St. Edward was born in 1004 to King Ethelred II and Queen Emma. Though born into a royal family, St. Edward the Confessor grew up in exile from age ten after the Danish invasion of England. But despite his hardships, his sincere piety and rejection of worldly pleasures led him to a life devoted to God. He dutifully accepted the throne of England when he was called back on the death of the Danish King and became a popular sovereign through his just actions and policies. He lived with his queen in celibacy to fulfill his vow of chastity. Long abandoned monasteries were restored. Edward had the Mercian, the West Saxon, and the Danis laws, which applied to their respective parts of his kingdom, codified and combined into one single system, and this became universal to the realm, forming the basis of English common law. King Edward also abolished the odious "Danegelt" tax, which had oppressed his people for 38 years; he was able to maintain his reign out of his own patrimony without the imposition of any taxes on his subjects. Little wonder then that he was greatly admired by the common people and was long remembered with affection as "Good King Edward." Edward was the first English King to touch and heal scrofulous sores, "the King's Evil," with his ring, a power conferred originally on the Kings of France by St. Remi. Edward's famous death-bed vision of his country's future has seen remarkable fulfillment: "When the measure of wickedness will have become full, then will God in his wrath send wicked spirits among the English people, and they will punish and afflict them with great severity by separating the green branch from the parent trunk for the space of three furlongs; but in the end, through the compassionate mercy of God, and without any governmental assistance, this same branch will return to its original fruit, will flourish anew and bear abundant fruit." The period from King Henry VIII's break with Rome in 1534 and the rule of the Protestant reformers until 1850, when Pope Pius IX re-established the Catholic hierarchy in England, is, in fact, slightly more than three centuries. St. Edward died on 5 January 1066 and was buried in St Peter's Church, now Westminster Abbey. He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161.
St. Edward the Confessor, pray for us to approach conflicts with dialogue and reason, and to strive for reconciliation.
Jonathan Fabian Ginunggil,
Most High Servant,
Jesus, Mary, Joseph Ministry of Love
(Blessed and Saints and the Nine Choirs of Angels)
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