Tuesday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time - July 23rd Saint Bridget of Sweden, Mystic and Prophet (1303–1373) Bridget of Sweden was one of the great women of the fourteenth century: the wife of a nobleman and the mother of eight children, a nun and founder of monasteries as well as a religious order, a pilgrim who crossed continents and seas, a mystic who filled many volumes with accounts of her visions and colloquies with Christ, a prophet who called kings to justice and popes to live up to their sacred duties. At fourteen she married a prince named Ulf. It was a happy marriage that lasted 28 years. Fed up with the frivolity of court life, she and Ulf embarked on a long pilgrimage that took them all the way to Compostela in Spain. When Ulf died there, Bridget received a vision instructing her to found a new monastery in Sweden. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land she settled in Rome for the last twenty years of her life. Wherever she traveled she spoke out against slavery, injustice, and threats to peace. She excoriated the pope for abandoning Rome for Avignon and for other corruptions. At one point she denounced the pope as “a murderer of souls, worse than Lucifer, more unjust than Pilate, more merciless than Judas.” Nevertheless, he did approve the Rule of her new Order of the Most Holy Savior, or Brigittines. St. Bridget died on July 23, 1373. A triumphal procession accompanied her back to her abbey in Sweden, where she was laid to rest. “Oh Rome, Rome, be converted and turn to the Lord thy God.” —Saint Bridget of Sweden
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 19:20:29 +0000
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