Lutgardis was born at Tongeren in 1182. She was admitted into the
Benedictine monastery of St. Catherine near
Sint-Truiden at the age of twelve, not because of a vocation but because her
dowry had been lost in a failed business venture. She was attractive, fond of nice clothes and liked to enjoy herself. For Lutgarde the cloister represented a socially acceptable alternative to the disgrace of unmarried life in the world. According to her
Vita, it was in the parlour, a welcome break in the monotony of monastic observance, that she was visited with a
vision of
Jesus Christ showing her
his wounds, and at age twenty she made her
solemn vows as a Benedictine. In 1208, at
Aywières (Awirs), near
Liège, she joined the
Cistercians, a stricter order, on the advice of her friend
Christina. The nuns of Aywières spoke French, not Lutgarde's native Flemish. Lutgard deliberately did not learn French in order to live in greater silence. Living, working, and praying in the midst of her sisters she experienced a loneliness and solitude that she had never known before. The prolific multiplication of Cistercian monasteries of women in the Low Countries obliged the White Nuns to turn to the newly founded friars, disciples of Francis and Dominic, rather than to their brother monks, for spiritual and sacramental assistance. Lutgarde was a friend and mother to the early Dominicans and Franciscans, supporting their preaching by her prayer and fasting, offering them hospitality, ever eager for news of their missions and spiritual conquests. Her first biographer relates that the friars named her
mater praedicatorum, the mother of preachers. Lutgardis was one of the great precursors of the devotion to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus. The first recorded mystic revelation of Christ's heart is that of Lutgardis. According to
Thomas Merton, Lutgardis "…entered upon the mystical life with a vision of the pierced Heart of the Saviour, and had concluded her mystical espousals with the Incarnate Word by an exchange of hearts with Him." When, in a visitation, Christ came to Lutgarde, offering her whatever gift of grace she should desire, she asked for a better grasp of Latin, that she might better understand the Word of God and lift her voice in choral praise. Christ granted her request and, after a few days, Lutgarde's mind was flooded with the riches of psalms, antiphons, readings and responsories. However, a painful emptiness persisted. 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. During this time she is known to have shown gifts of
healing and
prophecy, and was an adept at teaching the
Gospels. She was blind for the last eleven years of her life, and died of natural causes at Aywières. According to tradition, she experienced a vision in which Christ informed her of her forthcoming death. She died on 16 June 1246, the day after the
Feast of the Holy Trinity, at the age of 64. ==Veneration==