Today May 15

Today is the feast of dear St. Dymphna. Her dad was an Irish chieftain who kind of went off his rocker when his wife died. No woman was as fair as his dead wife . . . except her daughter. He burned with an unnatural lust for her, but she escaped with her priest friend Gerebernus across the Channel to what is now Gheel in Belgium. The chieftain and his warriors followed the money, so to speak. He followed reports of two folks using foreign coins like his own til they came to the farmhouse where they were in hiding. First the chief tried to convince and cajole his daughter into incest; then, when that failed, ordered them both killed. The warriors ran Gerebernus through with a sword but they wouldn't kill the princess. The chief had to do it himself. The bodies, left on the ground, were later buried in the area. The town that grew up around there, Gheel, is now home to sanatoriums and halfway houses for the mentally disturbed and the retarded who live among the people well cared-for and unmolested. She is a patroness for the mentally ill. And I think should also be for their relatives and those who love and care for them.