Saints · Ages 3-5 · 27 pages
Saint Elizabeth of Hungary: The Princess Who Fed Jesus
by Kyle Hancock
Long ago a little princess was carried from Hungary to a castle on a hill, to grow up and marry the prince. Elizabeth loved to play, and she loved to pray — and most of all she loved to give. When she won a game, she gave a share of her prize to the poor girls; and sometimes, right in the middle of winning, she stopped the game as a little gift to God. At fourteen she married Ludwig, and they loved each other very much. When babies came, Elizabeth carried bread down the steep path to the hungry in the town and sat beside the sick in their small houses, because Jesus had said, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” The book tells the famous story of the roses honestly — as an old story people have told for hundreds of years, written down long after she died — and then tells what the people who knew her wrote down under oath: that in the hard year when the rains came and the harvest failed, Elizabeth opened the castle storehouses and gave the grain away, sold her rings and her silk gowns to buy food, and made a hospital for the sick below the castle. When Ludwig came home he was not angry; he said he would gladly do the same. Then Ludwig set out for the Holy Land and died of a fever on the way, and Elizabeth, twenty years old with a newborn in her arms, cried as if her whole world had ended. She had to leave the castle. That night she and her maids slept in a shed where pigs had been kept — and before the sun came up she went to the brothers’ chapel and asked them to sing a song of thanks to God. In Marburg she put away her silks for a plain grey dress like the brothers of Saint Francis, built a hospital for the poor with the money that was hers, washed the sick and fed them with her own hands, and spun wool to give the money away. The poor children called her Mother. She died at twenty-four, singing softly, and the poor she had loved came to her grave. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary: The Princess Who Fed Jesus is the true story of a princess who became a saint by loving Jesus in the poor — happily feeding Him with her own two hands. It is told in warm watercolor illustrations and simple read-aloud words, and it does not hide the hard things: a famine, a husband who dies far from home, a castle left behind. Children can hear that a mother cried, and that she thanked God anyway — and that whatever we do for the least of His brothers and sisters, we do for Him. Written for ages 4 to 6 — a read-aloud for the youngest, and a first saint’s life for children who are starting to read on their own. Inside you’ll find a Scripture page from the Gospel of Matthew (“whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me”); the story told in short lines little ones can follow; A Note for Families on who Elizabeth was, which stories come from the sworn testimony of the maids who knew her and which are later legend, what the book teaches about the corporal works of mercy and about holiness in marriage and family, and how to talk about the hard pages; a prayer to pray together; Talk About It Together, questions for after the story, with one thing to do this week; and a page about Saint Elizabeth for the grown-up reading aloud — the dates, the famine of 1226, Ludwig’s death at Otranto, the hospital at Marburg, her canonisation in 1235 and the Church’s own prayer for her feast — with what is documented and what is tradition clearly marked. Feast day: November 17 (Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, religious; patroness of the Secular Franciscan Order, and of bakers, nurses, hospitals, widows and Catholic charities).
