Saint Columba of Iona

Saint Columba is the best known of the Iona Saints.  His feast day is June 9.  He is also known as Columcille - Dove of the Church

 

Troparion of St Columcille Tone 5

By thy God-inspired life/ thou didst embody both the mission and the dispersion of the Church,/ most glorious Father Columcille./ Using thy repentance and voluntary exile,/ Christ our God raised thee up as a beacon of the True Faith,/ an Apostle to the heathen and an indicator of the Way of salvation./ Wherefore O holy one, cease not to intercede for us/ that our souls may be saved.

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"In that night when Saint Columba passed, by a happy and blessed end, from earth to heaven, I and other men with me, at work catching fish in the valley of the river Findea which abounds in fish, saw the whole space of airy heaven suddenly lit up. Startled by the suddenness of this miracle, we raised our eyes and turned them to the region of the rising sun; and behold, there appeared what seemed like a very great pillar of fire which, rising upwards in that midnight, seemed to us to illumine the whole world like the summer sun at midday. And after that pillar pierced the sky, darkness followed, as after the setting of the sun...." A description of the repose of Saint Columba on 9 June 597 AD taken from the Life of Saint Columba by Adomnan