ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER
Saints celebrated on the 17th of November
Prayer to the Angels and the Saints
Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.
In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.
Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.
Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.
SAINT HILDA OF WHITBY, ABBESS
By despising the world for Christ, St Hilda [Hild] became greater, even in the eyes of men, than royalty itself could have made her.
Hilda was born [c. 614] daughter of Hereric, nephew to St Edwin, king of the Northumbers; and she was baptised by St Paulinus, together with that prince, when she was but fourteen years old.
SHE PRESERVED THE GRACE OF THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM
The grace of this sacrament she always preserved without spot, and from the moment she became a member of the kingdom of God, the obligations and happiness of this great spiritual dignity took up all her thoughts, and engrossed her whole soul.
The better to attend to them alone she left her friends and country, and went into the kingdom of the East Angles, where her cousin, the most religious king Annas, reigned.
SHE WENT INTO THE KINGDOM OF THE EAST ANGLES
Her first design was to retire to Chelles, in France, where her sister, St Hereswide, served God: with her she passed one year, till, upon her death, St Aidan prevailed upon Hilda to return into Northumberland, where he settled her in a small nunnery upon the river Were, founded by the first Northumbrian nun, Heiu.
SHE WAS MADE ABBESS
After living there one year, she was made abbess of a numerous monastery at Heortea, or Heterslie, now Hartlepool, in the bishopric of Durham; and some years after called to found a great double monastery, the one of men and the other of women, at Streaneshalch, (that is, bay of the light-house,) afterwards called Prestby, from the number of priests that lived there, and at present Whitby, (or Whitebay,) in Yorkshire.
All her monasteries were destroyed by the Danes, about two hundred and fifty years after her death; only this last was rebuilt in 1067, for Benedictine monks, and flourished till the suppression of religious houses [by the secular Government's Protestant Reformation].
FULL OF SANCTITY AND WISDOM
St Hilda, for her sanctity and her wisdom, in conducting souls to God, was most dear to St Aidan, and other holy prelates; and kings and princes frequently repaired to Streaneshalch to consult her in affairs of the greatest difficulty and importance.
This holy abbess, who was eminent in all virtues, excelled particularly in prudence, and had a singular talent in reconciling differences, and in maintaining concord, being herself endowed with the spirit of charity, meekness, and peace.
THEY ASKED ST HILDA FOR ADVICE
Oswy, king of the Northumbers, was the chief benefactor, or founder of the nunnery of St Hilda. He had reigned twelve years, endured many devastations of his dominions from Penda, the cruel Mercian king, and in vain attempted by presents to gain his friendship, when that sworn enemy of the Christian name, who had already murdered five Christian kings, (Annas, Sigebert, Egric, Oswald, and Edwin,) undertook the entire conquest of Northumberland, though in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
THE KING DEFEATED THE MERCIANS
Oswy, finding himself too weak for human relief, and all his offers, and gifts rejected, turned them into vows to implore the divine assistance, and devoted his daughter, then lately born, to perpetual virginity, with certain portions of land for endowing monasteries. His vows produced greater effects than his treaties; for, with a small army, he defeated the Mercians and their allies, though thirty times more in number; and slew Penda himself upon the banks of the Aire, near Seacroft, a village about three miles from Leeds, in Yorkshire, in 655.
From this victory, the village of Winfield seems to have taken its name: and by it Oswy was raised to the height of power; so that in three years he subdued all Mercia, and the greatest part of the country of the Picts, in the North.
HE GAVE HIS DAUGHTER TO BE CONSECRATED TO GOD
According to his promise, he gave his daughter, Elfleda, scarcely then a year old, to be consecrated to God, under the care of St Hilda, at Heortea, by whom she was removed, two years after, to Streaneshalch. The king gave to this house twelve estates of land for maintaining religious persons, each estate being ten families.
Oswy dying in 670, after a reign of twenty-eight years, his widow, Ealflede, who was daughter to the holy King Edwin, retired to this monastery, and there ended her days in the exercises of a religious life.
ST HILDA'S SOUL WAS CARRIED UP TO BLISS BY ANGELS
St Hilda died in 680, being sixty-three years old, of which she had spent thirty-three in a monastic life. A nun at Hakenes, thirteen miles from Whitby, on the strand, saw her soul carried up to bliss by angels.
The body of St Hilda, after the devastation of the monastery by the Danes, Inguar and Hubba, was carried to Glastonbury by Titus, the abbot, who fled thither.
In the time of Hugh, Earl of Chester, in the reign of the Conqueror, William de Percy, ancestor to the Percies, earls of Northumberland, rebuilt the monastery for Benedictine monks, in which state it continued till the suppression of monasteries.
(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)
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