April 14
Third Day of Easter 2020
Year A
This is the third day of Easter. Whoo-Hoo.
We have a crazy saint today. So crazy, in fact, that priests were brought in to see if she was possessed. She wasn’t. Her name is Lydwina of Schiedam. Actually, that’s SAINT Lydwina of Schiedam to you and me. (Schiedam is in The Netherlands). At age 16 Lydwina was in a terrible accident that left her paralysed and she suffered a lot over it. She spent her time praying, meditating, and offering her pain to God because that’s about all you could do in the early 15th century. She developed a special devotion to the Eucharist and the hagiography is that the Eucharist is all she ate for the last 19 years of her life. And I was thinking I could probably survive on nothing but bread and wine too, if it came with cheese and sausages. Anyway, Lydwina saw visions in which she was visited by saints. In her final vision she saw Christ giving her last rites.
She must have been in terrible pain and that can cause people to have visions. And God can cause them to have visions too, I guess. I admire Lydwina because she persevered. Instead of turning in to her pain she looked to God, who must have seemed far off. I hope that was some comfort to her. And I hope that when I find myself in pain I can remember that it’s not all about me, there might be something else going on too.
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