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English Correspondence

St Boniface, tr. Kylie, 1911

29. Letter 29: Boniface Consoles Abbess Bugga. 723-745

To his honoured and beloved sister, Bugga, Boniface or Wynfrith, servant of the servants of God, greetings of love in Christ.

O my dear sister, after the fear of Christ and the love of faring abroad separated us by a long stretch of land and sea, from many lips I have heard of the storms of tribulation, which by God’s will have come upon thee in thine old age. I was sad and grieved for thee thinking how, when thou hadst put aside the greater anxiety of caring for the monasteries and sought the quiet of the contemplative life, more numerous and pressing sorrows visited thee.

So now, honoured sister, feeling for thee in thy distress and mindful of thy kindness and of our old time friendship, I send across to thee a brotherly letter of cheer and consolation, and ask thee not to let pass from thy mind the word of Truth, where it says: “In your patience possess ye your souls”;¹ and the word of Solomon the wise: “For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth;”² and the judgment of the psalmist: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivereth him out of them all”;³ and elsewhere: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”⁴ Recall the words of the apostle where he said: “We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God;”⁵ and elsewhere: “We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed.”⁶ In that hope, my dear sister, always rejoice and be glad, because thou wilt not be made ashamed. The tribulations of this world despise with all the strength of thy mind, because all the soldiers of Christ, men and women, have looked down upon the storms and tribulations and infirmities of this life, and held them as nothing, on the witness of Saint Paul, who says: “When I am weak, then am I strong”;⁷ and elsewhere: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation?” and the rest to “him that loveth us.”⁸ Thy Father who loves thy virgin chastity, in the first years of thy youth, inviting thee to Him with the voice of parental love, called thee daughter, saying through the prophet: “Hearken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear: forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house: so shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.”⁹ He it is who in thy old age desires to decorate and adorn the fair beauty of thy soul with toil and tribulation. Rejoicing then, beloved, in the hope of thy future inheritance in thy heavenly home, to all adversities that assail thy heart or body, oppose the shield of faith and patience: that, with the aid of Christ thy spouse, in a happy old age thou mayst complete for the glory of God the tower of the spirit, which thou didst begin to build in the goodly days of thy youth, and that when Christ comes, thou mayst with the wise virgins carry to meet him thy lamp filled with oil and lighted. Meanwhile I beg thee with earnest entreaties to be mindful of thine old promise and to pray for me, that the Lord, who is our redeemer and the safety of all, may snatch my soul in the fruit of the spirit from these manifold dangers.

Farewell in Christ.

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