Saints Margaret of Scotland

Today there are two women Saints who have the same feast day, but are from different centuries. For many who pray the Liturgy of the Hours you can choose which prayers to say either the prayers for Saint Margaret of Scotland or Saint Gertrude. I was recommended by my Godmother to say the prayers of one Saint for even years and the other during odd, and if there are three Saints (which happens) well, you could do every three years for each or something like that.

Anyways, I decided to pray the prayers for Saint Margaret of Scotland. Why, probably because she was the Queen of Scotland and since I have traces of Scottish blood, I want to honor that, but also she was a good example of a wife and mother, which I will in the near future become myself. I would like before anything else copy and paste her little bio that is in the Liturgy of the Hours:

Saint Margaret of Scotland was born around the year 1046 in Hungary where her father was exiled. She was married to King Malcolm III of Scotland and gave birth to eight children. The ideal mother and queen, she died at Edinburgh in 1093.

It was not just the fact she was a wife and mother Saint, but the second reading in the Office that made me say, "Today I am asking for Saint Margaret of Scotland to intercede for me." Since there is nothing that she personally wrote, the second reading was from the Second Vatican Council. Titled in the Office as, "The sanctity of marriage and the family" I would like to copy and paste the reading for you all to enjoy.

Husband and wife, by the covenant of marriage, are no longer two, but one flesh. By their intimate union of persons and of actions they give mutual help and service to each other, experience the meaning of their unity, and gain an ever deeper understanding of it day by day.

This intimate union in the mutual self-giving of two persons, as well as the good of the children, demands full fidelity from both, and an idissoluble unity between them.

Christ the Lord has abundantly blessed this richly complex love, which springs from the divine source of love and is founded on the model of his union with the Church.

In earlier times God met his people in a covenant of love and fidelity. So now the Savior of mankind, the Bridgroom of the Church, meets Christan husbands and wives in the sacrament of matrimony. Further, he remains with them in order that, as he loved the Church and gave himself up for her, so husband and wife may, in mutual self-giving, love each other with perpetual fidelity.

True married love is caught up into God's love; it is guided and enriched by the redeeming power of Christ and the saving action of the Church, in order that the partners may be effectively led to God and recieve help and strength in the sublime responsibility of parenthood.

Christian partners are therefore strengthened, and as it were consecrated, by a special sacrament for the duties and the dignity of their state. By the power of this sacrament they fulfill their obligations to each other and to their family and are filled with the spirit of Christ. This spirit pervades their whole lives with faith, hope and love. Thus they promote their own perfection and each other's sanctification, and so contribute together to the greater glory of God.

Hence, with parents leading the way by example and family prayer, their children--indeed, all within the family circle--will find it easier to make progress in natural virtues, in salvation and in holiness. Husband and wife, rasied to the dignity and the responsibility of parenthood, will be zealous in fulfilling their task as educators, especially in the sphere of religious education, a task that is primarily their own.

Children, as active members of the family, contribute in their own way to the holiness of their parents. With the love of grateful hearts, with loving respect and trus, they will return generosity of their parents and will stand by them as true sons and daughters when they meet with hardship and the loneliness of old age.

Though this reading was written 20th Century, the ideas and notions are the same as the time Saint Margaret of Scotland was physical alive in the 11th Century. There are so many examples of how so many of God's children have forgotten sanctity of marriage and family. I watch those who raised and loved and still love their children are left in the care of those who they do not know, and never see their children. I find that I am gulity at time or another of doing that, and feel the regret lodged in my throat, for which I ask for constant prayers from my family members who have passed who I know I should of been closer to.

I have recently as I was writing this was looking up things about Saint Margaret, found a very good link that has a good biography about this married Saint. Check it out: Saint Margaret's Biography
Saint Margaret of Scotland is one of the many married Saints who remind me that the family and marriage are attacked now more than ever, and by her intercession, may Catholics and for that matter all Christians work to defend MARRIAGE and FAMILY LIFE!

Lord, you gave Saint Margaret of Scotland a special love for the poor. Let her example and prayers help us to become a living sign of your goodness. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, you Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.