Saint Oda was born about the year 680, according to long-standing tradition a princess of Scotland. She came into the world blind. Her father sent her on pilgrimage to Liège to the relics of Saint Lambert, bishop of Maastricht. While she prayed at his grave she was miraculously cured of her blindness, a wonder already noted in early accounts of the saint's cult. In thanksgiving she vowed to dedicate her life wholly to God.
She returned to Scotland resolved on consecrated virginity. When her father, now that she could see, sought to arrange a marriage for her, she kept her vow. With a maid she fled across the North Sea. Tradition tells that she made pilgrimage to Rome and to Monte Sant'Angelo on the Gargano, received the blessing of the Pope for her purpose of religious life, and then prayed in various places in the Low Countries.
She settled for a time near Venray. There she was repeatedly disturbed—by magpies according to one strand of the legend, or by troublesome folk according to another. Seeking deeper solitude she fled; the birds are said to have led her to an open space in the forest. Villagers built her a humble hut. To shield her shelter from wind and weather and from the eyes of the world she planted bushes; by the next day, tradition says, they had grown into a thick hedge. Her father searched for her. As in the story of Saint Dymphna, her whereabouts were betrayed by coins of her homeland. When he tried to approach the hut, magpies drove him off again and again until he abandoned the pursuit and returned to Scotland. Oda remained a hermitess in that clearing.
A later Venray tradition holds that as she left that region she turned on a hill and promised: she would remain forever Venray's advocate in heaven. The place of her solitude—called in Dutch a rode, a man-made clearing in the woods—became the town of Sint-Oedenrode. Some medieval writers place her death in 713; others, including the Acta Sanctorum tradition, in about 726. After her death her hut became a place of pilgrimage. Relics said to be portions of her skull and teeth are kept in the church of Saint Martin at Sint-Oedenrode; a chapel in the church garden honors her. Pilgrims have long sought her help for sore eyes and other ailments of the head. She is remembered as patron of Sint-Oedenrode and of Venray, and is depicted with a magpie and with a crown under her feet in sign of her rejection of an earthly kingdom.
May Saint Oda obtain for us the grace of pure fidelity to our vows, and teach us today the virtue of holy solitude offered to God.
Ex Vitis Sanctorum Butler
Vitae Sanctorum Butler
MAY 4 — ST. GODARD, BISHOP OF HILDESHEIM, C
He was a native of Bavaria, and abbot of Altaich, in that country, and reformed likewise the abbeys of Hersfeld, in Hesse, of Tergensee, in the diocese of Frisinguen, and of Chremsmunster, in that of Passaw. In 1021, the episcopal chair of Hildesheim falling vacant by the death of St. Bernward, St. Godard was compelled by St. Henry to take upon him that pastoral charge. The relief of the poor, both spiritual and temporal, was everywhere the first object of his attention. He died on the 4th of May, 1038, and was canonized by Innocent II. in 1131. Many places in Germany acknowledge him patron, and several bear his name. See his life by Wolfhert, his disciple, in Henschenius, p. 501, and in Mabillon: and more at large, with long histories of miracles, among the writers of the history of the most illustrious house of Brunswick-Hanover, t. 2, p. 483. Several very devout epistles of St. Godard, or Godehard, are given us by Dom. Pez, in his Codex Diplomatico-Historico-Epistolaris, p. 133, &c.
Fons:
Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints
