ST ETHELBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS

ST ETHELBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS - 11 OCTOBER

Saints celebrated on the 11th of October

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 ETHELBURGA, VIRGIN AND ABBESS

St Ethelburga [Ethelburge, Edilburge] was an English Saxon princess, sister to St 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.

St 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.

St 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. St Ethelburga's body was honoured at Nunnaminstre in Winchester.

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)

WELCOME

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BL. LUKE KIRBY, PRIEST AND MARTYR - 30 MAY

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY Saints celebrated on the 30th of May WELCOME! BLESSED LUKE KIRBY, PRIEST AND MARTYR 16th century houses, painted by Auguste Mayer He was born in the bishopric of Durham, according to Raissius ; others say at Richmond, in Yorkshire. He was master of arts in one of our universities; but going abroad to Douay, in Flanders, was received into the English college there, 1576, and made priest in 1577; and the year following sent upon the mission. Where he had not been long before he again went abroad, and travelled to Rome, partly for devotion, and partly for further improvement in learning. Here he remained in the English college till 1580, when he returned into England, and was not long after apprehended: for I find by a printed diary of things transacted in the Tower of London from 1580 till 1585, that on the 5th of December, 1580, Luke Kirby, Thomas Cottam , and other priests, were brought to the Tower from other prisons; and that these two, on the 10th...

BL. RICHARD NEWPORT, PRIEST AND MARTYR - 30 MAY

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MAY Saints celebrated on the 30th of May WELCOME! BLESSED RICHARD NEWPORT, PRIEST AND MARTYR Richard Newport, alias Smith , was born in Northamptonshire and performed his studies abroad, partly in the college of Rheims (if he be the Richard Smith whom I find in the Douay diary sent to Rome in 1586) and partly in that of Rome, where he was made priest. From thence he was sent upon the English mission, and behaved himself in such a manner as justly to acquire the character of a laborious missionary; being withal remarkably successful in bringing home many strayed sheep to the fold of Christ, to which his apostolical way of living did not a little contribute. He was several times apprehended and cast into prison, and twice banished. His name occurs amongst those who were transported in 1606; at which time, we are told, he took that opportunity of making a pilgrimage to Rome, there to pour forth his prayers at the tombs of the apostles, in behalf of thi...

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