Lidwina of Schiedam

About Lidwina of Schiedam

Lidwina was a Dutch mystic who suffered extreme illness from age 15 until death at 53. After a skating accident fractured her rib, she developed gangrene and progressive illness—unable to walk, blind in one eye, with abscesses and pain throughout her body. Rather than despair, Lidwina accepted suffering as mystical participation in Christ's Passion. She experienced visions, the stigmata, and survived on only the Eucharist. She also received visions of purgatory and heaven. Her patient endurance of suffering made her patron of chronic illness and a model of redemptive suffering.