A bit more stuff on St Boniface here, i can't help it. Because the more i find out about him, the more i think St Boniface just rocks.

This guy understands well the dark night of the soul, and had some serious periods of shake ups of faith...so relatable!. And maybe that’s what leads him so strongly to make sure others have a light for their own darkness. From a letter he wrote to his friend abbess Eadburg (from here):

" 'We were troubled on every side.... in this dark remoteness among German peoples man must come to the distress of death had he not the word of God as a lamp unto his feet and as a light unto his paths. Fully trusting in your love I beseech that you pray for me, for I am shaken by my shortcomings, that take hold of me as though I were tossed by a tempest on a dangerous sea.'

This consciousness of his shortcomings was not wholly due to the failure of his plans, for Boniface at one period of his life was much troubled by questions of theology. The simile of being tempest-tossed is often used by him. In a letter addressed to an unnamed nun he describes his position in language similar to that in which he addresses Eadburg. “

And the correspondence the other way around, from women to him, says just as much, and move even more. The others links i was looking at before talk about him corresponding with the women who he brought with him as missionaries, fellow exiles in a spiritually hostile place. But it goes deeper than that it seems. St Boniface's time was almost a precursor to the horrors of Henry the VIII and the like. His was a time when monasteries in some areas were absolutely unprotected, at the mere whim of the mood of the local prince who could easily invade or rob them at a whim, degrading the life there, seducing the nuns, or worse. Respecting monastic life was a joke to these rulers and so a monastic’s life was incredibly vulnerable, especially the women, it was just horrible. And the letters St Boniface receives from these women affected are so moving. It looks like some of them are about "simple" things like the state of real poverty these monasteries had been brought to, others of a deeper sense of danger, and still others had lost their ability to even live a prayerful life under the instability. This letter to me expresses the feeling under many of them, from here again:

"on account of the pressing miseries we have now insisted on to the full, we needs must find a true friend, one whom we can trust more than ourselves; who will treat our grief, our miseries and our poverty as his own, who will sympathize with us, comfort us, support us by his words, and raise us up by wise counsel. Long have we sought him. And we believe that in you we have found the friend whom we longed for, whom we wished for, whom we desired.”

They needed a true friend and a protector..and through him they sure had one. Big time. He worked ceaselessly it seems for the protection of women like this (i’m sure men too; but it looks like he had a very strong chivalrous streak that led him to a special protection of many women, God bless him). In some cases he fought for changes where they were, in other cases he brought them into his own jurisdiction and made real concrete provisions for them. And he also wasnt afriad to ask them to pray for him in his own struggles...fully trusting in prayer as worth much. I just love this guy.

Nuns of his day tended to be cloistered and well learned, and versed in things like manuscript copying and embellishing and the like. So i am thinking.....if any saint might be a wonderfully brotherly protective guiding patron to women who seek a life that is contemplative and “scribe” like, i think he is. And so its really moved something that he was given as my patron saint. Tonight i've just been feeling very...... cared for. Its hard to explain. But I am just so grateful.

Blessed St Boniface, Please Pray for Us. Such a wonderful "true friend", such brotherly guidance and protection as yours , is so direly needed by us here today. Now more than ever. Amen

(Image from here)