Today March 26

Today is the feast of St. Ludger, died c. 809. We have a surprisingly lot of information on today's saint, a native of Frisia, that group of islands off the coast of Germany where, if you close your eyes and concentrate, you'll feel like you're hearing English spoken, so close is Frisian to English. Ludger was in Germany itself when an Englishman arrived who wanted to preach in Frisia. The dean of the school there said okay, provided he take Ludger with him as deacon. The man, Alubert by name, took him back to York to be consecrated and it was there Ludger met Alcuin, that stellar mind, and the two clicked. In fact, Ludger stayed at the college for three and a half years and would have stayed longer had not all Frisians been kicked out in retaliation for the murder of an important English merchant's son. So he returned to Utrecht and was given charge of repairing a local church. Rather than doing so, he built a whole new one -- on the (previously unknown) burial place of the saint for which the church was named.

Then, finally, he was sent as deacon to his native Frisia aka Frieseland, where he labored long and hard to wrest the people from their pagan ways. He built churches and destroyed pagan temples, which were plundered by Charlemagne, although some was given back to the church (about a third), also in the form of protection. But all of a sudden, all his work came to naught when the Saxons invaded Frisia. Poor Ludger must have felt like a total failure, watching all his country plunge back into the darkness of paganism.

But all was not lost. After a three-year sabbatical in Monte Cassino , where he studied under, but did not become, a Benedictine. He was later able to return to his homeland, and to areas beyond: Heligoland, Westphalia and even Denmark and Scandinavia. He established a see at Muenster and became its first bishop.

Late in life, he kind of torqued off his emperor, the famous Charlemagne, because he didn't come immediately when called by a messenger -- nor a second or third. Ludger, you see, was praying and, as he later explained to the monarch, "I believed that the service of God was to be preferred to yours or to that of any man." He died in peace on this day, which was Passion Sunday in 809. St. Ludger, pray for us.