Saint Lutgardis

Saint Lutgardis was a Flemish nun, first a Benedictine at Sint-Truiden and later a Cistercian at Aywières in Brabant. The Roman Martyrology calls her a virgin and notes her devotion to the Sacred Heart of the Lord. The Church commemorates her on June 16.

She was born in 1182 in Tongeren, in present-day Belgium. When she was about twelve, she was entrusted to the Benedictine nuns of the monastery of Saint Catherine at Sint-Truiden. According to her Life, at first she did not think seriously about religious life.

The turning point came when, as her Life relates, while she was talking with a young man who was courting her, she saw Christ showing her his wounds. From that moment she chose him as her only Bridegroom and made her religious vows. In time the sisters elected her prioress, but she, wishing for a stricter life, joined the Cistercian nuns at Aywières. French was spoken there, while Lutgardis used Flemish for the rest of her life and never mastered the new language well.

At Aywières she spent the rest of her life in prayer and penance. Her Life describes many mystical experiences, among them an exchange of hearts with Christ: when the Lord asked her what she desired, she is said to have answered that she wanted his Heart. She undertook severe fasts and mortifications, which she offered for the conversion of the Albigensians and of sinners. In the encyclical Dilexit nos of 2024, Pope Francis named her among the holy women for whom resting in the heart of the Lord was a source of life and interior peace.

For the last eleven years of her life she was blind. She died at Aywières on June 16, 1246. Her tomb was held in great veneration, and in 1796, during the French Revolution, the nuns took refuge with her relics at Ittre, where they are kept to this day.

Her Life was written soon after her death by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré, who knew her personally. Lutgardis did not go through a formal canonization process, but she has been venerated as a saint since the Middle Ages and is listed in the Roman Martyrology. The Flemish regard her as their patroness, and the blind invoke her intercession.