The Catholic Catalogue by Melissa Musick

Author:Melissa Musick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2016-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

Walpurgis Night

Lord, give me light, that I may see your way.

Lord, give me strength, that I may follow your way.

Lord, give me love, that I may do your will.

—conclusion of the novena to St. Walburga

Long before there was a Farmers’ Almanac or a Weather Channel or daily forecasts, people divided the year simply into the warm season and the cold season. May 1 was the start of the warm season, and November 1, All Saints’ Day, was the start of the cold season. These days were understood to be liminal, or threshold, moments when, at midnight, the seasons mingled and met. In that in-between place, anything could happen. Some of that memory still infuses All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, a day that is widely kept in the United States.

Less familiar to most Americans is the European counterpart of All Hallows Eve, Walpurgis Night, on April 30, a celebration of St. Walpurga, or Walburga. Like her uncle, St. Boniface, Walburga was born in England, but she devoted her life to the church in Germany, where she died in the year 777. St. Walburga was the daughter of a saint, King Richard of the West Saxons, and the sister of two saints, Willibald and Winibald. You could say she went into the family business when her father took her, at the age of eleven, to be taught by the Benedictine nuns at Wimborne Abbey in Dorsetshire. She lived there from 721 to 748, the year her uncle called her to help with the work of bringing the Gospel to Germany.

Sister Walburga set out with other women from her abbey. The weather was fair when they set sail, but soon fierce storms arose and threatened to swamp their boat. Walburga knelt on the deck and prayed that, as Jesus calmed the winds and the waves for the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, he would calm the weather for her and her companions. The sea quieted and the sailors, who witnessed the miracle, told everyone in the German port where they docked how God had answered Walburga’s prayers.

Walburga went on to become an abbess at the Abbey of Heidenheim. She studied medicine, in addition to devoting her life to prayer and administration, and she became known for her ability to heal the sick. After the death of her brother, Winibald, who was the abbot at Heidenheim, she was placed in authority over both the men’s and the women’s abbeys. Antoine-Frédéric Ozanam, the founder of the lay Society of St. Vincent de Paul, wrote of Walburga and her sisters, “Silence and humility have veiled the labors of the nuns from the eyes of the world, but history has assigned them their place at the very beginning of German civilization.”

After Walburga’s death, pilgrims came to her tomb seeking cures. When her tomb was opened in 893 to take out a portion of relics for the Benedictine Abbey of Monheim, the nuns found her body covered in oil, and the oil continues to flow from her body today.

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