7 November, commemoration
Position: Archbishop
Death: 739
Patronage: Netherlands, Luxembourg; dioceses of Utrecht, Haarlem, and Echternach. Invoked for convulsions, epilepsy, and skin diseases.
Attributes: bishop’s staff, child, book, church model, barrel, and spring. Occasionally depicted with idols.
Biography:
He was raised in a Benedictine monastery in Ripon, England, under Abbot Wilfrid. He became a monk at the age of 15, travelled to Ireland at 20, and was ordained as a priest at 30. Furthermore, he then went on a missionary journey to Friesland. In 695, he became the Archbishop of Utrecht. He founded the Echternach monastery and built temples, proving himself as a missionary in Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Rhineland, Thuringia, and the island of Heligoland. He died in Echternach, in eastern Luxembourg.
BIOGRAPHY FOR MEDITATION
HAPPY IN GOD’S NAME
He was born on the 6th. November 11 658 in Northumbria, on the border of England and Scotland. His father, Williams, was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who became a monk after his wife’s death and later lived as a hermit. He also sent his seven-year-old son to a Benedictine monastery in Ripon, in the English county of North Yorkshire, to be brought up and educated. Here, Wilibrord was in the care of Abbot Wilfrid (d. 24 April), who was later appointed Bishop of York.
At the age of 15, Wilibrord took religious vows and donned a Benedictine robe. Five years later, he left for the Rathmelsigi monastery in the kingdom of Connaught in the northwest or west of Ireland, having become embroiled in a dispute about Iroscot customs. This allowed him to avoid church-political disputes and meet his Anglo-Saxon compatriots, Egbert and Wilbert. It was here that he began planning missionary work with the Frisians, receiving priestly ordination in 688.
The following year, Pippin II defeated the pagan Frisian king Radbod, and the Frankish Empire gained control of southern Friesland, a province in the north of the Netherlands. In 690, Wilibrord arrived in this territory with eleven companions and began spreading Christianity in Antwerp with the consent of Pippin the Butler. Evangelising the population was difficult and slow in these circumstances. Part of the territory was under the influence of Radbod, who tried to maintain pagan cults and combat Christianity. At Pippin’s suggestion, Wilibrord went to Rome for the second time in 695, where he was consecrated Archbishop of Utrecht on 21 November by Pope Sergius I, who also gave him the new name Clement (meaning ‘benevolent’, ‘kind’, ‘gentle’, ‘mild’). However, Wilibrord preferred his original name.
He returned to Utrecht with a pallium, relics, liturgical books, and clothing. With papal authorisation and the support of the nobility, he began establishing temples. After restoring the damaged church of St. Martina, he built a cathedral dedicated to the Holy Saviour. In Echternach, near Trier, he founded an abbey to educate Frisian heralds. He stayed here from 697 to 698. Thanks to him, the monastery of Susteren, near Maastricht, became another centre for spreading the gospel. He extended his missionary work to Luxembourg and Danish territory. He travelled and preached personally along the Rhine, reaching Denmark. His courage won over many pagans; he did not hesitate to eat from dishes intended for deities, thereby demonstrating their powerlessness.
After Pippin II died in 714, Duke Radbod defied Franconian rule, which had unfortunate consequences for Willibrord’s work. Willibrord was only able to continue his work in Friesland after Radbod’s death. 719. During this period, he worked alongside Boniface for approximately three years, blending the Anglo-Saxon and Roman Catholic traditions and serving as a missionary in Hesse and Thuringia. At around the age of 70, Willibrord is said to have written a summary of his tenure: ‘In Dei nomine feliciter’ (‘happily in God’s name’). Around this time, he was involved in the establishment of the Murbach monastery in Alsace, located in a valley at the foot of the Grand Balloon in the French Vosges mountains.
After fifty years of missionary efforts, Willibrord died in Echternach at the age of 81. In 1031, his remains were collected and placed in a white marble sarcophagus in the crypt under the main altar of the monastery temple.
RESOLUTION, PRAYER
