Richard II of England with his patron saints King Edmund the Martyr (left), King Edward the Confessor (middle) and St John the Baptist (right).
Edward, surnamed the Confessor, was the nephew of
King Edward the Martyr, and was himself the last Anglo-Saxon King.
Our Lord had revealed that he would one day be king, to a holy man
named Brithwald. When Edward was 10 years old the Danes, who were
devastating England, sought his life. He was therefore obliged to go
into exile to the court of his uncle, Richard II, the Duke of
Normandy. Amid the vices and temptations of the Norman court, he grew
up pure and innocent, a subject of admiration to all. His pious
devotion towards God and holy things was most remarkable. He was of a
very gentle disposition, free from lust of power, and was a burning
and shining light for love of God and the things of God. Of him the
saying is preserved that he would prefer not to be a king of a
kingdom won by slaughter and bloodshed. When the Danish rulers who
had murdered his brothers Edmund and Alfred passed away, Edward
returned to England and in 1042 assumed the kingship of his native
country.
Edward applied himself to remove all traces of the
havoc wrought by the enemy. To begin at the sanctuary, he built many
churches and restored others, endowing them with rents and
privileges, for he was very anxious to see religion, which had been
neglected, flourishing again. All writers assert that, though
compelled by his nobles to marry, both he and his bride preserved
their virginity intact. Such were his love of Christ and his faith,
that he was one day permitted to see our Lord in the Mass, shining
with heavenly light and smiling upon him. His lavish charity won him
the name of the lather of orphans and of the poor. He was never so
happy as when he had exhausted the royal treasury on their behalf. He
was honoured with the gift of prophecy, and foresaw much of England’s
future history. A remarkable instance is, that when Sweyn, king of
Denmark, was drowned in the very act of embarking on his fleet to
invade England, Edward was supernaturally aware of the event the very
moment it happened.
Edward had a special devotion to Saint John the
Evangelist, and was accustomed never to refuse anything asked in his
name. One day Saint John appeared to him as a poor man begging an
alms in this manner. The king, having no money about him, took off
his ring and gave it to him. Soon afterwards the Saint sent the ring
back to Edward, with a message that his death was at hand. The king
then ordered prayers to be said for himself. He died most piously on
the day foretold by Saint John, the Nones (5th) of January
1066. He was canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1161. Pope Innocent
XI ordered his memory to be celebrated with a public Office
throughout the whole Church on the 13th of October, the day on which
in 1102 his body, which was found to be incorrupt and sweet-smelling,
was translated by Saint Thomas Becket, Bishop of Canterbury, in the
presence of King Henry II.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
This glorious Saint was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the king of Wessex. The times had progressed since that eleventh century when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the Island of Saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelised by Rome, even as before them the Britons they had just chastised, they remembered, better than the latter from where their salvation had come: a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in Albion, for the constant fidelity of the princes and people of the heptarchy towards the See of Peter. In 800 Egbert, a descendant of Cerdic, had gone on pilgrimage to Rome when a deputation from the West Saxons offered him the crown beside the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, at whose feet Charlemagne, at that very time, was restoring the Empire. As Egbert united under one sceptre the power of the seven kingdoms, so Saint Edward, his last descendant, represents today in his own person the glorious holiness of them all. Nephew to Saint Edward the Martyr, our holy king is known to God and man by the beautiful title of the Confessor. The Church, in her account of his life, sets forth more particularly the virtues which won him so glorious an appellation. But we must remember moreover that his reign of twenty-four years was one of the happiest England has ever known. Alfred the Great had no more illustrious imitator. The Danes, so long masters, now entirely subjugated within the kingdom, and without, held at bay by the noble attitude of the prince. Macbeth, the usurper of the Scotch throne, vanquished in a campaign that Shakespeare has immortalised. Saint Edward’s Laws, which remain to this day the basis of the British Constitution, the Saint’s munificence towards all noble enterprises, while at the same time he diminished the taxes: all this proves with sufficient clearness that the sweetness of virtue, which made him the intimate friend of Saint John the Beloved disciple, is not incompatible with the greatness of a monarch.
You represent on the sacred Cycle the nation which Gregory the Great foresaw would rival the Angels. So many holy kings, illustrious virgins, grand bishops, and great monks who were its glory, now form your brilliant court. Where are now the unwise in whose sight you and your race seemed to die? History must be judged in the light of Heaven. While you and your reign there eternally, judging nations and ruling over peoples, the dynasties of your successors on Earth, ever jealous of the Church and long wandering in schism and heresy, have become extinct one after another, sterilised by God’s wrath and having none but that vain renown of which no trace is found in the book of life. How much more noble and more durable, O Edward, were the fruits of your holy virginity! Teach us to look upon the present world as a preparation for another, an everlasting world, and to value human events by their eternal results. Our admiring worship seeks and finds you in your royal Abbey of Westminster, and we love to contemplate, by anticipation, your glorious resurrection on the day of judgement when all around you so many false grandeurs will acknowledge their shame and their nothingess. Bless us, prostrate in spirit or in reality, beside your tomb where heresy, fearful of the result, would fain forbid our prayer. Offer to God the supplications rising today from all parts of the world, for the wandering sheep whom the Shepherd’s voice is now so earnestly calling back to the one Fold!
Also on this day according to the ROMAN
MARTYROLOGY:
At Troas in Asia Minor, the birthday of St.
Carpus, a disciple of the blessed Apostle St. Paul.
At Cordova in Spain, the birthday of the holy
martyrs Faustus, Januarius and Martial. First tortured on the rack,
then having their eyelashes shaven, their teeth plucked out, their
ears and noses cut off, they finished their martyrdom by fire.
At Thessalonica, St. Florentius, a martyr, who,
after enduring various torments, was burned alive.
In Austria, St. Colman, martyr.
At Ceuta in Morocco, seven martyrs of the Order of
Friars Minor, Daniel, Samuel, Angelus, Domnus, Leo, Nicholas and
Hugolinus. For preaching the Gospel and refuting the errors of
Muhammed, they were reviled, bound and scourged by the Saracens, and
finally won the palm of martyrdom by being beheaded.
At Antioch, the holy bishop Theophilus, who held
the pontificate in that church, the sixth after the blessed Apostle
St. Peter.
At Tours, St. Venantius, abbot, and confessor.
At Subiaco in Italy, St. Chelidonia, virgin.
And in other places, many other holy martyrs,
confessors and virgins.
Thanks be to God.
