A reflection for Friday within the Twentieth Week after the Octave of Pentecost — S. Hedwigis Viduæ, III classis (16 October)
The Mass of St. Hedwig does not open with a wedding song, as yesterday’s did, but with a confession. The Introit is taken from the great psalm of the Law: Cognovi, Domine, quia æquitas iudicia tua, et in veritate tua humiliasti me: confige timore tuo carnes meas, a mandatis tuis timui — “I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are equity: and in thy truth thou hast humbled me. Pierce thou my flesh with thy fear: for I am afraid of thy judgments” (Ps. 118:75, 120). Its verse is the psalm’s first line: Beati immaculati in via, qui ambulant in lege Domini — “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord.”
This is the Mass Cognovi of the Common of Holy Women neither virgins nor martyrs, and the Church gives it to St. Hedwig with a Collect of her own. It is a Mass for women who have lived in the world: who have married, borne children, run households, buried husbands and sons, and been sanctified not in spite of these things but through them. The Introit sets its key. Holiness here is not first an ecstasy. It is a humbling, accepted as just, and a flesh pierced by the fear of God.
It is Friday, the day of the Cross, and the Collect will speak of nothing else. And it is the week in which the Office still reads the Books of the Machabees, among them the mother of the seven brothers, whom Scripture praises because she joined “a man’s heart to a woman’s thought” (2 Mach. 7:21). The Church has been preparing all week to set before us a valiant woman.
I. Mulierem fortem quis inveniet?: the Epistle
“Who shall find a valiant woman? far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her. The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils… She hath considered a field, and bought it: with the fruit of her hands she hath planted a vineyard. She hath girded her loins with strength, and hath strengthened her arm. She hath tasted and seen that her traffic is good: her lamp shall not be put out in the night… She hath opened her hand to the needy, and stretched out her hands to the poor… Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands: and let her works praise her in the gates.” (Prov. 31:10-31)
The last chapter of Proverbs is an alphabetic poem: in the Hebrew each of its twenty-two verses begins with the next letter, from aleph to tau. The form is itself a statement. The valiant woman is praised from A to Z, completely, as if the whole of Wisdom’s teaching in the book had finally taken flesh in a single household.
A valiant woman. The Vulgate’s mulierem fortem is stronger than our “virtuous”: she is a woman of strength, of fortitudo. St. Thomas teaches that fortitude is the virtue which keeps the will firm in the good against the greatest dangers, and that its principal act is not attacking but enduring: to stand fast unmoved amid hardship (Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 123). The woman of this poem is never shown on a battlefield. Her strength is spent in rising before dawn, in labour at the spindle, in care for the poor, in steady provision for a household through the cold of snow. That is fortitude in its most frequent and least celebrated form.
The price from the uttermost coasts. The Fathers did not read this chapter merely as a portrait of a good wife, though it is that. St. Augustine, preaching on it, asks who this woman is and answers that she is the Church, and that her price, brought from far off and from the uttermost coasts, is the blood of Christ, which purchased her from every end of the earth (Sermo 37). St. Bede, whose treatise on this chapter follows Augustine, reads every verse in the same key: the husband who trusts in her is Christ, the household she feeds is the faithful, the wool and flax she works are the simple and the subtle works of virtue, and the lamp that is not put out in the night is the faith that burns in her through the darkness of this world (De muliere forti). Such a reading does not displace the literal sense. It explains why the literal sense is holy: the Christian wife and mother is an image of the Church, and the Church is the valiant woman whom every holy woman resembles.
Her lamp shall not be put out in the night. Non exstinguetur in nocte lucerna eius. Yesterday, on the feast of St. Teresa, the Gospel showed us five lamps that went out at midnight because their oil had been bought from the sellers of praise. Today Scripture shows us a lamp that does not go out. The reason is given in the same verse: gustavit, et vidit quia bona est negotiatio eius — she has tasted and seen that her trade is good. She knows the worth of what she works at, and she keeps working at it when no one is watching. The oil is in her own vessel.
She considered a field, and bought it. Consideravit agrum, et emit eum. Hold this verse. The Gospel is about to tell of another purchase of a field.
