Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. - Matthew 5:14
Saint Bridget of Sweden, whose feast we celebrate on July 23, was a wife and mother, a mystic and writer. Her private revelations have influenced Marian theology down to the present day.
And yet in her own life, St. Bridget could perhaps have viewed herself as a failure. She heard a call to found a religious order. Very little came of it in her lifetime (much like St. Faustina's call to found an order!). She heard a call to leave her home, go to Rome, and stay there until the Pope returned from his "Babylonian Captivity" in France. She died before any such return occurred, a stranger in a strange land.
Happiness to come
She endured a great many things - and for what? Well, that religious order took off after her death, extending right across the world as the "Ordo Sanctissimi Salvatoris" (The Order of The Most Holy Savior). She may not have lived to see the Pope return to Rome, but a later prophetic female saint, St. Catherine of Siena, by dint of persistent prayer, penance, and letter-writing, convinced the Holy Father to make the move back to where he belonged.
Like the Lourdes visionary St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Bridget of Sweden received happiness from the Lord Jesus and His Mother Mary, not in this life, but in the next.
So let all of us who have ever experienced loss or failures turn to St. Bridget for intercession, asking that she obtain for us the grace to patiently and lovingly suffer the inevitable crosses given to us in this life so that grace may flow to the Church and the world, and the will of the Lord be done.
"God doesn't require us to succeed, he only requires that you try" — Mother Teresa.
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