Optional Memorial of St Bridget of Sweden

Optional Memorial of St Bridget of Sweden

She was born in Sweden in 1303. She married at the age of fourteen and had eight children, 4 daughters and four sons. Her second eldest daughter would herself also become a saint, Catherine of Sweden. St Bridget became a member of the Third Order of St Francis, that is a lay member of the Franciscan order. After the death of her husband in 1344 when she was 39 years of age, she decided to live a more austere and ascetic life and founded the Bridgettine Order as she given lands by King Magnus IV to build a monastery at Vadstena.

She spent much of her day praying and attending to the sick and poor. She was a woman of immense charity and particularly cared for unwed mothers and their children. As the plague ravaged Europe St Bridget went to Rome for the jubilee year in 1350. She would remain there for the rest of her life except for a penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In 1370, just three years before her death in Rome in 1373, Pope Urban V granted formal recognition of the Bridgettine order.

She wrote numerous works with regard to her interior and mystical experiences which gave an insight into the Lord’s passion. She was canonised in 1391 by Pope Boniface IX.

Quotes of St. Bridget of Sweden.

“My Lord Jesus Christ, Your blessed, royal, and magnificent heart could never, by torments or terrors or blandishments, be swayed, from the defence of Your kingdom of truth and justice”.

“There is no sinner in the world, however much at enmity with God, who cannot recover God’s grace by recourse to Mary, and by asking her assistance.”

Pope St John Paul II on proclaiming St Bridget of Sweden as Co- Patroness of Europe.

“Yet there is no doubt that the Church, which recognized Bridget’s holiness without ever pronouncing on her individual revelations, has accepted the overall authenticity of her interior experience. She stands as an important witness to the place reserved in the Church for a charism lived in complete docility to the Spirit of God and in full accord with the demands of ecclesial communion. In a special way too, because the Scandinavian countries from which Bridget came were separated from full communion with the See of Rome during the tragic events of the sixteenth century, the figure of this Swedish Saint remains a precious ecumenical “bridge”, strengthened by the ecumenical commitment of her Order”.

Pope Benedict XVI: General Audience 27 October 2010

“In declaring her Co-Patroness of Europe, Pope John Paul II hoped that St Bridget who lived in the 14th century when Western Christianity had not yet been wounded by division may intercede effectively with God to obtain the grace of full Christian unity so deeply longed for. Let us pray, dear brothers and sisters, for this same intention, which we have very much at heart, and that Europe may always be nourished by its Christian roots, invoking the powerful intercession of St Bridget of Sweden, a faithful disciple of God and Co-Patroness of Europe.