SS. KYNEBURGA, KYNESWIDE, AND TIBBA - 6 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 6th of March

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.

SAINTS KYNEBURGA, KYNESWIDE, AND TIBBA  

The two first were daughters of Penda, the cruel pagan king of Mercia, and sisters to three successive Christian Kings, Peada, Wulfere, and Ethelred, and to the pious prince Merowald.

ST KYNEBURGA

Kyneburge [Kyneburga], as Bede informs us, was married to Alcfrid, eldest son of Oswi, and in his father’s life-time king of Bernicia. They are said to have lived in perpetual continency. 

THE NUNNERY

By his death she was left a widow in the bloom of life, and, renouncing the world, governed a nunnery which she built; or, according to others, found built by her brother Wulfere, in a moist fenny place, on the confines of the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton, then called Dormundcaster, afterwards from her, Kyneburgecaster, now Caster [Castor]. 

A MIRROR OF ALL SANCTITY

The author of her life in Capgrave says, that she lived here a mirror of all sanctity, and that no words can express the bowels of charity with which she cherished the souls which served God under her care; how watchful she was over their comportment, and how zealous in instructing and exhorting them; and with what floods of tears she implored for them the divine grace and mercy. She had a wonderful compassion for the poor, and strongly exhorted her royal brothers to alms-giving and works of mercy. 

THEY DEVOTED THEMSELVES TO GOD'S SERVICE

Kyneswide and Kynedride (though many confound the latter with St Kyneburge) were also daughters of Penda, left very young at his death. By an early consecration of their virginity to God, they devoted themselves to his service, and both embraced a religious state. Kyneswide took the holy veil in the monastery of Dormundcaster.   

THEIR RELICS

The bodies of these saints were translated to Peterborough, where their festival was kept on the 6th of March, together with that of St Tibba, a holy virgin, their kinswoman, who, having spent many years in solitude and devotion, passed to glory on December 13. She was honoured with particular devotion at Rihal, a town near the river Wash, in Rutlandshire. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)