Living in the modern world, it’s easy to base our self-worth on our achievements. Whether because of celebrity culture insinuating that our lives are more worthwhile the more people know about us, consumerism suggesting that the summum bonum is being able to afford more and better things, or social media offering endless carefully curated snippets of people living their “best lives”, we often fall into the trap of supposing that a life without constant achievement and progress is a life wasted.
As always, however, it seems like what the world demands, the world conspires to prevent. The last two years alone have seen millions of people’s educations and careers go off track, perhaps irreparably, thanks to various lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, and the threat of future restrictions remains omnipresent even in countries with large majorities of vaccinated individuals. Nor is the fallout from COVID the only obstacle people have to face – deindustrialisation, outsourcing, PhD overproduction, credentialism, degree inflation, housing shortages… So many things hinder us from following the traditional path of worldly happiness – marriage, children, career success – that, if this is really the way to find meaning, we must conclude that many young people will, through no fault of their own, be simply unable to live a meaningful life.
That’s where St. Lydwine can help us. Lydwine was a woman who, in worldly terms, achieved practically nothing. Born in Schiedam in Holland in 1380, Lydwine was a beautiful girl with a sweet and cheerful temperament. It seemed that her parents would have no trouble finding her the good match that they desired. Lydwine, however, wanted to live for God alone, and begged him to make her ugly so that she might avoid following her parents’ wishes. Her prayers were answered when, at the age of fifteen, she contracted an illness that left her thin, hollow-faced, and greenish in colour. It didn’t stop there: when she became strong enough, she went outside skating with her friends, fell over, and broke a rib. This injury gave rise to a tumour, causing her so much agonising pain that she was unable to get out of bed. (Lydwine was later made the patron saint of skaters because of this incident.)
Although her family brought in several doctors, none were able to cure her. Lydwine’s symptoms worsened; she suffered at various times from vomiting, fever, gangrene, ulcers, infestations of worms, blindness in the right eye, toothache, blood flows from the mouth, ears, and nose, gallstones, cancers, and dropsy, among other things. So hideous did she now appear that many of her former friends ceased to visit, unable to bear the sight of her. But despite her horrific appearance, Lydwine’s wounds were reported to give off a sweet smell, like that of cinnamon.
Lydwine suffered most during the first four years of her illness, when, in addition to her physical distress, she was tormented by the thought that God had rejected her, that she was damned, that all her prayers were worthless. She became so miserable that the mere sound of laughter was enough to make her weep with envy. Consolation finally came in the form of a good and holy priest, who told Lydwine that her sufferings were of a supernatural origin, sent by God to help expiate the sins of the world, and that she was being called to imitate Christ in suffering for the sake of others.
After this, although her physical torments did not abate but instead became worse, Lydwine began to receive great spiritual consolations, to such an extent that she even started complaining that she was not suffering enough, and declared that, if a single Hail Mary could free her from her pain, she would not say it. She had visions of Mary and the Angels and Christ crucified. She saw and conversed with her Guardian Angel, who took her soul to visit her parish church, Eden, Purgatory, and even Heaven. Here the saints would encourage her, telling her that her sufferings were temporary, but her joys would be eternal. Lydwine wept afterwards at the thought of how many years she still had left to live.
Some time after she started having these ecstasies, Lydwine’s stomach burst, and she had to have a pillow pressed on her to keep her intestines in place. Whenever it was necessary to move her, her carers would bind her body together lest it disintegrate. She was barely able to eat, consuming as much in thirty years as a normal person would in three days. In a vision she saw that her body represented in microcosm what the whole of Christendom, wracked by wars and schism, was then suffering. (This was the period known as the Great Western Schism, in which two, and sometimes even three, men claimed the papal tiara, and the Catholic Church seemed in serious danger of breaking up irreparably.)
News of Lydwine’s sufferings soon spread, and many people came to see her, some to be inspired by her holiness, others to gawp as if at a freak show. Oftentimes people would stay with her round the clock, trying to prove that the stories of her not eating were all false, and that she was having food brought in secretly when no-one else was present. Once a priest, who suspected that her mystical gifts came from the Devil, sought to test her by giving her unconsecrated Hosts. Lydwine, who had been warned of the ruse beforehand in one of her visions, rejected them at once. Other sceptics were confuted when Lydwine was able to give detailed descriptions of their homes or religious communities hundreds of miles away.
When Lydwine died at the age of fifty-three, her wounds miraculously vanished, and she became as fair and fresh as in her youth. Many people came to see her body laid out, and many miracles were attributed to her both at this time and subsequently. Veneration of her started immediately and her hometown of Schiedam became an important pilgrimage site, although she was not officially canonised until 1890.
Why do I consider St. Lydwine’s example to be especially relevant to us? Because, in purely human terms, she achieved nothing at all, being entirely bedridden and dependent on others for over two-thirds of her life. But despite her initial sorrow over her calamities, Lydwine didn’t let herself sink into self-pity, although probably few would blame her if she did. Instead she offered up her sufferings to the Lord, and so attained to far greater holiness than she could have done as part of a more conventionally successful life. So if you are sick and unable to work, or trapped at home in lockdown, or unemployed with no job in sight, don’t despair – ask St. Lydwine to help you offer up your sufferings for Christ, and you may find yourself achieving far more valuable than worldly success.