The return of Saint Oda

There are many saints. And by many, I do main a lot. Such a lot, in fact, that the Church has a hierarchy of saints to decide which saint’s feast day has precedence on any given day. Last Sunday, the Nativity of St. John the Baptist took precedence over everything else, for example.

At the Second Vatican Council, this hierarchy was adapted. Some saints had their feast days changed, and others lost theirs completely as their veneration was suppressed at various levels. Some saints, which in the past were venerated worldwide, are now only marked locally. Many early saints, who lived in the first centuries of Christianity, underwent this fate. Among them, many Dutch saints who had local importance, but had left no tangible mark in the larger scheme of things. One of these is Saint Oda.

The 8th-century saint, who lived as a hermit at what is now the village of Sint-Oedenrode in the Diocese of ‘s Hertogenbosch, gives her name to the parish which was established in 2010, and as a consequence, Bishop Antoon Hurkmans has asked the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints to reinstate her feast on the liturgical calendar. That request has now been granted. Her reinstated feast day will be on the 27th of November.

As the notification reads, “once holy, always holy”, Saint Oda’s sanctity has never been abrogated, but her veneration merely limited. Those limitations have now been removed so that the faithful of St. Oda’s parish can now mark their patron saint’s feast day again. Whether or not her veneration has been returned to universal status is unknown, but, to be honest, unlikely. The request from the bishop has been of a local nature, so it would make sense that St. Oda’s veneration is now reinstated for the diocese alone.