Lidwina

Lidwina was born at Schiedam in Holland, near the mouth of the Meuse, on 18 April 1380 (Palm Sunday according to local tradition), one of nine children of a laboring family and sister to eight brothers. From the age of seven she showed an extraordinary devotion to the Blessed Virgin: whenever her mother sent her on an errand she would first enter the church to greet Our Lady with a Hail Mary before her image. At twelve she made a vow of virginity and resolutely refused a proposal of marriage, desiring to consecrate her life wholly to God.

At fifteen, while skating with companions on the frozen river according to the custom of the country, she fell upon rough ice and broke a rib. The injury, joined to an inward bruise and a grave abscess, never healed. Progressive disease followed: an ulcer consumed her lungs so that she vomited purulent matter; exterior sores covered her face, legs, and body; dropsy afflicted her for nineteen years; and at length she was paralyzed save for her head and left arm. For the last seven years she could not stir herself in bed; when others moved her they bound her with cloths lest her emaciated frame fall apart. For some thirty years she never left her bed. Great pieces of flesh were said to separate from her body and were kept for a time by her parents in a vase, giving off a sweet odor until, distressed by the attention, she had them buried. Town officials of Schiedam authenticated in a surviving document her prolonged abstinence from ordinary food and sleep: she reduced herself first to a morsel of apple, then a bit of date and watered wine, then tidal river water, and at last, it was reported, lived almost solely upon the Holy Eucharist.

The first three or four years of illness cost her violent interior struggle to remain patient and resigned. Thereafter, counselled by her confessor, the devout John Pot, she divided the Passion of Christ into seven parts corresponding to the canonical hours and meditated upon it day and night. So deep became her consolation that she declared she would not exchange her sickness even for a Hail Mary. She received many visitors, especially the chronically ill, whom she comforted by her example of suffering borne in the love of God. She was credited with numerous cures and with works of charity in which food given to the poor miraculously multiplied or lasted beyond expectation. During the occupation of Schiedam by the soldiers of Philip of Burgundy a guard was set about her to test her fasts, which were confirmed; yet she also endured abuse from soldiers who slandered her swollen body.

Lidwina was favored with visions in which, accompanied by her guardian angel, she visited Rome, the Holy Land, heaven, hell, and purgatory. In paradise she beheld a rosebush; the angel gave her a branch and told her she would not die until all the roses had bloomed. After thirty-eight years of suffering the roses appeared in full flower in a final vision. She died at Schiedam on 14 April 1433, about the age of fifty-two, her face lit with a roseate glow. At her express wish her body was not placed in direct contact with the earth, for she had long been unable to set foot upon the ground. She was buried beside the church of Saint John; a chapel rose over the place of her death, and her father's house was later turned into a monastery of the Third Order of Saint Francis. Her tomb at once drew pilgrims. Friar John Brugman wrote two lives of her; Thomas à Kempis epitomized her story; and devotion spread widely. In 1615 her relics were taken to Brussels; they returned to Schiedam in 1871. On 14 March 1890 Pope Leo XIII confirmed her immemorial cult by equipollent canonization. She remains the beloved patroness of her native town, of ice skaters, and of all who bear chronic illness.

May Saint Lidwina obtain for us the grace to unite our sufferings with the Passion of Christ and to practice patient love today.