Lidwina was born in Holland in 1380, the daughter of a nobleman and a peasant woman. At an early age she’d already decided to join a convent and lead a holy life, which like I keep saying on this blog, wasn’t such a terrible choice when your options are a) spend all day praying or b) spend all day feeding some man your parents chose for you while having and raising his children. Medieval marriage: not a picnic.
When she was 15, Lidwina went ice skating with friends, as you do in Holland, but fell on some rough ice and sustained a broken rib and some sort of internal damage. Her wound became gangrenous, and over the course of years the gangrene spread over her entire body.
Things get increasingly disgusting from there. Her entire body putrefied, but she didn’t die. She had fevers, she vomited blood and it poured from all her orifices. She stopped eating gradually, first only eating a bite of apple a day, then a little bit of bread and wine each week, and eventually she was only eating communion brought to her by the priests, some of whom were convinced she was possessed by a demon. Her hagiographies report that parts of her skin fell off, entire bones fell off, and parts of her intestines fell out. Instead of getting rid of those things like normal people, her parents kept her shed body parts in a vase, where they allegedly gave off a “sweet odor,” leading me to wonder if the rest of medieval Holland was even more awful than we thought.
In researching this one, I found way more stories about female saints miraculously nursing others than you would think exist, and Lidwina is one of them. A widow who cared for her since she was bed-bound, Catherine, had a vision of Lidwina’s breasts filling with milk. Shortly thereafter, Lidwina had a vision of the Virgin Mary and a host of other holy women surrounding her bed, opening their tunics and lactating into the sky. As expected, the next time Catherine came over to change her sheets, Lidwina rubbed her breast, it filled with milk, she fed Catherine, and religion is officially weirder than fetish porn.
Another scrap that appears a few times in the literature is the rumor that Lidwina was impregnated by the local priest. Specifically, the sources state that four soldiers “abused” her with this rumor, taunting her that her body was bloated because she’d been impregnated by the priest. This priest was the same priest who refused her communion more than once, and once tried to give her an unblessed wafer, but of course she had saintly superpowers of communion detection and spit it out. Later on in her life she “saw his heart,” rightly accused him of adultery, and of course he repented. Since the priest was kind of a dick (what kind of priest wouldn’t give communion to a clearly devout, clearly sick woman?), I have to wonder whether the adultery thing was really divinely-inspired knowledge, or more first-hand knowledge that the guy was a rapist.
Before she died at age 53, Lidwina slowly became paralyzed, though she never got up from her bed again after the ice skating accident. When she died, the only thing she could move were her left hand and her head, and the descriptions of her illness have led some medical types to speculate that she may have had Multiple Sclerosis. If so, she would be the first recorded person with the disease.
St. Lidwina is officially the patron saint of ice skating, and unofficially the patron saint of MS. Please keep all of your internal organs internal for her saint day, April 14.
St. Lidwina of Schiedam on the Catholic Encyclopedia
Holy Feast and Holy Fast, by Caroline Walker Bynum
The Lives of the Primitive Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints by Alban Butler
The Illegiterati 
Ample food for thought, this case… If we review Anne Catherine Emmerich,s visions, we can see that she mentions Saint Ludwin as one of the few in those times really working for the salvation of the church, this done through her suffering.
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Dear Sir, I don’t know your name lol, so you’ll be Mr. Sir for now. I’ve read two of your post, this one and the one before. To be hnesot, I applaud you greatly for your efforts. I know what it feels like to go through what your going through. I, too, am a Gay Catholic. I converted to Catholicism my senior year of HS, and then fell in love with a boy my freshman year of college (didn’t materialise into anything) and was forced to accept the fact that I was gay. However, I also knew God’s love . and that the Catholic Church saw homosexuality as an abomination (as stated in the Catechism). Courage is one of the many groups that encourages gay and lesbian people to maintain a chase life. I was very moved by the post you made saying that, so much can come from a hug, a touch on the arm or hand. Its very beautiful for how powerful the simplicity! I have had my fair share with the Roman Catholic Church. I do not share the belief in a chase life for gay ppl. I do not beleive is reserved for child birth (I have many I won’t get into lol). However I do respect ppl that do remain chase as I respect all ppl that decide to remain chase until marriage. Being a gay catholic is very difficult, in the Catholic community, many times u cannot be tru to urself, even if you want to remain in a chase lifestyle, becasue of the stigma of being gay. In the gay community, you still can’t be tru to yourself, because many gay ppl have been autrocized by various religious organizations that they’ve grown to hate them, and unfortunately the ppl that belong to them gay christians included. Finally, taking the social aspect out, agreeing to stay chase is hard. Its hard to not give into the biological urge to have sex- its unnatural (unless artificially made so) to not have those urges. So, theres ur personal cross- so i’d say. I encourage to pray, and walk the path that Jesus shows you. He’s showed me that I can be Catholic and Gay . even if I choose to marry (u may or may not disagree). Perhaps he’s shown u to be chase eitehr way, you are what you are and God WILL lead you through it.The Catholic Church is the Lords Church. I have never doubted that Roman Catholic- up for debate as much as Eastern Orthodoxy and Asyrian churches are, not including others that are in apostolic succession, depending on someobdies standards. The Old Catholic Church in Europe and American. some parts of the Anlgican and Episcopal Church (debatable but there coudl stil lbe some apostolic succession). But God always comes out in the end.With respect to whether you shud continue courage or not- I would continue. I’m sure there was a miscommunication. If these are ppl of the LORD, then you shud be able to ask, hey= did you all have my number? I heard you all went out to dinner and I wanted to come, I just wanted to make sure you guys had my updated information blah blah blah. REAL CHRISTIANS WILL understand, and SHUD attempt to make adjustments. Feel it out- Satan himself will come down to destroy the most holiest of intentions. Its up to us to find him, and with God’s help always cast him out. If they don’t make amends then thats not of God. God has no cliques, only love, and any group claiming his name shud do ONLY the same for EVERYBODY. Being chase and catholic is hard- you need a social group if this is wat you want. Push for the Courage group. You’ll be in my prayers from now on. God Bless you Mr. Sir.Ernesto