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| St. Lydwina falling on the ice. |
Often when we perform routine tasks, or engage in sports activities, we suffer a fall or some injury.
Today we remember St. Lydwina of Holland who passed away on Easter Sunday on 14 April 1433.
Lydwina had a fall while skating with her friends on ice when she was a teenager at 15. Some accounts say she was pushed.
Lydwina was beautiful. She had many suitors. Her father, who worked as a watchman for the city, urged her to get married. But Lydwina told him she would remain a virgin for Christ.
Lydwina broke a rib with the fall. Gangrene set in. For the remaining 38 years of her life she was bedridden. For seven years she suffered the stigmata. She eked out her days as an invalid offering her suffering to God.
Lydwina was born in Schiedam, Holland. She was one among nine children. Her biography was penned by her contemporary Thomas a Kempis who was born in the same year as Lydwina in 1380. The biography, originally in Latin, is titled Vita Lydwinae. It focuses on the virtue of suffering as a medieval Christian attribute.
Her suffering is seen by some as an allegory of the rot in the Catholic church at that time. Living during the infamous Western Schism (1378-1417), when there were two rival popes, her body, besieged by multiple sclerosis, is symbolic of the Catholic church being torn apart for forty years. At that time Holland was not a separate country. It was part of the Holy Roman empire.
Lydwina was canonized as a saint by Pope Leo XIII in 1890. A cathedral has been built in her memory which houses her remains. She is the patron saint of ice skaters and the chronically ill.
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