In celebrating Saint Walburga’s Feast Day today, we also celebrate the monastery’s secondary patroness. She is recognized as such by her statue residing in our Lourdes Grotto, the shrine dedicated to our primary patroness, Mary Help of Christians. The following passage from My Lord of Belmont describes the addition of the statue to the Grotto Shrine:
Later in the month, on Corpus Christi, 28 May [1891], Father Francis blessed another statue for the [Lourdes Grotto] shrine. This one, recently imported from Europe, and positioned in the grotto, near the spring, was of Saint Walburga, the eight century abbess who was the monastery’s secondary patroness” (Baumstein My Lord of Belmont 110).
Notably, the spring that once flowed at the foot of the statue dried up when a well was sunk nearby. Yet the spiritual spring is ever-flowing for those who pray at the statue for the saint’s intercession. We should also remember the importance of Father Francis Meyer who blessed the statue. It was he who was cured by intercessions to Our Lady, which facilitated the construction of the grotto (see Lourdes Grotto post).
But the significance of St. Walburga to Maryhelp becomes more apparent in the following passage from an early grotto pamphlet:
The small shrine shows St. Walburga, an English Benedictine nun, who went to Germany to help her uncle, Saint Boniface, “Apostle of Germany,” and her brothers,–St. Willibald and St. Winibald. She died in 779. Her remains rest at Eichstatt, Bavaria. The staff (crozier) shows she was an Abbess: the book means she is famed for her writings; the vase tells of the oil that even to this day seeps from her tomb, through stone on which her sacred remains lie.
Following her death, St. Walburga’s bones were found to excrete a miraculous clear liquid, called “oil,” that healed countless people of their physical and spiritual ailments. Thus her statue in our grotto was placed near the spring.
The adoption of Saint Walburga as our secondary patroness acknowledges not only MaryHelp’s German roots, but the missionary spirit with which our monastery was founded, and not least by which the Benedictines came to the United States. She also represents the bridge between the English speaking culture and that of the German, a duality characterizing the early years of MaryHelp and manifested in virtuous measure in the person of our first abbot, Leo Haid. But more importantly, Saint Walburga as our secondary patroness is our guide in our intellectual and spiritual pursuits, interceding for us that we may be healed in both body and mind and lead us into the light of the love of Christ.
So let us pray:
St. Walburga, by your blessed life of love,
God blessed you with the power to heal,
to make whole the soul as well as the body.
Beg for us what we cannot obtain for ourselves,
and heal our world of sickness and sorrow.
May God hear you,
who lived so graciously for His glory,
and send us the healing grace we need,
through your powerful intercession. Amen.