She opened her hand to the needy. Manum suam aperuit inopi, et palmas suas extendit ad pauperem. The strength of her arm is for others. St. Thomas places almsgiving among the acts of charity and teaches that giving to the needy from what is superfluous is a matter of precept, not merely of counsel (II-II, q. 32). The valiant woman does not ask whether she is obliged. Her hand is already open.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain. Fallax gratia, et vana est pulchritudo. The poem closes by dismissing the two things the world most praises in a woman, and naming the one thing God praises: the fear of the Lord. The Introit has already asked for it: confige timore tuo carnes meas. And the last verse promises the reward: laudent eam in portis opera eius. Let her works praise her in the gates. Not her lineage, not her face, not her titles: her works.
II. Thesauro abscondito in agro: the Gospel
“At that time Jesus said to His disciples: The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field. Which a man having found, hid it, and for joy thereof goeth, and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a merchant seeking good pearls. Who when he had found one pearl of great price, went his way, and sold all that he had, and bought it. Again the kingdom of heaven is like to a net cast into the sea, and gathering together of all kind of fishes. Which, when it was filled, they drew out, and sitting by the shore, they chose out the good into vessels, but the bad they cast forth. So shall it be at the end of the world… Have ye understood all these things? They say to him: Yes. He said unto them: Therefore every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven, is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old.” (Matt. 13:44-52)
St. Gregory the Great’s eleventh homily on the Gospels takes up these three parables together, and it is the guide to this reading.
The treasure hidden. The treasure, says Gregory, is heavenly desire; the field in which it lies hidden is the discipline of a heavenly life. And why must the man hide what he has found? Because whoever carries treasure openly along a public road invites thieves. So the soul that has found the desire of heaven must guard it from the robbers who lie in wait for good works, the evil spirits who steal them through human praise. It is not enough to have the treasure; one must keep it from the eyes that would make it one’s own glory (Hom. in Evang. 11). Here is yesterday’s lesson again in a new figure: the oil in the hidden vessel, the treasure in the hidden field.
For joy thereof. Præ gaudio illius. The man does not sell everything grimly. He sells for joy. St. John Chrysostom, preaching on these parables, insists that the two images of treasure and pearl teach the same thing from two sides: that we must set the Gospel above everything else, and give up all we have for it, and that we do so not with reluctance but with eagerness, as men who know they are getting the better bargain (Hom. in Matt. 47). The renunciations of the saints are not the price of misery. They are the expenditure of a merchant who has seen what the field contains.
The one pearl. The merchant seeks good pearls, many, and finds one. Chrysostom notes that the pearl is one because the truth is one and not divided. Gregory says the pearl is the sweetness of the heavenly life, which, once tasted, makes everything else that had seemed precious grow cheap (Hom. in Evang. 11). Again the Epistle’s word answers: gustavit, et vidit. She tasted and saw.
The net. The third parable turns from finding to judging. The net is the Church, Gregory says, given to fishermen to draw men from the sea of this world, and it gathers good and bad together; the sorting comes only on the shore, which is the end of the age (Hom. in Evang. 11). The good are gathered in vasa, into vessels. One cannot read the parable without noticing that being in the net is not enough. All the fish were in the net, as all ten virgins had lamps. The question is what a soul has become while it was in the net.
New things and old. The Gospel ends with the scribe who has become a disciple, a householder who brings forth from his treasury nova et vetera. St. Jerome reads the new and old as the two Testaments, which the instructed scribe holds together, so that the Law and Prophets are not discarded but fulfilled in the Gospel (Comm. in Matt. II, on 13:52). It is a fitting last line for a Mass which pairs the oldest wisdom literature with the parables of the kingdom. The valiant woman of Solomon and the merchant of the Gospel are the same figure seen in two lights.
III. A duchess who carried her shoes
St. Hedwig lived the Epistle literally and the Gospel thoroughly, and she did both while holding high rank in the world.
She was born about 1174 at the castle of Andechs in Bavaria, a daughter of Berthold, Count of Andechs and Duke of Merania, a house of great power. Her sister Gertrude became Queen of Hungary and the mother of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, so that Hedwig was that saint’s aunt. She was educated by the Benedictine nuns of Kitzingen in Franconia, and at about twelve years of age was married to Henry, son of the Duke of Silesia, later Duke Henry I, called the Bearded. She bore him seven children.
