SAINT FEAST DAY 15 MAY: ST DYMPHNA

SAINT DYMPHNA, VIRGIN

Tradition says that Saint Dymphna was a seventh century Irish princess, daughter of a Christian mother and a pagan father. Tragically, her mother died when Dymphna was a young teenager and Dymphna’s father, the balance of his mind disturbed, tried to marry his own daughter.

SHE FLED ABROAD

Dymphna sought help from a priest, Father Gerebran [Gerebern] who, understanding that the king, her father, had the power to do whatever he wanted, advised her to flee abroad. Fr Gerebran and two others escaped with Dymphna to Gheel in modern-day Belgium. However, her father tracked her down, and when she refused to return with him killed Fr Gerebran and Dymphna, cutting off their heads with his sword.

PATRON SAINT OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

They were buried in tombs by the local people and soon there were reports of the miraculous healing at Dymphna’s tomb of the mentally ill and those suffering from epilepsy. More and more mentally ill people came to the shrine and the local people began to look after them in their homes, a tradition which continues today. St Dymphna is also patron of family harmony.

PRAYER:

O Lord God, Who has graciously chosen St Dymphna to be the patroness of those afflicted with nervous and mental disorders and has caused her to be an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who invoke her intercession, grant, through the prayers of this pure, youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all who suffer from these disturbances, and especially to those for whom we now pray: (Here mention oneself or names of others).

We beg thee to accept and to satisfy the prayers of St Dymphna on our behalf. Grant us patience in all our sufferings and resignation to thy divine Will.

Fill us with hope, and if it be in accord with thy divine plan, bestow on me (him, her) the cure I so earnestly ask for. Through Christ our Lord. Amen

***

FR BUTLER'S ACCOUNT OF ST DYMPHNA

She was the daughter of an Irish king, and having by vow consecrated her virginity to God, to avoid the snares to which she saw herself exposed at home, passed to Antwerp and chose her abode at Gheel, a village in Brabant, ten leagues from Antwerp.

There she served God in retirement and assiduous prayer. But being at length discovered and pursued by those who were the enemies of her chastity, she was murdered by them because she refused to consent to their brutish passion.

Her relics were solemnly taken up by the bishop of Cambray on May 15, and are preserved with veneration in a rich shrine at Gheel. She flourished in the seventh century.

From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints

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