Columba

(Ireland, d. 597)

He saw a young monk reading a book by a river, and he told the young monk that his book would fall in the water, and it did.

He foretold the arrival of unexpected visitors, the reign of kings, the sudden appearance of whales in the sea, the future lives of children he met, and the outcome of battles.

He could see behind himself. He could proofread the copies of sacred books without looking at them. When he chanted, his voice sounded normal to those next to him, but could be heard a mile away.

He knew that an evil man had slept with his own mother. Years before the news arrived, he knew that a town in Italy had been destroyed by a volcano. He knew that a priest was unclean, but didn’t say how.

He did not ask Crónán the poet to sing, for he knew that same night the poet was to be murdered by brigands. He knew that Guaire, the strongest man in all of Dalriada, would be killed by a close companion, but he didn’t tell Guaire that the companion was his knife that would slip in an accident. He knew that a wounded heron would land on their island and he instructed the monks to nurse it back to health when it was found. He stood in the sunshine and knew a storm was coming.

He knew that a youth named Colmán Ua Briún had not made the sign of the cross when he milked the cows and that the devil was hiding at the bottom of his milk pail.

He could cure plagues and heal broken bones and ease the pain of childbirth with a blessing. He could calm strong winds and high waves. With a prayer, he changed the heart of Luigne the Little Hammer’s wife, who loathed and would not sleep with her husband.

Long after his death, in a great drought, his tunic was carried into the fields and shaken three times, bringing rain.

His biographer, Andomnán of Iona, wrote a century later that “by divine grace he had several times experienced a miraculous enlarging of the grasp of the mind, so that he seemed to look at the whole world caught in one ray of sunlight.”

As a child, a ball of light was seen hovering over his head as he slept.