Post #6018

In the midst of the delights of the court, she afflicted the body with macerations and vigils, and reserved great part of the night in her pious prayers. Independently from the other fasting that she observed with certain circumstances, she used to fast forty entire days before the feast of Christmas with such rigour, that she didn’t suspend not even in the severe pains. Very attached to the divine cult, she built and restored many churches and monasteries, providing them of precious objects and abundant income. With her very effective example she reduced the king her spouse to better conduct and to do works similar to hers, and raised all the sons so holyly and happily, that many of them embraced, like the mother Agatha and the sister Cristina, a kind of life the holiest. She also recalled for the prosperity of the whole kingdom, freed the people from all the vices that had insensibly introduced themselves, and brought them back to customs worthy of Christian piety. But nothing was more admirable in her than her most ardent charity towards her neighbour, especially in need, so that not happy with giving abundant alms to the real multitudes, it was a feast for her to provide a meal every day with maternal goodness to three hundred of them, serving them on her knees like a servant, washing their feet with her royal hands, healing and kissing their wounds again. For this generosity and other expenses she not only sacrificed her royal garments and precious jewels, but more than once she emptied the treasury. Finally, after having endured very bitter pains with admirable patience and having purified herself with six months of bodily sufferings, she returned her soul to her Creator on November 16, 1093 in Edinburgh. In the same instant her disfigured face in the long illness of thinness and pallor, flourished with extraordinary beauty. Illustrious even after death by marvelous prodigies and declared patroness of Scotland by the authority of Clement X, she is religiously revered all over the world.