Saint Hilda of Whitby

Saint Hilda of Whitby is the patron Saint of our Anglican Catholic Parish in Maitland NSW Australia.

 

In modern times  Saint Hilda of Whitby is commemorated on the 18th of November, but the mediæval commemoration was a day earlier, on the actual anniversary of her decease.

 

Edward Bridle has translated her entry from the ninth-century Old English Martyrology for us, which describes the signs which marked her birth and her passing:

“On the seventeenth day of the month is the passing of the holy abbess in Britain whose name was Saint Hilda. She was the first builder of the minster which is named Whitby. Her father’s name was Hereric and her mother’s name was Bregoswyth; and to her mother was shewn on sleep, when she was pregnant with the child, that a jewel was thrust into her bosom, and it began to shine over all Britain. That betokened the fame of the maiden’s holiness. And Saint Hilda was three-and-thirty years in the secular state, and three-and-thirty years under the holy veil, and then she departed to Christ. And one of her nuns [literally, “of her handmaids-of-God”] saw how angels led her spirit to Heaven, and she glittered in the midst of the angels like the shining sun or a newly-pressed garment; and the same handmaid of God heard, at the same hour when she departed, the sound of a wondrous bell in the sky, and she saw also that angels raised up before her spirit a very great and wondrous Christ’s rood [cross], and it shone like a star of Heaven. And with such bliss was Saint Hilda’s spirit led to the royal glory of Heaven, where she now beholds our Lord for ever and ever, Whose will she did before, the while that on life she dwelt in her body.”

 

Please join us to commemorate St Hilda next Sunday 22nd November 2015,

at the school chapel in St Marys Campus of the All Saints College.

Entrance to the chapel is via Victoria St Maitland NSW.