(c.710-779) Walburga was born in Devonshire, Wessex, England, as the daughter of Saint Richard the King. She became a Benedictine nun and spent 26 years as a member of the community at Wimborne Abbey in Dorset. Her uncle, Saint Boniface, recruited Walburga and her brothers to assist in evangelizing pagan Germany. They were very successful, and she became abbess of a double monastery at Heidenheim in Bavaria, Germany. Her remains were transported to Eichstatt, where a miraculous healing oil is said to have begun to exude from the place where her bones were laid.
The oil continues to exude from her burial site, and even 19th-century Saint John Henry Newman deemed this to be a credible miracle. In a world skeptical of miracles, many have experienced one in recovery. “That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation…the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us” (Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous). Have you heard of this miracle in recovery? Have you experienced it?
“For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
Reflection by Brad Farmer