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  St.
Lydwine of Schiedam
by Joris Karl Huysmans
Long Live the Sacred Cross: Long
Live Suffering!
Review by Michael Whitcraft
"Long live the sacred cross: long
live suffering!"
How foreign these words of St. Veronica
Giulani are to our modern ears. Tell-tale examples like widespread
abortion and drug use are unnecessary to see that contemporary
society will do anything to avoid suffering. However, in turning
its back on suffering, it has also turned its back on Our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Changing the Course of History
As Catholics, we know that suffering
is a great treasure and a most effective means of union with
Christ. Our Lord taught us, "If any man will come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me" (St. Matt. 16:24).
In addition to granting personal union
with Christ, suffering can also change history. In His Infinite
Justice, God must reward every sacrifice suffered for His
sake. When He wishes to give the world more graces than it
deserves, He often calls special souls to suffer and thus
"buy" these graces. Thus He can show an overabundance
of mercy, without contradicting justice.
Therefore, there is a delicate economy
between sacrifice and grace, whereby the suffering of one
soul can determine the action of God and so alter history.
Author William Bush narrates a poignant example of this in
his book, To Quell the Terror. He shows how the martyrdom
of sixteen Carmelite nuns coincided perfectly with the fall
of Robespierre and the end of the Reign of Terror, concluding
that the expiatory sacrifice of those nuns, freed France from
the heinous throes of the French Revolution. (To read a review
of To Quell the Terror, click
here.)
Sometimes, God calls special souls to dedicate their entire
lives to suffering. Often nameless, these expiatory victims
affect government policy, topple kings, save souls and even
avert chastisements, without ever leaving their beds or monasteries.
God rewards them for their suffering.
Accepting the most terrifying pains, their submission brings
them a joy, comparable only to the elect in heaven. "My
life is a delicious Purgatory, where the body suffers and
the soul rejoices," said Marcelline Pauper, an expiatory
victim of the eighteenth century.
Throughout the history of the Church,
the list of expiatory victims is surprisingly long. The story
of one exemplary member of this list was recounted by the
illustrious nineteenth century author Joris Karl Huysmans
in his book, St. Lydwine of Shiedam, republished by
Tan books.
St. Lydwine
In 1380, St. Lydwine was born in the
small town of Shiedam in Holland, when all of Christendom
groaned under the weight and confusion of the Great Schism.
At 15, while ice-skating with her friends, she broke a rib,
forcing her into a bed she would never leave.
Over the next 38 years, she would frightfully
endure every known ailment of the time with the exception
of leprosy. Swollen with liquids, her stomach would expand
to such an extent that she appeared to be with child; intolerably
sensitive, her eyes would shed blood whenever they were struck
by light and transfixed by agony, she bore the side wound
of Christ's passion through the stigmata.
Although in the onset of her sickness,
she was given to despair, and rejected this torrent of sufferings,
she soon became inflamed with an intense love of God that
no pain could extinguish. Then, crippled by the agony of her
infirmities, she donned a hair shirt and took to an insufficiently
thin mattress of straw strewn on the floor, to augment her
already unspeakable pain.
Perhaps the worst of all her sufferings
was the persecution she suffered from some members of the
clergy, who denied her the sacraments. One priest, Dom André,
even calumniated her, and later met an untimely end.
Prophetically, St. Lydwine warned Dom
André of his impending death and threatened that if
he did not repent of his habit of stealing and make proper
restitution, he would be damned. With this, he went into fit
of rage and "died with foam on his lips in an excess
of anger against the saint."
Compensating her many sufferings, St.
Lydwine was graced with a heavily mystical spiritual life.
She was often taken to the earthly paradise, and held colloquies
with Our Lord, Our Lady, the angels and saints.
By the time of her death, her body
bore all the repugnant signs of a lifetime of suffering. However,
upon dying, she was miraculously restored to all the former
youth and beauty she possessed before her illnesses.
The most enlightening part of the book
comes at the beginning, where Mr. Huysmans applies the sufferings
of St. Lydwine to the moral crisis aborning at the time. He
shows that despite some technical advances, the Renaissance
was essentially the rebirth of paganism. He then described
the reactionary legion of men called by Divine Providence
to fight against the errors of this new historical epoch.
He cleverly divided this legion into three levels, each with
a specific function.
The first consisted of the Franciscans
and preaching orders who evangelized and confessed the Faith.
The next was made up of the cloistered orders, whose prayers
insured the success of the first level. St. Lydwine belonged
to the last level, where those suffering souls, seemingly
detached from events of the time, bought the graces from God
to decide the course of history.
St. Lydwine and Our Times
Immersed in the moral corruption and
decay of modern society, we wonder if there still exist expiatory
victims whose continual mortification holds back the chastising
hand of God, allowing Him to bestow undeserved graces and
blessings upon a sinful world. There certainly has never been
a time more in need of them.
However, in addition to these special
souls, our society as a whole must look to the cross as means
of union with Christ. As the Church has always taught, we
must all "take up our crosses and follow Him." Then,
we will find true joy, conquer the errors of our days and
together with St. Veronica Giulani, exclaim: "Long live
the Sacred Cross: Long live suffering!"
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