What is told of her married life reads like a commentary on Proverbs 31. She governed a great household and a frontier duchy, and she did it well. With her husband she founded, in 1202, the Cistercian abbey of nuns at Trzebnica (Trebnitz), endowed it richly, and made it the heart of her life; she founded hospitals and houses of charity, and the account of her life written after her canonization, the Legenda maior, records that she fed the poor at her own table, served the sick with her own hands, visited prisoners, and paid the debts of those condemned for them. Manum suam aperuit inopi.
After the birth of her last child, she and Henry took a vow of continence before the bishop, and kept it. Henry, the tradition says, let his beard grow from that time, and so earned his name. When Henry was seized in war by a rival prince, Konrad of Masovia, the Legenda records that Hedwig went herself to his captor and obtained his release without the bloodshed her sons were prepared for. The heart of her husband trusteth in her.
Her penances were severe, and the Legenda is careful to describe them as the fruit of love, not of contempt for the body. She went barefoot through every season, even in the Silesian winter, until her feet bled. When her confessor commanded her to wear shoes, she obeyed by carrying them in her hand. The story is told with a smile in the sources, and should be: it is a perfect picture of a saint who had sold all for the field and could not be induced to buy back anything she had given up, not even a pair of shoes.
Then came the sorrows that made her a widow in the full sense of the word. Her children did not all repay her; her sons quarrelled, and fought, and several of them died before her. Henry the Bearded died in 1238. In April of 1241 the Mongol armies poured into Silesia, and her son Duke Henry II, called the Pious, led the Christian forces against them at Legnica. He was killed, and his head was carried on a lance before the walls of the town. The Legenda records that when the news came, Hedwig did not weep as the others did, but gave thanks to God for having given her such a son, who had loved and honoured her all his life, and who by his death for the faith had been joined to God in heaven. She shall not fear for her house in the cold of snow.
After her husband’s death she withdrew to Trzebnica, where her daughter Gertrude was abbess. She lived among the nuns, wore their habit, kept their observance, and yet did not take their vows, so that she might keep the free disposal of her goods and give them away to the poor. It is a striking choice, and it tells us that she understood both counsels at once: the Gospel’s sell all that thou hast, and Solomon’s open hand. She sold all, and then she kept giving.
She died at Trzebnica on the fifteenth of October, 1243, and was buried in the abbey church. A pious tradition says that she died holding a small image of Our Lady, which she had carried everywhere and with which she blessed the sick, and that her fingers could not be loosed from it. She was canonized by Clement IV in 1267, and the Church has kept her memory as the patroness of Silesia. Her feast was extended to the universal Church in the seventeenth century.
St. Paul describes the widow “that is a widow indeed and desolate” as one who “trusts in God, and continues in supplications and prayers night and day” (1 Tim. 5:5). St. Augustine, writing to the widow Juliana, calls holy widowhood a second degree of continence, below virginity and above marriage, whose glory is that it chooses God when it might have chosen another husband (De bono viduitatis). St. Ambrose, in his treatise De viduis, makes the same point by holding up the widow of Sarepta and the prophetess Anna: the widow’s poverty is her strength, because it leaves her nothing to lean on but God. Hedwig was such a widow. She had been a duchess, a wife, a mother of princes. At the end she had nothing in her hands but her shoes and a small image of the Mother of God.
IV. The Mass as a whole: the field bought twice
St. Thomas teaches that all things go forth from God and return to Him, and that the return is accomplished through Christ. Today’s Mass traces that return in the figure of a purchase.
Everything goes forth from God as gift. The field, the treasure, the pearl, the strength of the valiant woman’s arm, the oil in her lamp: none of these is manufactured by the soul. They are found. Quem qui invenit homo. The kingdom of heaven is first of all a discovery, and the discovery is grace.
The return is made by buying. The Epistle says consideravit agrum, et emit eum: she considered a field and bought it. The Gospel says vendit universa quæ habet, et emit agrum illum: he sells all that he has and buys the field. The Old Testament woman and the New Testament merchant do the same thing. They see the true worth of what lies before them, and they give what they have to possess it. And the Fathers’ reading of Proverbs carries us one step further. The price of the valiant woman, Augustine says, is the blood of Christ. Before any soul bought the field of the kingdom, Christ bought the soul. He is the first merchant, who sold all He had, emptied himself (Phil. 2:7), to purchase the pearl of His Church. Our buying is only a response to His.
