St. Margaret of Scotland

To the excellent gifts of prayer and fasting, she joined the gifts of mercy. For what could be more compassionate than her heart?  Who more gentle to the needy?  It was her custom as soon as dawn had broken, to rise from bed, and to continue a long time in prayer and reading the psalms, and as she read she performed this work of mercy.  Nine little orphan children who were utterly destitute, she had brought into her at the first hour of the day so that she could feed them.  She ordered soft food such as little children delight in, to be prepared for them daily; and when the little ones were brought to her, she did not think it beneath her to pick them up and sit them on her knee, and feed them herself with the spoons from her own table.  Thus Queen Margaret, honored by all the people, performed for Christ’s sake the office of a most devoted servant and mother.

– from The Life of Margaret, Queen of Scotland (†1093), attr. Turgot, Bishop of St. Andrews