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Annual Feast Days
Feast Day of St Sigfrid
February 15th
Join us in celebrating the feast day of St Sigfrid. If you are a church on the St Sigfrid's Way, perhaps you'd like to hold a themed service around pilgrimage to celebrate being a St Sigfrid's Way church. If you are a pilgrim, why not walk some of the St Sigfrid's Way and connect with this ancient practice of pilgrimage. What can this ancient form of travel and prayer offer to you today?
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Please do send us your photos and stories of anything you do for this day, we'd love to hear from you.
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There will also probably be an online service to celebrate St Sigfrid's Day, which you will be welcome to join. Details of such will be released closer to the time.
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Feast Day of Birgitta of Sweden
July 23rd
Birgitta (known in English as Bridget) was born in 1303 into a wealthy family in Uppland, on the eastern coast of Sweden. She married at the age of fourteen, had eight children and often attended the royal court, where she continued to experience the mystical revelations she had known since childhood. After the death of her husband, her mystical revelations increased in intensity, and she responded by founding a ‘double monastery’ (where monks and nuns lived in separate cloisters but shared one church) at Vadstena, on the shores of Lake Vättern, in 1346. Birgitta’s daughter Catherine was the first abbess of the Brigettine Order, which enjoyed the generous patronage of King Magnus, and became very influential in northern Europe. After travelling to Rome to obtain the pope’s approval for her plans, Birgitta never returned to Sweden but spent the rest of her life as a pilgrim, an adviser to rulers and church leaders, and a minister to all in need. Her Revelations were recorded by her confessors before her death, which occurred on this day in 1378.
Feast Day of St Lucia (Lucia Day)
December 13th
Saint Lucy's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Lucy, is a Christian feast day observed on 13 December. The observance commemorates Lucia of Syracuse, an early-4th-century virgin martyr under the Diocletianic Persecution, who according to legend brought food and aid to Christians hiding in the Roman catacombs, wearing a candle lit wreath on her head to light her way and leave her hands free to carry as much food as possible. Her feast day, which coincided with the shortest day of the year prior to calendar reforms, is widely celebrated as a festival of light. Falling within the Advent season, Saint Lucy's Day is viewed as a precursor of Christmastide, pointing to the arrival of the Light of Christ in the calendar on Christmas Day.
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[In Sweden] she is represented as a lady in a white dress symbolizing a baptismal robe and a red sash symbolizing the blood of her martyrdom, with a crown or wreath of candles on her head.
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Read more here.
Image credited to Claudia Gründer - CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3221537
If you have any questions or if there's something you'd like to share, please do get in touch, we'd love to hear from you!