St. Patrick had already done for Ireland. In his great establishment at Iona, Colm proved himself to be a marvelous teacher and director and the shining rule of life which he laid down for his community was: “Let not a single hour pass in which you do not devote yourself to prayer, reading, writing, or some other useful work.”
To achieve this aim Colm divided the day at Iona into three parts, one part for reading, one part for good works, and one part for prayer, and as well as their teaching duties, both he and his monks fasted, and worked on the farm. It is traditionally told that Colm’s bed was the bare ground and his pillow a stone.
Described as being “a great saint, whose example of piety, austerity, teaching and irm rule inspired a generation of missionaries in Britain and Europe.the super-type of the Irish sort of Abbot, a member of a royal family, someone who played a substantial part in secular as well as religious afairs,” before his death, which occurred in 597, Colm Cille had established more than 60 monasteries of which that at Iona was recognized as the parent foundation. It is reported that not only was the grief among the brothers in Iona intense when their beloved Colm passed away, so too was it throughout Scotland and parts of Eng- land and Ireland. Tradition maintains that in his native Donegal, on the night of his passing, many people, including St. Ernan of Drimahome, beheld the strange phenomenon of an immense clear ire in the eastern sky, a ire which illuminated the entire earth like the sun at noon, after which a mighty pillar of lame ascended from earth to heaven before disappear- ing. His Feast Day is celebrated on June 9th.
But surely, one of the greatest events associated with Colm Cille and one which we must touch on is the tale of his encounter with the Loch Ness Monster, because it is claimed that Colm is the irst on record to have seen the fabled creature. Around the year 685, the cel- ebrated work known as Vitae Columbae-‘The Life of Colm Cille/Columba’ was written by a monk named Adomnán, the ninth abbot of Iona and a relative of Colm Cille’s. The book is divided into three clearly deined parts. Part 1 deals with Colm’s extraordinary powers of clairvoyance and details his many prophecies; Part 3 which covers his early life may well