Saint Birgitta`s ecstasy

 

Birgitta is one of the great woman mystics of the middle ages. She was born in 1302, a daughter of a noble family in Sweden. She married early and got 8 children, living the life of a noble lady. The story is that Birgitta had religious visions at some points during childhood, and when her husband died the visions returned, and transformed her life completely. 

In an important vision, God told her that her calling was to be his bride and mouthpiece. Birgitta let go of her comfortable life and her assets, moved into a monastery and started conveying the visions and messages she received from Jesus Christ and Mother Mary. There were messages about how to live a good christian life aligned with the will of God, about international politics and what God wanted the Pope and kings of England and France to do, and about founding a new monastic order. More than 600 visions, which were written down by Birgitta and her helpers, were spread and read widely. She was also an important counsellor and healer to many people.

Many of the dialogues in the visions are with Mother Mary, and Birgitta can be seen as part of the devotion to Mary in the  medieval Europe, when women mystics like Hildegard of Bingen emphasized the divine character of the cyclical mother nature, and Julian of Norwich described God as an embodied, nurturing mother. Birgitta was a mother, and there is a vital, fecund and carnal quality in her spirituality, a sensual devotion which is visible in the statue which is called the ecstatic Birgitta (picture above).

To me the underlying notion of the feminine Marian approach is that the divine is present in matter, a perspective which is challenging to the main christian traditions, which are emphasizing the split between the creator and creation, and the sinful and destructive dimensions of the latter. This traditional view of the created world has resulted in a deep unbalance in the western collective psyche, an attitude to nature and embodiment which is today manifested in global ecological and societal crises. There is an acute need for collective readjustments and a regaining of a new balance. Maybe this is the significance of the messages of saint Birgitta in our time. 


     

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