This weekend our parish celebrates our Patronal Feast—June 9 is the feast of Our Patron, Saint Columbkille.
Saint Columbkille is Scotland’s most revered saint and, in Ireland, he is honored second only to St. Patrick.
Sometimes, he goes by the name St. Columba of Iona, and he’s not to be confused with St. Columban, or the St. Columba who was a Spanish consecrated virgin in the 7th century, or St. Columba of Terrygrass.
Saint Columbkille’s birth name was Colum MacFehlin MacFergus. The name Colum is Gaelic for dove, which is why religious art of Columbkille, such as our wonderful statue here in the Church, has a dove. and as a young boy Colum spent so much time in Church that they added the word “kille” to his name, which is the Gaelic word for Church. So, Colum-Kille means Dove of the Church,
His father and mother were both royalty in County Donegal in 6th century northern Ireland. St. Columbkille was well educated, and a man of great faith who could have become a king but instead chose a life of service to God. He was ordained at the age of 25, as a monk and a priest.
Columbkille spent much time copying the Scriptures and other manuscripts and writing poems. Our parish statue of Saint Columbkille is also holding the Book of Kells, the most well-known illuminated manuscript of the Gospels.
After his ordination, he spent the fifteen years working among the poor in his native Ireland and was famous for his works of charity and his preaching.
Columbkille left Ireland in 563, with twelve fellow monks, and landed on the isle of Iona off the western Coast of Scotland. He spent the next 34 years on Iona establishing churches and schools, attracting many converts to the faith by his ardent penance, fervent prayer, sincere preaching, and deep confidence in God.
There are many neat stories and legends about Saint Columbkille, even one where he confronts the Loch Ness Monster which is the earliest written account of the monster at Loch Ness! But I went to tell one from the very end of his life.
In his later years, when he was too infirmed to go on any more missionary journeys, the old monk Columbkille settled into a quiet life of prayer, writing poetry, and copying books for libraries at the Monastery Abbey, on the Isle of Iona, off of Scotland, which you can still visit. On the last day of his life, he was transcribing the book of Psalms when he reached verse 11 of the 33rd Psalm. He transcribed “They who seek the Lord shall not be deprived of any good thing”. Then set down his pen, went to the monastery chapel, knelt before Jesus in the tabernacle, and died. That was the year 597.
Saint Columbkille truly sought the Lord and worked tirelessly for the spread of the Gospel and we do well to We do well to seek our patron’s intercession not only today, on his feast day, but throughout the entire year—to ask his prayers for the spiritual well being of all of our parishioners, and for all of the people in our parish territory who do not share our Catholic faith, that they may experience the conversion for which our patron worked so tirelessly.
The Scripture readings today speak of the power and importance of the Christian faith preached by Saint Columbkille by which we receive Divine Life. Both the first reading and the Gospel tell of the raising of two dead young boys.
From the first book of Kings we heard of the widow of Zarephath. Remember, widows, in the 9th century before Christ were practically helpless. No social security, no social safety net. Having lost her husband, her son was her last hope. But a severe drought and famine struck the land, the widow and her son were starving to death. The widow’s Son became desperately ill and died. She became angry at Elijah for not being able to save her son’s life, and she became angry at God, she hit rock bottom.
Yet, to show that God has power in the most desperate, hopeless situations—to show that rock bottom can be a place of new life, God used Elijah to perform a miracle. The life of the widow’s son was restored. And so was the woman’s faith.
Similarly in the Gospel, Jesus comes into the city of Naim, not too far from Nazareth. Our Lord sees a funeral procession underway. The body of a young man, the only son of a widowed mother, is being carried to burial.
Jesus is moved with pity by her grief and desperation, and he brings the young man back to life. The miracle awakens not just amazement in the woman, but we hear how all those gathered were amazed and glorified God.
God can make something from nothing, God can bring faith where faith is absent, God can bring new life to dead bodies and dead souls. We hear even in our own day of medical miracles, where doctors, men of science, claim to witness God’s hand at work, bringing back the lifeless, curing disease without explanation.
But more important than miracles of physical healing, are the stories of spiritual healing and conversion, the stories of those who have lost faith or who never had faith or who are in mortal sin are brought back to supernatural life. Saints like Columbkille remind us that the vocation of every Christian is to be an instrument of conversion—souls are meant to be brought back to life through you and through me, through good works which glorify God, through preaching which glorifies God. The Christian faith is not just a matter of bodily life and death, but eternal life and death.
In the past few years there has been great popularity of movies and television shows about zombies, one of the most successful shows on television is called “the walking dead”. If you are not familiar with the term, a “zombie” is an animated corpse, which sort of shambles around looking to feed its insatiable hunger. The zombie, the walking corpse, which has lost its humanity, seeks to feed on the living—it consumes without moral regard.
Is not a man who lives without the Christian faith, or who has given up the faith, kind of like zombie, a walking corpse. He sort of wanders aimlessly, looking for things to consume. That aimless consumerism, seeking to fill the emptiness with stuff, his insatiable hunger for novelty, his lust, his moral disregard, is like a zombie plague which has infected our world. As a person strays farther and farther away from the Christian faith, with less and less regard for the things of God, he loses his humanity, he loses his soul.
But there is a remedy for the zombie plague. That which can restore lifelessness, which can breath new life, supernatural life back into a soul, is the Christian faith. The Cure, the saving Gospel, is not something we make up on our own, it is something we receive from the Church. It has brought divine life to millions, it has converted hardened sinners to saints, it has brought hope to the hopeless.
The Cure is received and passed down, which is why parents have such a great responsibility in raising their children in the faith. Our children need to be immersed in a Catholic culture—with our tradition, and art, and music, and sights, so they can build up resistance to that spiritual disease, lest they be infected, and lose their humanity and the promise of eternal life.
We need to be very vigilant over the types of entertainment we are exposed to. For, the anti-Christian attitudes in many movies and television shows are contagious like the zombie plague.
During this Year of Faith, we must take seriously our call to spread the cure, to bring the fallen away back to the practice of the Christian faith, confession, Sunday Mass, daily prayer and bible study. To boldly live as St. Columbkille wrote in his last moments, “Those who seek the Lord, shall not be deprived of good things,” the most of important of which, is eternal life through Jesus Christ. With the help of the Blessed Virgin, Saint Columbkille our patron, and all the saints, may we be transformed into instruments of Divine Life for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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