(1182-1246) Born in Belgium, Saint Lutgardis’ father lost her dowry in a failed business venture, so she was sent to a Benedictine convent at age 12. She was a pretty girl who liked clothes, but at 20 she had a vision of Jesus showing His wounds, and she renounced the world, chose to live for Him alone, and became a professed nun. Lutgardis soon joined the stricter Cistercians. She was a mystic with gifts of healing and prophecy, and when meditating on the Passion of Christ, would levitate and drip blood from her forehead. She was the first known female stigmatist, an early devotee of the Sacred Heart, and blind for the last 11 years of her life.

Saint Lutgardis is mentioned by Pope Francis in his 2024 Encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a woman who has “spoken of resting in the heart of the Lord as the source of life and interior peace” (Dilexit Nos, 110). How have you sought to improve your conscious contact with God lately (Step 11)?

Saint Lutgardis, pray for us, that we experience “resting in the heart of the Lord as the source of life and interior peace” as you did. Amen.