More on Saint Columba

My blogging buddy Erin (who must have moved her blog for now) sends me occasional e-mails that are always insightful and a surprising joy to read! She read my post on St. Columba and added some additional insights!

Dear Elena,

I stop by your blog every month or two to see what’s new with you and your family, and today I noticed that St. Columba is your “patron saint for a year.” This jumped out at me, because early this fall I myself found out who St. Columba is.

Like your husband and your children, I have a very Irish heritage. Some 15 or 20 years ago my father and his father set out to find out about our genealogical roots. It wasn’t easy for my grandfather, because his own father died when he was just a toddler, after which time he was sent to live with an Uncle in Vermont. This uncle died in the early 1950s, well before my grandfather took enough interest in his roots to ask any questions about it.

My grandfather did know that his grandfather, Edward, had come to Vermont from Canada, but didn’t know too much more than that. Unfortunately, grandpa Grace died in 2003, never knowing for sure where his family came from.

For a couple of years now I have been doing some genealogical research, mostly compiling data found by other family members, so that when the time comes for my children to take an interest in their roots, I will have something to share with them. Through my research I made contact with another branch of my grandfather’s family, the grandson of his father’s brother.

This turned out to be a revelation. It confirmed that our ancestors traveled from Ireland in the early half of the 19th century to a little town in Quebec called St. Scholastique. From there this brave and much maligned group of immigrants formed the Parish of St. Columban in 1835 (http://www.stcolumban-irish.com/). These Irish Catholic immigrants were coordinated by their beloved father Phelan, in search of a better life for themselves and their progeny. Father Phelan was later named the Bishop of Kingston and the vicar general of Montreal (http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBioPrintable.asp?BioId=38255).

St. Columba seems to have a knack for reconciliation, both that reconciliation that we understand as Catholics, and that kind that we understand as humans.

It was there, in St. Columban, that my great-great Grandparents, Edward and Catherine Grace, began their family that would one day be made up of 12 sons and 1 daughter. It was in St. Columban that they buried their third born son, and infant named Michael, who was born on February 28, the same day as my own infant son nearly 140 years later. Michael lived less than six months, and might have been completely lost to my branch of the family tree, had I been unable to “reconcile” with my father’s cousins.

And it has been through this information that I have been able to develop a closer relationship with my own father, and have begun to write to my grandmother.

Just as St.Columba played a part in reconciling JFK with his own dead children, as you stated in your post. St. Columba kept them until they could be reunited in death with their own father.

Discovering my ancestors had made me see that every moment we spend in this life is filled with meaning, how the lives of those who have gone before us, the actions of those in the past, continue to resonate with meaning in the present, bringing those that are gone very much into our present reality. In a spiritual sense, there is no past present and future, there is only Always.

From the site http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04136a.htm I noticed another connection to you :):

Columba is said never to have spent an hour without study, prayer, or similar occupations. When at home he was frequently engaged in transcribing. On the eve of his death he was engaged in the work of transcription.

Maybe you could even call him the Patron Saint of transcriptionist!

Just wanted to share.

Be Well,
Erin

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