November 7th.  St. Willibrord.

His life and mission run parallel to that of St. Boniface, who was his contemporary.  He was born in Yorkshire in 658, educated at Ripon under St. Wilfrid, and ordained priest after a spell in Ireland.  In 690 he was encouraged to go with twelve others as a missioner to Frisia, the Low Countries, and received the support of Pope Sergius for this task.  In 695 he was consecrated bishop by the same Pope, who gave him the name in religion ‘Clement’ and sent him back to establish a base at Utrecht and organise the church rather in the manner of the mission to Canterbury.  Monastic foundations also aided the work of evangelisation; the largest was at Echternach (in modern Luxembourg) where Willibrord was to die in 739.    The Frisian mission was not without setbacks; the pagan king Radbod destroyed many of the foundations in Utrecht itself in 714.  However Willibrord not only persevered but extended his mission further east, and north to Denmark and Heligoland.  For a time he worked with Boniface, although the latter’s mission was essentially to Germany.  Like Boniface, Willibrord had several ‘stand-up encounters’ over pagan rites, sacrifices and totems.  He is the patron of Holland.  Never formally canonised, he was recognised as a saint almost immediately after his death.  At celebrations at his shrine there takes place a sacred dance for the bishop and clergy – not something we normally associate with stiff-lipped European practice, though there is another in Seville – the origin of whose steps are lost in antiquity