The net then reminds us that the purchase is not finished in this life. The good are gathered into vessels on the shore, at the end. The valiant woman is praised in portis, in the gates, which in Israel were the place of judgment. Until then the soul keeps trading, keeps its lamp burning through the night, keeps its treasure hidden, and keeps its hand open.
And the Collect tells us where the field lies. It lies under the Cross.
V. The Collect
Deus, qui beatam Hedwigem a sæculi pompa ad humilem tuæ Crucis sequelam toto corde transire docuisti: concede; ut eius meritis et exemplo discamus perituras mundi calcare delicias, et in amplexu tuæ Crucis omnia nobis adversantia superare.
“O God, who didst teach blessed Hedwig to pass with her whole heart from the pomp of the world to the humble following of Thy Cross: grant that by her merits and example we may learn to tread underfoot the perishable delights of the world, and in the embrace of Thy Cross to overcome all things that are adverse to us.”
Three movements are named, and they are the three movements of the Gospel. A sæculi pompa ad humilem tuæ Crucis sequelam transire: she passed from the pomp of the world to the following of the Cross, as the merchant passes from his many pearls to the one. Perituras mundi calcare delicias: to tread underfoot the perishing delights of the world, as the man sells everything for the field. And in amplexu tuæ Crucis omnia nobis adversantia superare: to overcome all adversities in the embrace of the Cross. That last is the fortitude of the valiant woman, and the Collect tells us its source. Hedwig did not endure the deaths of her husband and her sons by sheer strength of character. She endured them embracing the Cross, which is to say, embracing the One who had already embraced it for her.
Note too the verb docuisti: Thou didst teach her. Her passage from the court to the Cross was not a single act of will but a lesson learned slowly over a long life, and the prayer asks that we too may learn it, discamus. On a Friday, the Collect is almost a stational prayer at the foot of the Cross.
VI. A word for practice
Examine. What is my field? Where in my state of life, as a husband or wife, a parent, a worker, a widow, is the treasure of the kingdom lying hidden, waiting to be bought? And what am I still holding back from the purchase: some “pearl” of comfort, reputation, or control that I have not yet sold?
Do. Open your hand to the poor today, concretely and in secret: an alms, a meal, a visit to someone sick or alone. Let it be a work that will praise you only in the gates. And if you carry some sorrow for a child or a spouse, as Hedwig did, bring it today before a crucifix and say what she said at Legnica: I thank Thee, Lord, for what Thou gavest me.
Pray. The Collect of the day, slowly, attending to the words in amplexu tuæ Crucis. It is Friday: pray it before a crucifix, or make the Stations of the Cross.
Aspiration. Mulier timens Dominum, ipsa laudabitur. “The woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised” (Prov. 31:30).
Devote. It is October, the month of the Holy Rosary. Pray the Sorrowful Mysteries, lingering on the fifth, the Crucifixion, where the valiant Woman stood beneath the Cross and did not fall, stabat Mater; and ask her, whose image St. Hedwig held to the end, to teach you to stand there too.
If you wish to go deeper: the Lives of the Saints path continues with the holy women of the house of Andechs: St. Hedwig’s niece, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, whose feast falls in November, and the royal and noble widows who followed the same path from court to cloister. The Theology and Doctrine path treats the virtue of fortitude and the precept of almsgiving following St. Thomas, and the theology of the states of life: marriage, widowhood, and virginity. The Church History path takes up the Mongol invasion of 1241, the battle of Legnica, and the Christian settlement of the Silesian frontier.
Sources. Scripture is cited from the Douay-Rheims with the Vulgate. The Fathers are given in paraphrase with their loci: St. Augustine, Sermo 37 and De bono viduitatis; St. Bede, De muliere forti (on Proverbs 31); St. Ambrose, De viduis; St. Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia 11; St. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum 47; St. Jerome, Commentarius in Matthaeum II. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, qq. 32 and 123. The life of St. Hedwig follows the Legenda maior de beata Hedwigi (late thirteenth century) and the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910), s.v. “St. Hedwig”; the tradition of the image of Our Lady at her death is given as pious tradition.
Sancta Hedwigis, ora pro nobis.