Paul Duerksen

A Passage to Iona Paul Duerksen

Scotland in the post-Roman period was a wild, dark place, filled with warring, scrabbling Pictish tribes. The first brave Irish missionaries traveled there with the message of Christ near the end of the Fourth Century, A. D. Over the next decades others followed, establishing an outpost on the western Scottish island of Iona (ancient Iouan). From there over the next few centuries other missionaries at great sacrifice to themselves made the journey into the Hebrides, Scotland proper, and northern Briton and Saxon England (Northumbria). This is the fictional tale of one such missionary encounter between the a Pictish man who early in his life began to receive divine visions. These led him to an encounter with the great Irish missionary, St. Columba.