Anybody who visits the European sites of the monasteries founded by St Columban cannot but be struck by the beauty of their natural setting. Like other early Irish saints, finding God in creation came naturally to St Columban.
Many legends grew up around him in at the monastery he founded in Luxeuil in north east France. Squirrels and doves were pictured playing in the folds of his cowl. Birds also approached him and nestled in the palms of his hands. Even wild beasts obeyed his commands.
His biographer the monk, Jonas, relates how St Columban once withdrew to the forest in order to fast and pray. The food ran out and all he and the young monk Chagnoald had to eat were crab apples. However, when Chagnoald went to collect the apples he found a hungry bear eating them. He returned to St Columban for directions. St Columban ordered him to go back to the orchard and to divide it in two halves, one for the bear and one for the monks.
Jonas recalls another occasion when St Columban was walking and praying in the forest near Luxeuil. He was confronted by a pack of wolves. He remained completely still and prayed Deus in adjutorium meum intende; Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina (God come to my aid; O Lord make haste to help me). The wolves approached and touched his habit, but instead of harming him they wandered off.
On another occasion when St Columban was looking for a quiet place in which to pray near the nearby monastery at Annegray, France, he came on what he considered to be an ideal place. Unfortunately it was a bear’s den, but, far from being frightened by the experience, St Columban ordered the bear to leave the place and never to return. The bear duly did so and found another den further away from Annegray.
On another day at meal time St Columban took off his working gloves and left them at the door of the refectory. While the monks were eating, a raven swooped down and carried off one of the gloves. Jonas writes that he told the monks that he would not feed the chicks of the raven until the latter had returned the stolen glove. Immediately, as the monks watched, the raven flew down with the glove in its beak and dropped it in front of St Columban, and the bird did not fly away until he gave it permission to do so.
St Columban and his monks clearly found God in the created world around them. In his sermon on grace we find, “Seek no further concerning God; for those who wish to know the great depth (of God) must first learn about creation.” Further on in the same sermon there is a sentence which could become the mantra for Creation Theology, Intellige, si vis scire Creatorem, creaturam (If you wish to know the Creator, learn about creatures).
Centuries later St Thomas Aquinas wrote, “God brought things into being in order that his goodness might be communicated to creatures and be represented by them; and because his goodness could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, he produced many and diverse creatures so that, what was wanting to one in the manifestation of the divine goodness, might be supplied by another, … and hence the whole universe together participates in the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better, than any single creature whatsoever”. (Summa Theologica Part 1, Question 47, article 1).
So other species also reveal God in ways that humans do not and cannot. My own experience of this came many years ago in Lake S’bu in the mountains of South Cotabato in the Philippines. One evening a group of fishermen brought a Philippine eagle over to my house. A flock of kalaw (hornbills) had forced this young eagle down on to Lake S’bu and its talons became entangled in the fishermen’s nets.
Because we had preached so much about protecting God’s creation, the fishermen didn’t kill the bird. Instead, they brought it over to my place where we built a makeshift aviary. We sent for a vet from the Philippine Eagle Foundation in Davao City because we thought the bird had been injured. For the next few days hundreds of people from the T’boli indigenous community came from all over the mountain to view this magnificent creature. It stood more than three feet tall and had a wing span of more than six feet. Everything about the bird was stunning – its eyes, its beak and its front plumage. After the bird had been treated by the vet, we released it back into the wild. I remember being struck by the power of its wings in flight.
While marvelling at the beauty of the eagle, I experienced incredible sadness at the thought that I and those watching were the last generation of humans which would see the Philippine eagle in the wild. We are living in the sixth largest extinction of life on earth since life began 3.8 billion years ago. We have comprehensive data on about two million species, but there could be thousands of others we do not know about. We could lose up to a third of or half the species on the planet - all of which mirror God in a particular way - over the next 50 years. May the memory of St Columban cause us to prevent any further loss of God’s wondrous creatures.
Columban Fr Seán McDonagh worked for many years in the Philippines as a missionary priest. He is the author of numerous books and articles on ecology.
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