Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 17:4 (Fall 2003)
Article: Jewels In Her Crown: A Library Discovery
Author: Evelyn Bence

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Jewels In Her Crown: A Library Discovery

Evelyn Bence

Evelyn Bence is coauthor of the humorous book Just As We Were: A Nostalgic Look at Growing Up Born Again (Revell, 2003) and author of Spiritual Moments with the Great Hymns (Zondervan, 1997) and a book for children, The Saint Who Became Santa Claus (Regina, 2002).

Two hundred years before Martin Luther’s reformation, a woman now known as St. Bridget of Sweden (1302-1373) challenged wayward kings, priests, and popes, calling them to repentance. As a young woman married to a nobleman, she dedicated herself to prayer and service to the poor and sick, even as she mothered eight children and served as a lady-in-waiting to the queen. (The royals remained fond of Bridget even as they ignored her pleas for moral and legal reform.)

Widowed at age forty, Bridget founded a religious order and took on an international campaign, castigating three popes seated in Avignon rather than Rome, denouncing one as a “murderer of souls, more unjust than Pilate.”1

A mystic, Bridget frequently received prophecies and visions, recorded in her Revelations. In a recent trip to Woodstock Theological Library on the campus of Georgetown University, I was delightfully startled to discover an account of a vision—in the voice of the ancient Roman martyr St. Agnes—telling Bridget of the jewels in her heavenly crown. Its timeless message imparts fresh courage to face an age-old problem.

“The crown is the patience which has endured in tribulation, to be rewarded by God.

“The first stone in this crown is a jasper, and it was gained for you by him who spoke of you contemptuously, saying that he did not know by what spirit you spoke, and that it would better become you to spin than to dispute about the Scriptures. As the gleaming jasper enkindles joy, so does God inflame the soul by joy in tribulation, enlighten the understanding in spiritual things, and destroy the irregular desires of the heart.

“The second stone, the sapphire, was won for you by him who spoke friendly words to your face and robbed you of credit behind your back. As the sapphire reflects the blue of the heavens, so does the malice of men often help to keep the just man’s [/woman’s] thoughts turned to God.

“The third stone is the emerald. The man you have to thank for it is he who accused you of saying things you never said or thought. For as the emerald is a very brittle stone, of a fair green color, so does falsehood quickly come to nothing, and yet beautify the soul by the patience with which it is endured.

“A pearl comes next in your crown, and it was placed there by one who slandered a friend of God in your hearing, an injury which grie...

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