St Joseph visits the English Benedictines of Brussels
On the Feast of Our Lady Help of Christians to whom the prayer Sub tuum praesidium is addressed I was reading "Historic English Convents" by Dom Basil Whelan which is an account of the convents of the Catholic exiles in Flanders. Amazingly, the book fell open at this page:
"Not all of the English convents in Flanders were as fortunate as the Benedictines of Brussels, in whose records we find the following facts related :
One night, it appears, when the community was reduced to penury and there seemed no prospect of getting means to feed the hungry mouths, the portress heard a ring at the great gate during Matins. She hurried down to the wicket with no small trepidation, for a visitor at midnight was a most uncommon event. She peeped through the grating to see who the untimely guest might be, and saw an old man, whose venerable and comely appearance at once reassured her, and caused her to throw open the gate. There the old man stood, with silvery locks and flowing beard, and smilingly he handed her a bag, saying : ' Take this bag to the Lady Abbess, and tell her to use freely what it contains, and to ask her community to recite the prayer Sub tuum praesidium every day till I come back.' So saying, he suddenly disappeared, leaving the good portress perplexed and astonished at what had happened. After Matins she delivered the bag and the message to the Abbess, assuring her Superior that she was convinced that she had seen a heavenly visitor and benefactor.
On opening the bag the Abbess found that it contained £1000. The religious never doubted but that their venerable helper was the great St. Joseph, whom they had invoked in their difficulty and distress. Though St. Joseph has many and many a time helped the nuns since, he has never returned to claim his bag ; and whilst awaiting his reappearance the religious have, for some two hundred years, joyfully and faithfully recited every night, after Matins have ended, the anthem which he ordered to be said: Sub tuum praesidium. So does God take care of His children and this incident could be paralleled by somewhat similar events in other convents. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."
This took place in about 1690. The nuns were evicted by the French revolutionaries and their property torn down four years later. They came to East Bergholt whose sad history is related below. I live not two hundred metres from the site of the Brussels Convent and intend to take up daily recitation of the Sub tuum praesidium. May others join me in the honour of the English Benedictines of Brussels.
And if only more of the Bishops in our own time had remembered:
"Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."
"Not all of the English convents in Flanders were as fortunate as the Benedictines of Brussels, in whose records we find the following facts related :
One night, it appears, when the community was reduced to penury and there seemed no prospect of getting means to feed the hungry mouths, the portress heard a ring at the great gate during Matins. She hurried down to the wicket with no small trepidation, for a visitor at midnight was a most uncommon event. She peeped through the grating to see who the untimely guest might be, and saw an old man, whose venerable and comely appearance at once reassured her, and caused her to throw open the gate. There the old man stood, with silvery locks and flowing beard, and smilingly he handed her a bag, saying : ' Take this bag to the Lady Abbess, and tell her to use freely what it contains, and to ask her community to recite the prayer Sub tuum praesidium every day till I come back.' So saying, he suddenly disappeared, leaving the good portress perplexed and astonished at what had happened. After Matins she delivered the bag and the message to the Abbess, assuring her Superior that she was convinced that she had seen a heavenly visitor and benefactor.
On opening the bag the Abbess found that it contained £1000. The religious never doubted but that their venerable helper was the great St. Joseph, whom they had invoked in their difficulty and distress. Though St. Joseph has many and many a time helped the nuns since, he has never returned to claim his bag ; and whilst awaiting his reappearance the religious have, for some two hundred years, joyfully and faithfully recited every night, after Matins have ended, the anthem which he ordered to be said: Sub tuum praesidium. So does God take care of His children and this incident could be paralleled by somewhat similar events in other convents. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."
This took place in about 1690. The nuns were evicted by the French revolutionaries and their property torn down four years later. They came to East Bergholt whose sad history is related below. I live not two hundred metres from the site of the Brussels Convent and intend to take up daily recitation of the Sub tuum praesidium. May others join me in the honour of the English Benedictines of Brussels.
And if only more of the Bishops in our own time had remembered:
"Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."
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