ST MILBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS - 23 FEBRUARY

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

 Saints celebrated on the 23rd of February

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 MILBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS

(Seventh Century.) Saint Milburge [St Milburga] was sister to St Mildred, and daughter of Merowald, son of Penda, king of Mercia. 

Having dedicated herself to God in a religious state, she was chosen abbess of Wenlock, in Shropshire, which house she rendered a true paradise of all virtue. 

PURITY OF HEART AND HOLY PEACE

The more she humbled herself, the more she was exalted by God; and whilst she preferred sackcloth to purple and diadems, she became the invisible glory of heaven. 

The love of purity of heart and holy peace were the subject of her dying exhortation to her dear sisters. She closed her mortal pilgrimage about the end of the seventh century. 

HER FEAST DAY

Malmesbury and Harpsfield write that many miracles accompanied the translation of her relics, in 1101, on May 26, which Capgrave and Mabillon mistake for the day of her death: but Harpsfield, who had seen the best ancient English manuscripts assures us that she died on February 23, which is confirmed by all the manuscript additions to the Martyrologies of Bede and others, in which her name occurs, which are followed by the Roman on this day. 

THE ABBEY OF WENLOCK

The abbey of Wenlock was destroyed by the Danes: but a monastery of Cluny-monks was afterwards erected upon the same spot, by whom her remains were discovered in a vault in 1101, as Malmesbury, who wrote not long after, relates.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)