ST WIGBERT, ABBOT - 13 AUGUST

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 13th of August

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.

ST WIGBERT, ABBOT 

Saint Wigbert was a companion of St Boniface. He was born in England about 675 and died at Hersfeld about 746. Positive biographical accounts of him are scanty; he had several contemporaries of the same name, and it is difficult to decide in all instances to which Wigbert the different details belong. 

PURITY OF MORALS

In 836 Servatus Lupus wrote a life of Wigbert, but this contains very few clear historical data while it relates in detail the purity of Wigbert's morals, his zeal for souls, charity, familiarity wit the Bible, knowledge of theology, skill in teaching, enthusiasm for monastic life, and the faithfulness with which he fulfilled his duties. 

ZEAL FOR SOULS

St Boniface called him from England. Wigbert was certainly older than Boniface. A letter from a priest name Wigbert to the fathers and brethren in Glestingaburg (Glastonbury) in Somersetshire is preserved. It has been supposed that the writer was St Wigbert and therefore a monk of Glastonbury, but this is not probable. 

HE BECAME ABBOT OF THE HERSFELD MONASTERY

He went to Germany about 734, and Boniface made him abbot of the monastery of Hersfeld in Hesse; among his pupils there was St Sturmi, the first Abbot of Fulda. 

About 737 Boniface transferred him to Thuringia as Abbot of Ohrdruf, where he worked with the same success as in Hersfeld. 

HE CONTINUED HIS AUSTERE LIFE NOTWITHSTANDING OLD AGE AND ILLNESS

Later Wigbert obtained Boniface's permission to return to Hersfeld to spend his remaining days in quiet and to prepare for death; notwithstanding old age and illness he continued his austere mode of life until his end. 

HE WAS FIRST BURIED AT FRITZLAR

He was first buried at Fritzlar in an inconspicuous grave, but during an incursion of the Saxons (774) his remains were taken for safety to Buraburg, and from there, in 780 by Archbishop Lullus transferred to Hersfeld, where in 850 a beautiful church was built to him; this was burned in 1037. A great fire in 1761 destroyed the new church (dedicated, 1144) and consumed the saint's bones, or else they crumbled in the ruins. 

HIS VENERATION

The veneration of Wigbert flourished especially in Hesse and Thuringia. At the present day he is venerated only in the dioceses of Mainz, Fulda, and Paderborn. He is recorded in the "Martyrologium Romanum" under August 13. 

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)