← Catholic Saints
Catholic Saints
St. Lutgardis
00:15:50
When the twelve-year-old Lutgardis entered a Benedictine convent, it wasn't from a burning ardor for serving the Lord in religious life. Instead, like many girls of her time, she entered because her family could not furnish her with a marriage dowry. Join Dr. David Moser and Dr. Jessica Ewell to find out how God used even this less-than-ideal situation to draw her close to Him and to make known the love He bears in His Sacred Heart for each one of us.
Loading summary
Transcript38 lines
- [00:02]
A
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
- [00:21]
B
Hello and welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their legacy for the church and for us. I'm Dr. Jessica Ewell, and today I'm joined by Dr. David Moser. Welcome. It's great to have you.
- [00:33]
C
It's great to be with you, Jessica.
- [00:34]
B
We're going to be talking today about Saint Ludgardis, somebody that I really didn't know much about, and I'm really excited to learn more. And before we do that, though, just tell us a little bit about some of your favorite courses that you teach in the graduate school.
- [00:48]
C
Yeah, so I got to teach a class called the Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas last fall here at the Augustine Institute. And, yeah, it's essentially like what it sounds. It's St. Thomas on the teaching about Christ that the Church has handed down to us from the Scriptures. And I found that really exciting because, you know, I love St. Thomas Aquinas. I love his work. But these are portions of the Summa Theologia, his masterwork, that people don't read as much. They're more about devotional. And there's a lot of ways you can focus it around scriptural teaching.
- [01:18]
B
And so apart from St. Thomas Aquinas, who is part of that. Right. The center of that course, how do the saints come into your teaching?
- [01:26]
C
Yeah. Another course I teach here is called Jesus and the Gospels. It's one of our foundational classes you take here as an MA student. So everybody has to take it. And reading the Gospels with the saints, that's something I do regularly. We bring up the saints in class, their commentaries on scripture. I think of St. Augustine in his commentary on John or St. Thomas Aquinas commentary on John. I think often the saints give us an insight into the meaning of the text that might not always be apparent to us. They can actually help us see what's really right before us in the mass reading or in our daily devotional readings in the Bible. Right there.
- [01:57]
B
Yeah. And their particular perspectives, where they are in history, their personalities, all of those things can help us to grow deeper in our own faith. So today we're going to be talking about Saint Ludgardis, and her feast day is June 16th. So when you first heard about her, David, what were you thinking? What was your first thought about. Okay, this saint. I haven't, you know.
- [02:23]
C
Cool name. Saint Ludgardis. Yes. Yeah. I Wanted to say it over to Saint Ludgardis.
- [02:28]
B
We're put it in a baby book.
- [02:29]
C
Yeah, there we go.
- [02:30]
B
It's going to be the most popular name for 2027.
- [02:33]
C
It's going to happen. Yeah, it's definitely going to happen.
- [02:34]
B
Definitely. When did she live?
- [02:36]
C
So she lived from 1182 to 1246, so quite some time ago.
- [02:42]
B
And where did she live?
- [02:43]
C
So she was born in Tanderen in present day Belgium. So back then it was part of the Holy Roman Empire. And she entered religious life fairly early on, as many girls of her time did at a Benedictine convent near Sint Troyden. Okay, I think I got that right. Sint Troyden in Belgium around age of 12. So as far as I can tell, people debate this stuff. Right. But she entered primarily because her family couldn't support her. So it was primarily financial need. A lot of times in those days, you could enter a convent, or what we now call a convent or a monastery or a religious community for women, if your family can support you, because then you would be dependent upon the community for your survival and everything. So she started out in this Benedictine convent and then eventually joined up with the Cistercians, which are kind of a Benedictine offshoot. Very important one.
- [03:42]
B
Wow. Yeah. So in some ways it seems almost like she's sort of like Saint Teresa of Avila and that she entered probably because she thought it was more respectable to do that than maybe to have to do something else, that she would have to be more on her own or it would be. She was in the cloister. Okay. That's a pretty good life. And then later. Right. She had some kind of a deeper conversion experience.
