Saint Bridget of Sweden, Widow
S. Birgittae Viduae
Saint Bridget of Sweden, a noble wife, mother, and widow favoured with heavenly revelations, founded the Order of the Most Holy Saviour and is honoured as one of the great women of the Church.
Saint Bridget was born about the year 1303, of a noble and devout family of Sweden. Brought up in piety, she was married while young to a nobleman, Ulf Gudmarsson, and proved a faithful wife and the mother of a large family, among whom was Saint Catherine of Sweden. With her husband she ordered her household in the fear of God, cared for the poor, and made pilgrimage; and the two of them lived their married life as a path of holiness, until Ulf’s death left Bridget a widow.
Widowhood and revelations
From her childhood Saint Bridget had been favoured with the grace of prayer and, as the tradition relates, with visions and revelations concerning our Lord, his Passion, and the affairs of the Church. After she was widowed she gave herself still more wholly to God, embracing a life of penance, prayer, and charity. The revelations granted to her, which she made known in obedience to her spiritual guides, are famed throughout the Church; in them she dwelt especially upon the sufferings of Christ and called princes and prelates to repentance and to the reform of their lives. The Church honours her sanctity and the fruit of her counsels, while leaving the particulars of private revelations to the measure of belief that is their due.
Moved by what she had received, Saint Bridget founded a new religious order, the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, commonly called the Brigittines, devoted to the praise of God and the honour of his Passion and of his blessed Mother. She laboured for its establishment and approval, and it spread in the lands of the north and beyond.
Pilgrim and intercessor
In her later years Saint Bridget journeyed to Rome and made it her home, urging by word and example the reform of the Church and the return of the Sovereign Pontiff to the City, and serving the poor and the sick of Rome with her own hands. She undertook also a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that she might venerate the places of our Lord’s life and Passion. Worn by her labours and her penances, she died at Rome on the twenty-third of July, 1373, and was afterward canonised; her body was carried back to Sweden, to the great monastery of her order at Vadstena.
Her feast is kept on the eighth of October. The collect of her feast recalls that our Lord revealed heavenly secrets to Saint Bridget, and asks that we, his servants, may rejoice in the revelation of his eternal glory. In Saint Bridget the Church honours a woman who was faithful to God in marriage, in widowhood, and in the founding of a religious family, and who spent herself for the reform of the Church and the love of the Passion of Christ.
The Collect
O Lord our God, who didst make known thy heavenly secrets to blessed Bridget through thine only-begotten Son: grant unto us thy servants; that we may rejoice in the revelation of thine eternal glory.
Dómine Deus noster, qui beátæ Birgíttæ per Unigénitum tuum cæléstia secréta patefecísti: da nobis fámulis tuis; in ætérnæ beatitúdinis revelatióne gaudére.
Patronage
She is venerated as the founder of the Brigittine Order and is honoured as a patroness of Sweden and, with others, of Europe; she is invoked by widows and by those devoted to the Passion of our Lord.
In the Modern Calendar
In the modern calendar her memorial is observed on 23 July, the anniversary of her death.
Common Questions
When is the feast of Saint Bridget of Sweden?
In the calendar of the 1962 Roman Missal her feast is kept on 8 October as a Third Class feast. In the modern calendar her memorial is observed on 23 July, the anniversary of her death.
Who was Saint Bridget of Sweden?
She was a fourteenth-century Swedish noblewoman, wife, mother, and widow, favoured with heavenly revelations, who founded the Order of the Most Holy Saviour, the Brigittines. She laboured for the reform of the Church, made her home in Rome, and died there in 1373. She is honoured as one of the great women of the Church.
What were the revelations of Saint Bridget?
They were visions and communications, especially concerning the Passion of our Lord and the state of the Church, which she received in prayer and made known under the direction of her spiritual guides. The Church venerates her holiness and the good fruit of her counsels; private revelations such as these are received with the reverence due to them, but are distinct from the public teaching of the faith.
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