ST KEBENNINA, HERMITESS - 28 NOVEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN NOVEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 28th 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.

ST KEBENNINA, HERMITESS 

Kebennina, also called Kebinina or Kebeni, was a hermitess at St Gallen [Switzerland]. She was the handmaid of St Wiborada, the teacher of the holy Bishop Ulrich.

The sources do not give her place of birth; but probably she, like St Wiborada, came from Klingen in the former Landgraviate of Nellenburg. With St Wiborada she then moved to Constanz and St Gallen. Everywhere she strove to attain the sanctity of her Mistress.

After the death of her Mistress she served her companion, the blessed Rachilde, with just as much diligence and redoubled her works of penance.

Once when Rachilde was ill, Kebennina prepared a medicine for her by the embers, and the infernal spirit threw poor Kebennina into the fire, burning her in such a bad way that her bones became visible. Following this accident, Kebennina developed a life-threatening inflammation. Rachilde thereupon placed the penitential robe of St Wiborada on Kebennina, who was in a coma by now - and immediately she arose from her sickbed, healed.

Quite some time later, Dean Ekkehard, who knew that Kebennina was an eyewitness to the late St Wiborada's life, committed her under obedience to record the Saint's life for posterity. But Kebennina, as she had got older, had started losing her memory. Therefore, she approached her late Mistress for her intercession and was with the help of her prayers able to fulfil the task given to her.

Kebennina died in October. The year is uncertain. She lived under the abbot Kralo or Crolochius - that is, between the years 942 and 958 - and probably died during his lifetime. As long as Wiborada and Rachilde lived, as a maid she was not bound to the hermitage, but after their death she also became a hermitess in her own right.

(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, 1858- 📷 Entry from Helvetia Sancta, Heinrich Murer, 1750)