SAINT LUTGARDE ,THE "ACCIDENTAL SAINT".. Saint Lutgarde was a contemporary of Saints Francis and Clare. She was born in 1182, just one year after the little Poor Man of Assisi. Both were destined to share in the Passion of Christ; both would bear the impression of Christ’s wounds. Saint Lutgarde is often depicted — as are both Saint Bernard and Saint Francis — held in the embrace of Jesus Crucified, and invited to drink from the wound in His Sacred Side Lutgarde is the classic example of “the enclosed nun with the unenclosed mind.” Her deep sense of the Church, her keen interest in the preaching mission of the mendicant friars, both Dominican and Franciscan, made her a greathearted woman, a woman of Catholic dimensions. For Lutgarde, enclosure was no impediment to a real participation in the mission of preaching the Gospel. Her seven year fasts on bread and beer make her unique in the annals of holiness. Reluctantly Cloistered Lutgarde’s first attempt at monastic life was anything but fervent. She went to the monastery dragging her feet, more resigned to the cloistered life than committed to it. Her marriage dowry had been squandered in unwise business investments, making her unattractive to suitors, at least from the perspective of economic advantage. For Lutgarde, as for so many other women of her time, the cloister represented a socially acceptable alternative to the disgrace of unmarried life in the world. One could always play along with the monastic life if one didn’t want to live it, or so she thought. Encounter in the Parlour Lutgarde loved the parlour, a welcome break in the monotony of monastic observance. If her visitors were entertaining and handsome young men, susceptible to the feminine charms that, despite veil and grille, she knew well how to deploy, so much the better. Then everything changed. In a blaze of beauty and of love, Jesus Crucified, the Lord of glory, came to the parlour, revealing Himself to Lutgarde, claiming her heart for Himself, offering her a glimpse and foretaste of “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Cor 2:9). At the age of twenty, a changed Lutgarde embraced the monastic way, consciously, deliberately, generously. Psalm 26 expresses her experience: “Thou hast said, ‘Seek thou my Face.’ My heart says to Thee, ‘Thy Face, O Lord, do I seek’” (Ps 26:8). That one verse expresses the exchange underlying every call to intimacy with Christ. He says, “Seek thou my Face.” I respond, “Thy Face, O Lord, do I seek.” One who perseveres in seeking the Face of Christ is brought ineluctably to knowledge of the secrets of His Sacred Heart. The Face of Jesus Crucified, perceived in a shocking flash of beauty and of love, impressed Itself upon Lutgarde’s heart. She began to live “hidden in the secret of the Face of the Lord” (cf. Ps 30:21). When Lutgarde’s sisters chose her as abbess, she was driven by the Spirit to seek a life even more hidden in the Face of Christ, to place her stability in His Sacred Heart. She sought admission to the abbey of Aywières where, laying aside the habit of the Black Nuns, she put on the white cowl of Cîteaux, happy to have found a deeper silence, a more hidden solitude . Lutgarde’s silence was virtually complete. The nuns of Aywières spoke French, not Lutgarde’s native Flemish. Despite her efforts, she found the French tongue impossible to master. Living, working, and praying in the midst of her sisters she experienced a loneliness and solitude that she had never known before. Lutgarde’s health was poor. Fevers and poor eyesight, later turning to blindness, made the austere Cistercian observance wearisome and draining. The same Christ who had revealed Himself to her at the beginning of her conversion, waited for her one night in the dormitory, by the door to the staircase leading into the choir. Crucified and bleeding, His gaze met hers. Removing His right arm from the Cross, He drew her mouth to the wound in His side, the wound opened by the soldier’s lance on Calvary. Lutgarde drank, and drank deeply. The daily Eucharist renewed sacramentally her mystical experience of Christ’s pierced Heart. Like the children of Israel, she drank “from the supernatural rock” (1 Cor 10:4), but journeyed in the wilderness nonetheles Long hours in choir did little to console her. Her Latin was on a par with her French. Lutgarde’s solitude was complete. The liturgical dialogue with God was as frustrating as dialogue with her sisters. When, in a mysterious visitation, Christ came to Lutgarde, offering her whatever gift of grace she should desire, she asked for the intelligence of the Latin tongue, that she might better understand the Word of God and lift her voice in choral praise. Christ granted her request but, after a few days, Lutgarde began to feel strangely restless, unsatisfied. She hungered for more than the enlightenment of the intelligence. Though Lutgarde’s mind was flooded with the riches of psalms, antiphons, readings and responsories, a painful emptiness, a persistent yearning, throbbed in her heart. With disarming candour she returned to Christ, asking to return His gift, and wondering if she might, just possibly, exchange it for another. “And for what would you exchange it?” Christ asked. “Lord, said Lutgarde, I would exchange it for your Heart.” Christ then reached into Lutgarde and, removing her heart, replaced it with His own, at the same time hiding her heart within His breast. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ez 36:26). This mystical exchange of hearts signified Lutgarde’s passage into spiritual maturity. The heart, created for love, is satisfied by love alone, a love beyond all understanding. The road of Lutgarde’s exodus, her particular monastic journey, had been one of loneliness and isolation, of frustration and disappointment until, having given her heart in exchange for the Heart of Christ, she was “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:19). Who among us can claim to know the gift that will bring peace, deliver from trouble, and satisfy the longings of the heart? Who among us would presume to know the grace of which he or she stands, at this very moment, most in need? I, for one, would fear to choose. The only safe place in the monastic journey is the Face of Christ, the only stability that never disappoints is in His pierced Heart, the wellspring of undying, eternal, indestructible love. The love of the pierced Heart of Christ is given us, freely and abundantly, in the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is the exchange, or rather, the communion of hearts, the Heart of Christ in the Church, the heart of the Church in Christ. May the friendship of Saint Lutgarde and the energy of her prayer accompany us into the presence of Christ’s Eucharistic Heart, and remain with us amidst all of life’s changes, chances, and crossings.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 02:51:30 +0000
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