Today is the 10th day of June. One day last week, along with a number of former classmates, we met and celebrated the 65th anniversary of our June 10th, 1947 high school graduation.

We don’t pay too much attention to that particular date every year, but we do pay tribute on that day every year to someone very special who lived in the 11th century and is best remembered for these words of advice to her husband, King Malcolm of Scotland. Here are the words of his beloved Queen Margaret:

“The love of peace is the first duty of him who is the common father of his people; war being the greatest of all temporal calamities.

“Those warlike princes whose heads were crowned with laurels, and whose triumphs dazzle the world and swell the pages of history with so much pomp, were the scourges of the earth, especially of their own nations, at least in the ages wherein they lived; and their sounding achievements and victories, when placed in the light in which faith commands us to consider them, will appear no better than a long series of boundless ambition, murders, plunder of whole countries, and the most heavy oppression of their own people.”

Margaret’s kinfolk took refuge from William the Conqueror at the court of King Malcolm Canmore in Scotland. There Margaret, as beautiful as she was good and accomplished, captivated Malcolm, and they were married in the year 1070, she being then twenty-four years of age. God blessed the couple with a family of six sons and two daughters, and she brought them up with the utmost care, instructing them in the Christian faith and superintending their studies.

This marriage was fraught with great blessings for Malcolm and for Scotland. He was rough and uncultured but his disposition was good, and Margaret, through the great influence she had over him, softened his temper, polished his manners, and rendered him one of the most virtuous kings who have ever occupied the Scottish throne. To maintain justice, to establish religion, and to make their subjects happy appeared to be their chief objectives in life.

“She incited the king to works of justice, mercy, charity and other virtues”, writes an ancient author, “in all which by divine grace she induced him to carry out her pious wishes. For he, perceiving that Christ dwelt in the heart of his queen, was always ready to follow her advice.” Indeed, he not only left to her the whole management of his domestic affairs, but also consulted her in state matters.

What she did for her husband Margaret also did in great measure for her adopted country, promoting the arts of civilization and encouraging education and religion. Her care and attention was extended to her servants and household as well as to her own family, yet in spite of all the state affairs and domestic duties which devolved upon her, she kept her heart disengaged from the world and recollected in God. Her private life was most austere: she ate sparingly, and in order to obtain time for her devotions she permitted herself very little sleep.

Every year she kept two Lenten periods, the one at the usual season, the other before Christmas. At these times she always rose at midnight and went to the church for Matins, the king often sharing her vigil. On her return she washed the feet of six poor persons and gave them alms.

Perhaps Margaret’s most outstanding virtue was her love of the poor. She often visited the sick and tended them with her own hands. She erected hostels for strangers and ransomed many captives – especially those of English nationality. When she appeared outside in public she was invariably surrounded by beggars, none of whom went away unrelieved, and she never sat down at table without first having fed nine little orphans and twenty-four adults. Often, the king and queen would entertain three hundred poor persons, serving them on their knees with dishes similar to those provided for their own table.

She died four days after her husband, on November 16, 1093, being in her forty-seventh year, and was buried in the church of the abbey of Dunfermline which she and Malcolm had founded.

The following memoir of Margaret by Turgot, bishop of St Andrews, a man who knew her well and had heard the confession of her whole life, leaves a wonderfully inspiring picture of the influence she exercised over the rude Scottish court. In spite of his foreign-sounding name, Turgot was a Lincolnshire man of an old Saxon family. Speaking of the care she took to provide suitable vestments and altar linen for the service of God, he writes:

“These works were entrusted to certain women of noble birth and approved gravity of manners thought worthy of a part in the queen’s service. No men were admitted among them, with the sole exception of such as she permitted to enter along with herself when she paid the women an occasional visit. There was no giddy pertness among them, no light familiarity between them and the men; for the queen united so much strictness with her sweetness of temper, so pleasant was she even in her severity, that all who waited upon her, men as well as women, loved her while they feared her, and in fearing loved her.

“Thus it came to pass that while she was present no one ventured to utter even one unseemly word, much less to do aught that was objectionable. There was a gravity in her very joy, and something stately in her anger. With her, mirth never expressed itself in fits of laughter, nor did displeasure kindle into fury. Sometimes she chided the faults of others – her own always – with that commendable severity tempered with justice which the Psalmist directs us unceasingly to employ, when he says ‘Be ye angry and sin not’.

“Every action of her life was regulated by the balance of the nicest discretion, which impressed its own distinctive character upon each single virtue. When she spoke, her conversation was seasoned with the salt of wisdom; when she was silent, her silence was filled with good thoughts. So thoroughly did her outward bearing correspond with the staidness of her character that it seemed as if she had been born the pattern of a virtuous life. I may say, in short, every word that she uttered, every act that she performed, showed that she was meditating on the things of Heaven.”

St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, was canonized in 1250 and named patroness of Scotland in 1673.