ST ETHELBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS - 11 OCTOBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 11th of October

WELCOME!

SAINT ETHELBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS 

Saint Ethelburga [Ethelburge, Edilburge, Edelburga] was an English Saxon princess, sister to Saint Erconwald, bishop of London. To the end that she might live entirely to herself and God, she in her youth renounced the world, and neither riches nor the tempting splendour of a court could shake her resolution; for the world loses all its influence upon a mind which is wholly taken up with the great truths of faith and eternal salvation.

Saint Erconwald considered only the perfection of his sister’s virtue, not flesh and blood, when he appointed her abbess of the great nunnery which he had founded at Barking in Essex. Ethelburga, by her example and spirit, sweetly led on all the chaste spouses of Christ in that numerous house in the paths of true virtue and Christian perfection. 

How entirely they were dead both to the world and to themselves, and how perfectly divine charity reigned in their souls! 

When a raging pestilence swept off a part of this community, in 664, all rejoiced in their last moments, and thought even every day and every hour, long before they went to the possession of their God, to love and praise whom with all their powers, and without interruption for eternity, was the pure and vehement desire with which they were inflamed; and the living envied the dying. 

The comfort of those that survived was in the divine will, and in knowing their retardment could be but for a moment, that they might labour perfectly to purify their hearts, before they were united to their friends, the saints, and swallowed up in a glorious immortality. 

Saint Ethelburga survived this mortality for the support and comfort of the rest. Having sent before her so many saints to heaven, she met her own death with a great spirit, and her glory was manifested by miraculous visions. Saint Ethelburga's body was honoured at Nunnaminstre in Winchester. 

Source: Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints

PRAYER:

O God, who gladden us each year by the feast of the blessed Ethelburga, graciously grant that, as we rejoice in her merits, we may be inspired by her example. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.