ST EGWIN, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR - 11 JANUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN JANUARY

Saints celebrated on the 11th of January

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 EGWIN, BISHOP AND CONFESSOR 

Saint Egwin was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, devoted himself to the divine service in his youth, and succeeded Ostfor in the episcopal see of Worcester, in 692. 

HIS ZEAL IN REPROVING VICE

By his zeal and severity in reproving vice, he stirred up some of his own flock to persecute him, which gave him an opportunity of performing a penitential pilgrimage to Rome. 

HE THREW THE KEY INTO THE RIVER

Some legends tell us, that setting out he put on his legs iron shackles, and threw the key into the river Severn, others say the Avon; but found it in the belly of a fish, some say at Rome, others in his passage from France to England. 

HE FOUNDED THE FAMOUS ABBEY OF EVESHAM

After his return, with the assistance of Coenred or Kenred, king of Mercia, he founded the famous abbey of Evesham, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin. 

SECURING AN ETERNAL CROWN

After this he undertook a second journey to Rome, in the company of Coenred, king of the Mercians, and of Offa, of the East Saxons, who gave up their temporal principalities to labour with greater earnestness to secure an eternal crown. 

AT FIRST, HE WAS BURIED IN THE MONASTERY OF EVESHAM

St Egwin died on December 30, 717, and was buried in the monastery of Evesham. His body was translated to a more honourable place in 1183, probably on January 11, on which day many English Martyrologies mark his festival. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)