Like all earthly joys, the reunion of Bridget's family, separated for twenty years, was mingled with some bitterness.
The saint's first glance at her eldest son showed her that he was wasting away from a chest disease. She drew him to her heart, and immediately a stream of blood gushed from the knight's lips, but it carried away the illness; the contact with the maternal heart had just healed Charles Ulfsson.
Catherine had immediately understood the miracle and explained it to the Romans who questioned her. The Lady of Tofta had not asked for a prodigy but for prayers. During the first pilgrimage of the Bishop of Vexiö and his diocesan to Rome, Bridget, rapt in ecstasy, had witnessed the judgment of Ulf Sparre.
The demon was prosecuting this soul, represented in the form of a trembling heart. Doubtless the charity of the deceased erased his iniquities, yet the sins committed had to be expiated. The knight remained condemned to suffer in his entire being, until the Last Judgment, the punishment that purifies. The Mother of Mercies and the saints he had honored intervened and obtained a mitigation of the sentence; then it was revealed to the ecstatic that by restoring to the legitimate possessors the goods wrongly acquired by the deceased, and by giving alms and offering prayers for his intention, his sufferings would be shortened.
Ulf's widow remembered that on the day of their marriage she had promised to be her husband's help, and she accomplished everything that heaven indicated. Now she sought new enlightenment.
Bridget prayed, and a vision showed her once more the soul of the knight at the supreme tribunal.
"Tears of love have flowed before me for this soul," said the Master. "Bring it into that rest which it could not conceive if it were still on earth."
The soul ascended, like a rising star, but from the mouth of Christ came severe words: "The time is near," he declared, "when I will execute justice. The progeny of this dead man grows proud, they will receive their punishment."
The seneschal had delivered the soul attached to her own. She sang her Canticle of Simeon and perhaps offered her life for her children, whom Bridget saw threatened by heavenly wrath amidst the civil war. In any case, she died in the Eternal City and was buried there near the saints.
Urban V received Bridget, her sons, and their companions in a private audience. Birger resembled a man-at-arms from the old legends of the North. Charles shone with the sumptuous luxury that the Swedes borrowed from the Germans. Over his coat of mail, he wore a belt of solid silver and draped a mantle covered with ermine, adorned with the most sparkling jewels. The austere pontiff looked at the two foreigners:
"You are truly your mother's son," he said to Birger. "You," he continued, turning to Charles, "are a son of this age."
The saint prostrated herself at the feet of the successor of Saint Peter.
"Grant my children absolution for their faults," she cried.
With the fine irony of a French gentleman, Urban V smiled. He lifted Charles's rich belt.
"Wearing these heavy garments will doubtless be penance enough?" he asked.
The former lady-in-waiting to the queen raised her clear eyes and fixed them on the pope.
"Most Holy Father," she said in a respectful but firm tone, "remove his sins from him, and I will take charge of removing his belt."
This meeting with Urban V was not, as Bridget had hoped, followed by frequent contact. Seized by a morbid disgust for his capital, the pope left the Vatican and settled sometimes in Viterbo, sometimes in the gloomy castle of Montefiascone, which, like a dark prison, rose near the smiling Lake Bolsena. Fever burned the pontiff's blood; his dreams showed him the beautiful palace of Avignon built under his care. The effort of will that kept him in the patrimony of Saint Peter was no longer enough to sustain the activity demanded by the interests of the Church.
Bridget understood that he would not grant her at this moment the only thing she had not yet obtained his attention for: the approval of the Rule of the Savior. She knew how to persevere without ever falling into discouragement, but she also knew that one struggles in vain if one presumes to act before God's hour, and she placed her hope in Providence.
Immediately Christ appeared to her:
"Sometimes," he said to her, "I command you to wait, sometimes to walk. Today, I send you to the tomb of my apostle Andrew."
When she objected due to her old age, her infirmities, and lack of money, he promised to provide for everything.
The idea of a pilgrimage to Amalfi was joyfully accepted at the Papuzeri palace. The saint's three children, the Bishop of Vexiö, the Prior of Alvastra, Magnus of Eka, Master Peter, and others urged Bridget to depart. It was to undertake a true journey. As serious illnesses were prevalent on the western shore of the peninsula, they would see the beaches of the Adriatic before those of the Sicilian Sea, since they had to pass through Bari, a singular route to reach the vicinity of Naples.
The Scandinavians obtained from the Holy See a safe-conduct to cross Apulia, where the Count of Bari was warring against Queen Joan I, and other favors ensured their religious practices. With the remission of their sins and a plenary indulgence at the hour of death, Urban V granted Bridget and Catherine the right to have Holy Mass celebrated, on a portable altar, everywhere they found themselves, even in places under interdict.
