Giovanna Garbelli
St. Francis de Sales & St. Hildegard of Bingen Writing Groups
St. Lutgarde has been a companion along my journey of intimacy with the Lord. She can teach everyone that devotion to the Sacred Heart requires an unrestrained gift of oneself to the will of Christ. Lutgarde is also an icon of the spiritual marriage as union of the wills—nothing sentimental, but a complete surrender to the will of the Beloved, preferred above everything else. Indeed, I owe my understanding of St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s mystical theology to the discovery of The Life of St. Lutgarde by Thomas of Cantimpré, translated and commented on by Thomas Merton.
Four hundred years before St. Margaret Mary prayed and suffered for the institution of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, St. Lutgarde’s mystical life began with a vision of the pierced heart of the Lord. It ended with her mystical espousal with the Incarnate Word by an exchange of hearts with him.
St. Lutgarde was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, and she too had received a wound in her heart which can be classed as stigmata. While well known to her contemporaries, she has been forgotten probably because sources about her are in Latin, but thanks to Thomas Merton’s translation, she can again inspire many to participate in the Lord’s work of redemption by offering him their daily sacrifices.
A well-to-do businessman, Lutgarde’s father wanted a good marriage for her because she was beautiful in soul and face. Her mother, however, managed to put the twelve-year-old girl under the protection of the Benedictine nuns of St. Catherine’s at St. Trond. When she turned eighteen years old, she had her first vision of Christ. Being just an oblate, she used to spend long intervals in the parlor with a young man who was in love with her. One day, Christ suddenly appeared, blazing before her astonished eyes. He revealed the spear wound in his side and said to her, “Seek no more the pleasure of this unbecoming affection: behold, here, forever, what you should love, and how you should love: here in this wound I promise you the most pure of delights.” Struck with terror and love, she dismissed her suitor with these words: “I belong to another lover.”
Yet, she had to pass through another trial before she was resolved to a life of hiddenness and penance. Another friend, a soldier who had long been pursuing her, tried to kidnap her during one of her visits to her biological sister. She escaped by running to the woods. When she returned to the convent, the news had spread, and crowds gathered to see her. Lutgarde had to suffer the shame of being suspected of impurity. Her thoughts turned to Christ and to the shame he had suffered for men. Once again safe in the convent, she imposed on herself a voluntary rule of enclosure and solitude to give herself entirely to God. Furthermore, she transferred to a monastery of more strict observance and became a Cistercian nun at Aywières.
Soon afterward, Lutgarde experienced in a vision the spiritual marriage, as Jesus allowed her to exchange her heart with his. Jesus had just asked her to give him her heart and she replied, “Take it, dear Lord. But take it in such a way that Thy Heart’s love may be so mingled and united with my own heart that I may possess my heart in Thee, and may it ever remain there secure in Thy protection.”
Lutgarde was the first saint to whom Jesus showed his heart. Even though I cannot aspire to the same grace, this vision shows how much Jesus desires collaboration in the work of salvation. Lutgarde’s sufferings and prayers for the salvation of sinners encouraged my commitment to the redemption of the world. We need people dedicated to prayer and sacrifice in this era of warfare against the mystery of iniquity. We need Lutgarde’s intercession.
Lutgarde was at the disposal of Jesus’ plan. The Blessed Virgin asked her to fast for the salvation of the Albigensian heretics and for sinners. She fasted on a piece of bread and a glass of weak ale for three periods of seven years.
Few saints in the history of the Church show the ideal of vicarious suffering in reparation for sin more than St. Lutgarde. Vicarious suffering and reparation are the core of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Lutgarde’s story may strengthen the resolve of many who daily consecrate themselves to the hearts of Jesus and Mary to participate in the work of redemption.
She was called to heaven on June 16, 1246. How fitting that her feast day is in mid-June when the whole Church devotes herself to the Sacred Heart.
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Biographical information is from Thomas Merton’s What Are These Wounds?: The Life of a Cistercian Mystic Saint.