A Blacksmith

Once in the midland districts of Ireland there lived a blacksmith named Columb Coilrigin. He was much devoted to doing good. At the very moment when he was dying in a ripe old age, the holy Columba (c. 521-97 AD) was far away from there on the Iona island in Scotland, where he said to a few of the senior brethren standing around him,

"Columb Coilrigin, the blacksmith, has not worked in vain. As he desired, he has had the joy to buy the eternal rewards by the work of his hands. Look out, at this moment his soul is carried by the holy angels to the joys of the heavenly land, because he laid out all that he could earn by his trade in alms to the poor."

Further Words

Try to cheer up somebody else on a day it feels very wrong to cheer up yourself. [Cf. Mark Twain]

The educated differ from the uneducated, the living fish from the dead fish. [With Aristotle]