The Bishop's Mom

Andrea Vij draws hope from the legend surrounding a medieval saint’s mother.

Why, you might ask, would I develop a sudden interest in the story of Saint Adelphus of Metz? Although revered in his own time, this fifth-century Gallic bishop has faded into obscurity outside his native region in modern-day France. We don’t know much about him beyond an apocryphal biography and a collection of woven images on a medieval tapestry. I doubt he’d make the list of top fifty, or even top one-hundred saints we turn to in the modern age. So why my sudden preoccupation? 

It’s a mom thing. Literally.  

The Angel and Beatrice 

Some of us still have a copy of Hoever’s Lives of the Saints sitting around. Remember that quaint little volume so many kids, including me, got as a First Communion gift back in the day? The cover on mine has faded to a soft, worn-looking blue, and the inner pages give off a fragrance they picked up during my teens when the book sat in a dresser drawer with socks, pajamas, and a rose-scented sachet. Sometimes I open the book’s cover and take a rosy whiff out of nostalgia; then I sit back and read about a saint or two. The entries are short, with one for each day of the year.  

On a recent afternoon I happened upon the entry for Saint Adelphus, and what struck me wasn’t anything about the saint himself but about his mother, Beatrice. As the story goes, before Adelphus was born Beatrice received a visit from an angel who said, “Hail, beloved of God. Rejoice, because you will conceive and bring forth a new Paul, the Bishop Adelphus.” 

After noting the similarities to the Annunciation, I reminded myself to take the story with a grain of salt. Medieval writers loved to embellish their accounts of the saints. But I had to wonder, would a story like this just rise up out of thin air, or could there be something to it? Maybe mom-to-be Beatrice had a dream one night, told a few friends, and over the next hundred years the story blew out of proportion until a visit from a full-fledged angel worked its way into the narrative and stuck. 

True or not, I liked the idea of an angel showing up to offer an expectant mom a few hopeful tidbits about her child’s future. I thought back to the anxiety I experienced in the months before my husband and I brought our son home. As an adoptive mom, I felt so helpless. Waiting and worrying are universal, no matter how your child enters your life, but the worry can hit especially hard, I think, when he isn’t nestled inside your own body where at least you can keep track of his whereabouts.  

LEGO, Photography, and Sainthood 

At the time, I would have loved some angelic reassurance that everything would turn out okay. But what exactly would my angel have told me? That the adoption process would take longer than expected, but my son would be healthy and happy? That he would grow into a bright and curious boy who loved to play in the snow and build with LEGO? That he would one day show an interest in photography, have a great sense of humor, and stand several inches taller than me?  

Surely my angel would have advised me to stop worrying and to trust in God through thick and thin, because eventually (as in, right now) I’d face the uncertainty of guiding a teenager to adulthood in a world that seems to get more mixed-up every day. But (the angel would have said) my son would be loved immensely not only by me but by his Father in heaven who, despite all the uncertainty, would call him step by step to the glory of sainthood, just as He calls each of His beloved children, bishops and all. 

Hope: A Mom Thing 

Hmmm. That seemed like a hopeful message, and it had shown up just when I needed it. I closed the faded blue cover of Lives of the Saints wondering if angels might occasionally speak to us through the stories we find in little rose-scented books. 

I have no way of knowing if an angel truly came to Beatrice, but either way, even a bishop’s mom must have had days when she worried about her son. We all worry; it’s a mom thing. But so is hope, and I’m grateful that the story of Beatrice and the angel reminded me of that. Not every child is called to become a bishop, but every mother’s child, including mine, is called to become a saint.  

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Copyright 2025 Andrea Vij
Images: © Ralph Hammann - Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Canva