Hello, fellow pilgrims. Yesterday, The Episcopal Church (TEC) commemorated a saint with whom you may not be familiar. Her name is St. Birgitta (St. Bridget) of Sweden. Oftentimes, we hear about saints who forfeited their secular lives and devoted themselves entirely to God or Christ—some living in cloistered communities, others living in seclusion as hermits. St. Birgitta was a mother, wife, pilgrim, reformer, and eventually a widow. She and her family served Christ together and devoted themselves not only to the spread of Christ’s kingdom, but also to the reformation and ethics of leadership in the church and beyond. She and her family advocated peace, ethics, wellness, and love in action. And they lived their lives as pilgrims for Christ, traveling to Rome and to the Holy Land and spoke to kings, nobles, clergy, and popes. They even traveled the Camino of St. James to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. They served the poor and the sick and were so devoted to the passion of Christ that when St. Birgitta’s husband Ulf died, she founded the Order of Bridgettines, a contemplative order with vows of prayer and hospitality and who advocate for unity and the cessation of division among Christians.
Through her devoted life of faith, St. Birgitta exemplified the beauty of an avowed life to Christ alongside her vows as a wife, mother, pilgrim, widow, and mystic. St. Birgitta died in 1373 and was canonized a saint only 18 years later. She is the patron saint of Europe, as well as of widows, pilgrims, and family. Wife, mother, advocate, servant, foundress, widow—Saint.
You are Beautiful and Beloved.
Angela+