How Burdens must be Borne to win Eternal Life [III]

How Burdens must be Borne to win Eternal Life  [III]

If you could but see the Saints crowned in endless glory,(Wisdom.3:1
;6:16) you would at once humble yourself to the dust, and would rather
be the servant of all than lord it over a single person; for the
Saints are now as highly exalted as they were formerly accounted by this
world low, despicable, and unfit to live. You would not hanker after a
pleasant time in this life, but rather be glad to suffer for God's
sake, and account it the greatest gain to be considered of small
importance among men.
--Thomas à Kempis --Imitation of Christ Bk 3 Ch 47

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July 6th - St Sexburga
† 699

Abbess Of Ely, Widow daughter of Anna, King of the East Angles; sister
of SS. Etheldreda, Ethelburga and Withburga, and half-sister of St
Sethrida

She was given in marriage to Erconbert, King of Kent, a prince of
excellent dispositions which she contributed for twenty-four years to
improve by her counsels and example. Her virtue commanded the
reverence, and her humility and devotion raised the admiration, of her
subjects; and her goodness and charity gained her the love of all. She
became the mother of two princes and of two saints, Ercongota and
Ermenilda. Because she had a longing to consecrate herself wholly to
God in religious retirement, and that others might attend divine
service without impediment, she began in her husband's lifetime to
found a monastery at Minster in the isle of Sheppey, which she
finished after his death in 664. Here she assembled 74 nuns, and
herself joined them. After some years she appointed her daughter
Ermenilda to rule the house, and, being desirous to live in greater
obscurity and to be more at liberty to employ all her thoughts on
Heaven, she left Kent and went to the abbey of Ely, where she was
chosen to succeed her sister St Etheldreda in the government of that
house.

16 years after she caused the body of that saint to be taken up, when
it was found incorrupt, and was enshrined in a white marble coffin
found at Cambridge. Sexburga herself passed to bliss in a good old
age, on July 6, at the end of the seventh century. Her monastery of
Minsterin-Sheppey was destroyed by the Danes, but rebuilt in 1130, and
consecrated in honour of our Lady and St Sexburga, continuing to be
occupied by Benedictine nuns until the dissolution.  She was also
honoured in Sweden.

See Bede's Ecclesiastical History, bk iii, cap. 8 and iv, 19.  A Latin
life of Sexburga described by Hardy, Catalogue of British History
(vol. i, pp. 361-362), seems to be of no historical value apart from
its quotation from Bede.  There is some mention of Sexburga in certain
Anglo-Saxon fragments printed by Cockayne in vol. iii of his
Leechdoms.  See also the Acta Sanctorum, July, vol. ii, and Stanton's
Menology, p. 313.