: Saint Boniface 2003 :
A Patron Saint of our times
June 5, 2003
Today, the Church celebrates Saint Boniface’s birthday, patron of our diocese. Who was this man?
Born to a noble family of Wessex in Crediton England, in 675 and baptized as Wynfrid (or Wynfrith), he enters the Benedictine monastery of Nhutscelle (Nursling) and becomes a monk and a priest. He found in his heart a burning passion for foreign mission. With his abbot’s permission, he leaves in the spring of 716 and sets out for the land of the Frisians (in Freiseland), where the missionary saint Willibord had already been preaching the Gospel for several years. But the pagans’ hatred and wars were big obstacles to the young priest. Several months later, having failed, he returned to his abbey where the abbot had just died. Elected to replace him, he refuses to return to a mission.
In 718, Wynfrith once again leaves his monastery, this time for good. He would never return to England. So he sets off for Rome to ask the Holy Father for his commissioning and blessing. On May 14, 719, he threw himself at the feet of Pope Gregory II. That particular day the Church celebrates saint Boniface, the worshipped martyr of Rome. Gregory II gives Wynfrid the Benedictine monk, the saint’s name, which means GOOD DEED or GOOD FACE. From then on, the Pope sends the missionary named Boniface. The entire Germany becomes his discipleship.
He crosses the Alps and methodically penetrates into the country: Frisia, Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria become the grounds for intense apostolic functions. Upon his return to Rome, on November 30, 722, the Pope consecrates him as bishop on Saint André’s day. In 723, near Fritzlar, Boniface fell a sacred old oak tree, dedicated to the god Thor. In 725, he returns to Thuringia. He continues to correspond with Rome and England. The Pope Gregory III names him archbishop in 732 and invests him with the Pallium, asking him to establish a hierarchy in Germany. Consequently, he establishes dioceses: Büreberg, Erfurt, Würzburg, and in appointing capable bishops, he re-organizes the dioceses of Bavaria. On his third journey to Rome in 738, he becomes the apostolic legate of the Franks’ kingdom. With the support of the Franc princes, he organizes reformative synods, thus promptly putting order in the Church.
In 744, at FULDA, Boniface founds the abbey of Fulda with his disciple Sturm; this monastery serves Boniface as a place to rest; in fact, whenever he feels the need to relax and to find solitude, he withdraws to Fulda. As requested in his Will, his body was taken back to the monastery he had founded in Fulda.
At approximately 80 years old, he sets out again to Freiseland, where he had firstly begun his apostolic endeavours. On the day of the Pentecost, June 5, 754, Boniface along with 52 companions are murdered by heathen Frisians along the Borne River. The cities of Utrecht and Mainz wish to prepare the burial place for the holy martyr, but, according to Boniface’s wish, his body was taken to Fulda and was shrouded in the monastery of the church on July 9,754.
Today, the tomb containing the saint’s body lies in the crypt of the Cathedral of Fulda. Many pilgrims from Germany, Europe and the rest of the world gather at this site. For more than one hundred years now (1867), the plenary meetings of the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference are held here. Fulda is both the centre and the heart of the Catholic Germany.
Boniface describes his mission in his letters and shows us the courage we must maintain in serving the Church; the Church, who navigates like a big vessel on the sea of the world, and who, in this life, is beaten by the waves of hardships. The Church must not be abandoned, but must be steered.
Our first Fathers, Clement, Corneille and many others from Rome, Cyprien to Carthage, Athanasia to Alexandria, have set the example while being ruled by pagan emperors; they have steered the Christ’s ship or rather their endearing Church by teaching, upholding the truth, struggling and suffering to the point of shedding their own blood.
Considering these men and their like, I am filled with dread; fear and anguish impregnate me and I seem to be veiled by the darkness of my sins. I would like to entirely relinquish the Church’s helm that was entrusted to me, if I could find approval in the examples of our Fathers or in the Holy Scripture.
Let us remain steadfast in justice and let us prepare our souls to face hardships so as The Lord stays by us, and let us say to Him: Time after time, Lord, you have remained our refuge. (Letters of saint Boniface)
Emilius Goulet, p.s.s.
Archbishop of Saint-Boniface
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