Posted on 10/12/2018 9:01:48 PM PDT by CMRosary
THIS GLORIOUS SAINT was like a beautiful lily, crowning the ancient branch of the kings of Wessex. The times had progressed since that sixth century, when the pagan Cerdic and other pirate chiefs from the North Sea scattered with ruins the island of saints. Having accomplished their mission of wrath, the Anglo-Saxons became instruments of grace to the land they had conquered. Evangelized by Rome, even as the Britons they had just chastized, they remembered, better than the latter, whence their salvation had come; a spring-tide blossoming of sanctity showed the pleasure God took once more in Albion, for the constant fidelity of the princes and people of the heptarchy towards the See of Peter. In the year of our Lord 800, Egbert, a descendant of Cerdic, had gone on pilgrimage to Rome, when a deputation from the West Saxons offered him the crown, beside the tomb of the Prince of the apostles, at whose feet Charlemagne, at that very time, was restoring the empire. As Egbert united under one scepter the power of the seven kingdoms, so Saint Edward, his last descendant, represents today in his own person the glorious holiness of them all.
Nephew to St. Edward the martyr, our holy king is known to God and man by the beautiful title of the Confessor. The Church, in her account of his life, sets forth more particularly the virtues which won him so glorious an appellation; but we must remember moreover that his reign of twenty-four years was one of the happiest England has ever known. Alfred the Great had no more illustrious imitator. The Danes, so long masters, now entirely subjugated within the kingdom, and without, held at bay by the noble attitude of the prince; Macbeth, the usurper of the Scotch throne, vanquished in a campaign that Shakespeare has immortalized; St. Edward’s Laws, which remain to this day the basis of the British constitution; the saint’s munificence towards all noble enterprises, while at the same time he diminished the taxes: all this proves with sufficient clearness, that the sweetness of virtue, which made him the intimate friend of St. John the beloved disciple, is not incompatible with the greatness of a monarch.
Thou representest on the sacred cycle the nation which Gregory the Great foresaw would rival the angels; so many holy kings, illustrious virgins, grand bishops, and great monks, who were its glory, now form thy brilliant court. Where are now the unwise in whose sight thou and thy race seemed to die? History must be judged in the light of heaven. While thou and thine reign there eternally, judging nations and ruling over peoples; the dynasties of thy successors on earth, ever jealous of the Church, and long wandering in schism and heresy, have become extinct one after another, sterilized by God’s wrath, and having none but that vain renown whereof no trace is found in the book of life. How much more noble and more durable, O Edward, were the fruits of thy holy virginity! Teach us to look upon the present world as a preparation for another, an everlasting world; and to value human events by their eternal results. Our admiring worship seeks and finds thee in thy royal abbey of Westminster; and we love to contemplate, by anticipation, thy glorious resurrection on the day of judgment, when all around thee so many false grandeurs will acknowledge their shame and their nothingness. Bless us, prostrate in spirit or in reality beside thy tomb, where heresy, fearful of the result, would fain forbid our prayer. Offer to God the supplications rising today from all parts of the world, for the wandering sheep, whom the Shepherd’s voice is now so earnestly calling back to the one fold!
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Edward the Confessor’s parents are my 29th great grandparents.
And a lot of others you can be sure.
Do the math 2x2=4x2=8x2=16 and so on till you reach the 29th level. And of course if one person were missing..you or I wouldnt be here.
And they say there is no such thing as miracles? HAH! Think of this...all those plagues, all those wars, famines, etc.
Do the math 2x2=4x2=8x2=16 and so on till you reach the 29th level. And of course if one person were missing..you or I wouldnt be here.
Exactly. If one's ancestry goes back into the early 1600s in New England, it is almost impossible to not descend from Edward the III, William the conqueror, and a whole lot of other royalty.
Also a much greater number of peasants.
Mine goes back through New England 1635-6 to the Temples of Stowe England. It is said the most powerful family in England at that time and later.
Of course, they were Puritans and things did not go to well for Puritans for a time in Old England. Yet they seemed to have survived having favored a Hanovarian rule in the stedd of the Stuarts.
Oh what a tangled web they weaved.
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