Today, June 16, is the memorial of Saint Lutgardis.
Lutgardis was born in Belgium in 1182. She was a pretty girl who enjoyed wearing the most fashionable clothes. She also had no apparent religious vocation,
She was sent to the Benedictine monastery near Saint Trond at age 12 because her dowry had been lost in a failed business venture. Therefore, as was the custom of her time, she could not have a life as a normal, married lay woman.
Jesus appeared to Lutgardis in her late teens. In that vision, Jesus showed her His wounds. In 1194 at age 20, she became a Benedictine nun with a true vocation.
Lutgardis nurtured a deep interior life which was rewarded by visions of Jesus, ecstasies, levitations, and an unusual occurrence– blood dripped from her forehead and hair while she was contemplating the Passion. At one point in her visions, Christ and Lutgardis exchanged hearts.
She did not find the Benedictine Order strict enough. Her friend St. Christina the Astonishing advised her to join the Cistercians where she lived for the last 30 years of her life. She displayed the gifts of healing, prophecy, spiritual wisdom, and was an inspired teacher on the Gospels.
She became blind for the last 11 years of her life, considering her blindness as a grace. In one of her last visions, Jesus revealed to her the day of her death. Lutgardis spent her remaining time in prayer for the conversion of sinners.
She died of natural causes in 1246 at age 64.