St. Bridget of Sweden

A Successful Failure?

A Successful Failure? What does that mean? And how can someone who embodies this dubious sounding oxymoron be a great saint?

We’ll find the answer to those questions in the story of today’s saint.

 But first, let’s go back to the 14th century.  Due to a combination of Roman violence and corruption, mixed with French finagling, the popes left the Eternal City in the first decade of the century. They spent almost seventy years in the city of Avignon, in what is now southern France.  There, 400 miles from their episcopal see, the Bishops of Rome, the Pontiffs of the Universal Church, lived like vassals of the French king in increasingly secular splendor.  

On top of the spiritual illness plaguing Europe, the continent soon encountered a physical malady as well. This was the bubonic plague, the “Black Death.” In short order it would kill fully one third of all Europeans.

An Age of Failure and Futility

     Today’s saint, St. Bridget (or Birgitta) of Sweden, lived in the midst of that distressing century.  Bridget was born to a prominent Swedish family in 1303, six years before Pope Clement V abandoned Rome for Avignon. She died in 1373, three years before Pope Gregory XI returned the papacy to its proper home. The failure and futility of the age found echoes in the saint’s life.

     Bridget’s life started happily enough. She was married in her early teens, as was common at the time. The future saint had eight children, one of whom would go on to become St. Catherine of Sweden.  She enjoyed a deeply committed and loving relationship with her husband, and at the same time acquired a reputation for personal piety and charity. Her virtuous conduct attracted favorable notice from many people, including learned clerics and even the King of Sweden.  When Bridget was in her early forties, however, her life changed abruptly when her beloved husband died. In her changed circumstances she devoted herself completely to the practice of religion and Christian virtues.  Also, as the Catholic Encyclopedia [link] puts it:

The visions which she believed herself to have had from her early childhood now became more frequent and definite.  She believed that Christ Himself appeared to her, and she wrote down the revelations she then received, which were in great repute during the Middle Ages.  They were translated into Latin by Matthias Magister and Peter Prior.

Laying the Foundations

Influenced by these visions, she laid the foundations for a new religious order, the Brigittines. Bridget set out for Rome. First of all, she was seeking Papal approval for her order (which was finally granted twenty years later, in 1370). Her other purpose to urge the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon (a task later taken up by St. Catherine of Siena).  

     Having been first a mother of a large family and then a consecrated religious woman who founded an order of nuns, both in extremely trying times, St. Bridget of Sweden is truly a versatile saint. She is a patroness of mothers, families and those in religious communities. She is also an exemplar of charity, piety, and determination for all of us.

The Common Thread

     One of the most interesting things about St. Bridget, the common thread that connects all of her other experiences, is summed up in this passage from the article about her [link] at Catholic Online:

Although she had longed to become a nun, she never even saw the monastery in Vadstena.  In fact, nothing she set out to do was ever realized.  She had never had the pope return to Rome permanently, she never managed to make peace between France and England, she never saw any nun in the habit that Christ had shown her, and she never returned to Sweden but died, [a] worn out old lady far from home in July 1373.  She can be called the Patroness of Failures.

The article goes on to call her a “successful failure”, citing her canonization in 1391.

 

    

The World’s Eyes and God’s Eyes

St. Bridget of Sweden might well have looked like a failure at the end of her life . . . in the eyes of the World. The eyes of the World, however, are not God’s eyes:

“the LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  (1 Samuel 16:7)

St. Paul underscores this same truth when he tells the Corinthians that “the wisdom of this world is folly with God.” (1 Corinthians 3:19) St. Bridget is in fact an excellent example of the quote attributed to St. Theresa of Calcutta: “God hasn’t called me to be successful, he has called me to be faithful”.  Whether or not Mother Theresa actually said it, it’s a marvelous statement of what it is to be a Saint. Not only that, it’s also a perfect description of why we honor St. Bridget of Sweden today.

As it happens, her efforts did in fact bear fruit, even though she didn’t live to see it. The pope did return to Rome, and the order she founded continues to this day. But that’s not why she’s a saint.   St. Bridget’s success, and our “success” as Christians, consists in fidelity to Christ and in nothing else.

Featured image top of page: “Christ and St. Brigida” from Santa Maria Della Catena, Palermo