Draw Me to Thy Piercèd Side
Monday, 16 June 2014 06:27
June 16th is the feast of one of the first mystics of the Sacred Heart: Saint Lutgarde of Aywières. Some years ago I was given a piece of her wooden choirstall: one of my most treasured relics.
Wounded by Love
Saint Lutgarde was the 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.
Mother of Preachers
The prolific multiplication of Cistercian-Benedictine 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.
Woman of the Church
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.
Prayer and Fasting
For Lutgarde, enclosure was no impediment to a real participation in the mission of preaching the Gospel. From within her monastery, she followed the friars in their travels, uniting her prayer and fasting to their apostolic labours. Lutgarde had a compelling insight into Jesus’ words to the apostles after their failure to deliver a boy from an unclean spirit: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). 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).
Conversion
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 and the 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). Psalm 30 contains, in effect, two promises that have given hope to monastics down through the ages: “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy Face. . . . Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle” (Ps 30:21). For Lutgarde, it became clear that she was to live hidden in the Face of Christ and to lodge in the tabernacle of His pierced Heart.
Stability in the Sacred Heart
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.
Drawn to the Wound in His Side
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 nonetheless.
The Mystical Exchange of Hearts
Long hours in choir did little to console her. Her Latin was as poor as 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 Only Safe Place
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 Eucharistic Heart of Christ
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.
Heroic confidence in the midst of impossibilities
Monday, 16 June 2014 08:35
June 17th is the dies natalis of Marie-Adèle Garnier, Mother Mary of St. Peter, Foundress of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Tyburn, O.S.B. In 1913 Blessed Columba Marmion wrote to one of her spiritual daughters, saying, “The special characteristic of your Mother is heroic confidence in the midst of impossibilities.”
Monastic Roots
Marie-Adèle Garnier was born in France on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, August 15, 1838. She was baptized on the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, September 12. Marie-Adèle’s native Burgundy is the land of Cluny, of Cîteaux, and of Paray-le-Monial. Her life was marked, from the very beginning, by an environment shaped by the Rule of Saint Benedict, by the ardour of Saint Bernard, and by the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
The Heart of Jesus and the Eucharist
As a young woman, Marie-Adèle grew in awareness of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, Priest and Victim: the Sacred Heart truly present in the Sacrament of the Altar where ceaselessly He glorifies the Father and intercedes for all men. Marie-Adèle was impelled by the Holy Spirit to seek a life wholly illuminated by the Sacrifice of the Mass, and marked by perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
Happy, So Happy
In 1872, Marie-Adèle, after having read an article on the proposed basilica of Montmartre, heard an inner voice saying to her: “It is there that I need thee.” “At the same moment,” she writes, “I saw an altar raised on high and sparkling with lights, dominated by the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the monstrance. I felt so overcome by this that I had to lean against the door to save myself from falling. And then I felt so happy, so happy, that I could make nothing of it.”
Like many of her contemporaries drawn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Marie-Adèle heard the interior summons to a life of reparation and doxology. “I felt Jesus speaking to my heart, illuminated by a light of surpassing brightness; He told me that it was His Will that His Heart present in the Holy Eucharist should be the object of the worship of Montmartre, and that the Blessed Sacrament should be exposed there night and day.”
Salutary Failure
Marie-Adèle first attempted to respond to her vocation by living in solitude on Montmartre, close by the site of what would become the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. God allowed her to experience a salutary failure without, however, withdrawing the attraction to a life of reparation and adoration at Montmartre. Her first sojourn at Montmartre ended on the feast of the Compassion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, September 15, 1876.
Beginnings
In 1898, having returned to Montmartre with a companion, Marie-Adèle began a hidden life of adoration, reparation, and intercession for the Church under the special protection of Saint Peter the Prince of the Apostles, and Saint Michael the Archangel. From the beginning the Rule of Saint Benedict inspired and guided the new monastic family. On June 9, 1899, Marie-Adèle, now known as Mother Mary of St. Peter, and her first daughters, made their profession in the crypt of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the altar of Saint Peter. Two days later, June 11, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the whole human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Tyburn
The anti-clerical laws of 1901 obliged the fledgling community to leave Montmartre for England. Mother Mary of St. Peter and her daughters established themselves at Tyburn in the heart of London on the site of the cruel torments and death of England’s glorious Catholic Martyrs. Her companion, Mother Agnes, wrote, “And we ourselves, little as we were, but supporting our littleness on the Heart of Jesus, we, too, were coming to labour, within the limits of our vocation, in the great work of the conversion of England.”
Blessed Columba Marmion|
From 1908 onward, Mother Mary of St. Peter was under the direction of the Benedictine Abbot Blessed Columba Marmion. It was to Abbot Marmion that she wrote on December 23, 1909: “In spite of this humiliating burden of misery and worries, my soul dwells in her God, because He supports her, holds her up, carries her, sustains her in a life of faith, of love, of confidence, not sensibly consoling, but supremely happy!”
Happy With God and With My Children
Abbot Marmion died in 1923, leaving Mother Mary of St. Peter and her daughters to mourn his passing and, at the same, to live in gratitude and joy from his spiritual patrimony. The following year on June 17, after much suffering, Mother Mary of St. Peter died. Her last intelligible words were: “I am so happy with God! And with my children.” Today Mother Mary of St. Peter’s Benedictine Congregation of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart has monasteries in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, Peru, New Zealand, Ecuador, Colombia, and Rome, Italy.