On the march, they would recite a rosary enriched with singular graces by the sovereign pontiff: an indulgence of one hundred days was attached to each bead. The habit of counting the number of prayers on beads or threaded nails dated from the primitive Church and remained widespread, but except in the Order of Saint Dominic, where, following the founder's example, they continued to say one hundred and fifty Hail Marys, divided by fifteen Our Fathers and as many Glorias, the rosary had been forgotten during the great plague.
Each arranged the rosary according to their particular attraction. Bridget's was to recite sixty-three Hail Marys in honor of the sixty-three years of earthly life that tradition assigns to the Virgin, seven Our Fathers to celebrate the seven sorrows and the seven joys of Mary, and finally seven Creeds instead of the Glorias of the rosary. She thus formed a series of six decades, each ended by an Our Father and a Creed, and completed by the recitation of a final Our Father, a Creed, and a Hail Mary.
Advent was beginning, and fasting preoccupied the saint. She suffered from her liver; several of her companions did not enjoy robust health, and on the journey through Italy, they feared they might not be able to obtain fish. Should they make themselves ill or risk scandalizing their neighbor? With the filial confidence she was accustomed to, Bridget asked the Lord what should be done.
The Master's response was full of sweetness. As in the Gospel, he recommended to his servants not to follow the example of the Pharisees and to eat what was useful for sustaining their lives. The bizarre itinerary imposed by epidemics and sanitary cordons allowed the Swedes to stop at Orlone, where several of them had followed Bridget in 1365. Impatient to arrive, they wanted, despite the guides' advice, to hasten the journey and gain a stage; thus, when they appeared under the city walls, the gates no longer opened. They had to spend the night outside.
Bridget consecrated it entirely to prayer. At daybreak, Christ warned her that he was punishing her thus for the ardor with which she had followed her own will.
"Enter now," said the Master, "my servant Thomas will give you what you desire." Near the relics of the apostle, Bridget again enjoyed the sensible presence of the Lord Jesus.
"Here is my treasure, my light," said the incarnate Word, showing the apostle in a bodily form. And he added, "I am going to give you what you have long wished for."
Then the pilgrims, grouped around the reliquary, the confessors, and Bridget's children witnessed a striking miracle. The chest containing the bones of the blessed one opened by itself; a fragment of the relics traversed the space and fell into the saint's hands. Bridget had indeed desired, since her first pilgrimage, what she obtained on the second. As two years before, they went to the sanctuary of the Holy Angels, then they saw the ramparts of Bari.
The bishop, Bartholomew Garrafa, remembering the miraculous apparitions of Saint Nicholas to Bridget, offered his palace to the pilgrims. He restored to them the possibility of fasting and abstinence by inviting them to eat the fish caught on the shore. The Scandinavians' stop in Bari was short. The Lord ordered them to spend the Christmas festivities in Naples; they had to hurry. A painful journey from the shores of the Adriatic to the Gulf of Salerno led the travelers to the ancient city where the relics of Saint Matthew rest.
Bridget knelt before the reliquary.
"You were an excellent money-changer," she said to the publican turned evangelist: "you exchanged perishable goods for eternal goods; as the price for yourself, you received God."
The apostle showed himself to the privileged gaze of the seer:
"Blessed be the Lord who inspired you to greet me thus," he replied. Then, to instruct her, with all Christians, he continued, "In the office I exercised in the service of the state, I strove to regulate everything with equity, I sought God alone, and at the first call I followed him. Wealth, honors were nothing to my soul filled with gratitude and love. After the Passion, I reported what I had seen and heard, not out of vainglory, but for the praise of the Master and the good of men. Today, efforts are made to destroy the action of my writings; contradictions are found in them. People dispute over the evangelical precepts instead of conforming their lives to them."
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Before leaving the sanctuary, Bridget gained understanding of another vision she had never fully comprehended. A few years earlier, Jesus Christ had appeared to her: he was urging his servants to convert souls. Those who lived in the world gave their hearts to the apostolate, but their strength, their spirit, their time were consecrated to objects other than the salvation of men.
Besides their hearts, religious offered their obedience; as for their will, it was not in this sacrifice of self for their neighbor. Finally, ready to brave death, a small, select few offered themselves entirely.
At the tomb of Saint Matthew, Bridget penetrated the sentiments of this elite, which she had only guessed at before, for the Word made her experience the love that, without any desire for reward, leads one to sacrifice oneself for beings in danger of eternal death. She felt with extreme intensity the power of silent example, of persuasive words in which human eloquence has no part, of the forgiveness of injuries, of prayer, of the offering of oneself. Saint Stephen was present with the evangelist; thanks to them, she saw clearly that to save one's brothers, one must know how to pray, preach, suffer, and die.
Source: Saint Bridget of Sweden – Sister Vincent Ferrier de Flavigny – 1892