Feast Day: April 14th
We travel to Holland this week, a little town of Schiedam, named after the river it was perched along. Peter was a laborer, and his (even more hardworking) wife, Petronilla, was the mother of their 9 children. Eight were boys, but right in the middle was their only daughter, Lidwina, or Lydia as we’d probably call her. She was born on Palm Sunday, right as the Passion was being chanted at their local church, an easy delivery for Petronilla thank God in the year of Our Lord, 1380.
One wintery day a decade and a half later, Lidwina was out with her friends ice skating and took a bad fall on the ice breaking one of her ribs. It was an injury that changed the course of her whole life. At first it all seemed to be ramifications from the broken rib: an abscess formed in her chest, eventually bursting, further increasing her pain and nausea. With some periods of remission, she grew increasingly disabled over the coming years. By 19, both of her legs were paralyzed, and her vision limited and over the coming four decades, she would lose feeling and eventually grow paralyzed through much of her body, enduring fevers and headaches, bleeding and blindness. For anyone with chronic pain or who has been bedridden, St. Lidwina is your patron.
Scientists say it may have been the first recorded case of multiple sclerosis. The Catholic Church says she was a saint. And it all came down to the way she endured all those crosses. No one expected, at 15, that she would become a saint in that way. She could have been a virtuous wife and mother, she could have entered religious life, or dedicated her life to God in some other way. Her whole life was open before her! But then she had a bad fall, and a disease no one understood began to ravage her body, and she had a choice to make: to embrace Christ, on the cross, or plunge into the sufferings without Him.
The path of sanctity perhaps sounds heroic and meaningful, and surely it was, but in some ways it actually made it harder for Lidwina. Now people came by, gawking at someone that was said to be a mystic. Poking and prodding, some scoffing at her reputed holiness, some claiming her charity had worked miracles. She risked deeper union with the Lord, remaining with Jesus amidst the daily struggle to stay cheerful, her mind and heart were more and more filled by Jesus’ Love, and inspired by His cross. She prayed constantly, choosing to fast and make sacrifices beyond even what her illness forced upon her.
Her example is a hard one. At first glance, we have to ask: does being a saint mean suffering for most of your life and dying young? Of course, the answer is ‘no’, Jesus says “I came that you may have life, life in abundance.” But then, where is abundant life to be found at Lidwina’s bedside? And here’s where we get to her sanctity: not in the extremity of her sufferings, nor the miracles or mystical prayer, but in the simple choice to hold fast to Jesus in all those circumstances. We don’t know what her relationship with Our Lord was like before her fall (though we know her parents were faithful and pious, so we must assume their home was one of prayer and devotion), but we know that she did choose Jesus, again and again, in the years after. That is something that we can do as well, whether we’re ice skating or just doing a day’s work. whether we’re suffering or currently in fine health, whether we’re given the grace of mystical prayer or just persevering in spending time with Our Lord before Mass. All of us can make the same choice – of relationship with Jesus – and become just as holy, just as saintly, just as inspiring as St. Lidwina.
– Fr. Dominic has ice skated three times in his life. His current skill-level is “unstable”. He can get up to a fine rate of speed but can only decelerate by hitting the boards … or hitting the ice. Meanwhile, figure-skaters are hitting quadruple-axels and speed-skaters are hitting 60mph … and the Lord is waiting for both of us to do life with Him.