- [04:04]
C
Right, right, yeah, I think that's true. It shows you that in the Lives of the Saints, very often the motivation of becoming devoted to Christ in whatever way, whether lay or religious, the motivation can often be something that's not ultimate. Right. It's not enjoying God for himself. It can be financial provision. And I think that's a common theme we see in the Lives of the Saints.
- [04:26]
B
Yeah, I mean, it shows they're very normal people. They start. God takes them where they are and then takes them further. So were there any important historical events that Cornsett coincided with her?
- [04:37]
C
Yeah. So during this time period in the Middle Ages, High Middle Ages is what historians often refer to this time period where she's living, you know, 11th, 12th, 13th century, there's a lot of really interesting renewal happening in the church at this time. So you've got. Saint Lagardus is actually contemporary with Saint Francis of Assisi, who's very well familiar to listeners of this podcast. Someone who is well loved all over the world for his reforming efforts. Not because of, you know, any one particular thing he said, but just the way that he lived his life. Also. At the same time, you got Saint Dominic, who is in the order of preachers that he begins in their work of reforming Catholic preaching and teaching in the south of France against the Albigensian heresy. Other heresies that were coming up at the time trying to reform the Church's teaching. The way that the Church is being teaching is being promulgated at the time. Also the level of the hierarchy. She's living downstream of the Gregorian reforms in the 12th century. So there's a lot of renewal to basically argue or set forth the Church's freedom in relationship to what we now call the state or the king. Right. The Church has its own right to govern itself. So there's a lot of renewal happening at this time. And also there's reform of the monasteries. That's an important thing that's going on. There's an increasing devotion to the Eucharist and the humanity of Christ and medieval piety. And we really see that in St. Lou Garde's Witness.
- [06:03]
B
And she was known as a mother of the Dominican order, wasn't she? Even though she wasn't a Dominican. Didn't they really admire her or. There was a lot that there was great love between her.
- [06:14]
C
Near the end of her life, she got to know Thomas of Cantinpre, who was a biographer of many of the saints. And he wrote the most famous and well known biography of our known in Latin, the Vita of Lutgardius, the biography of Loughardius life. And he was Dominican, so he's largely responsible for transmitting the memory of St. Lugardius to us in the present.
- [06:35]
B
That's really neat. Is she known for any big miracles or any.
- [06:41]
C
Yeah. So if you read. I didn't get a chance to read the vita myself of Saint Lugarius, but Thomas of Cantinpre wrote that she experienced several ecstasies in prayer. Another common theme you see in these medieval saints, especially women saints, which is where you experience God in such a transformative way. You seem to kind of go out of your body, perhaps ecstasy. And that in this biography as well, he speaks of her levitating in the midst of these ecstasies. And then he records that early in her life she experienced Christ appearing to her in the form of humanity that he once had among humans. That's what Thomas rights So basically, in this vision that she has, Jesus draws back his garment and he shows her the wound in his side, and he calls her not to seek frivolous loves, but the only love that can satisfy her, himself. So early on, Lugardius was really taken with suitors, you know, that were coming to approach her for marriage, you know, before she became a nun. And Jesus really calls her and says, no, no, I'm the only one that can truly fulfill you. I'm the only one that can truly give you what you're seeking. And so Lugardius, in a later vision, asks Jesus for his heart. Okay, Lord, I don't have what I need. Right. This is the gist of what she's saying. I need you. And Jesus responds to her. And this is a quote, okay. Rather, it is I, Jesus says, who wish your heart? And so Luke Garides responds, so be it, Lord, as long as you mix in your heart's love with mine. And I own my heart only in you now, being safe from for all time under your protection. And so in that quote, we see the exchange of hearts between Jesus and St. Lou Gardis, and that actually becomes a really powerful motif in this Cistercian mystical tradition, and it also precedes the Sacred Heart tradition.
- [08:36]
B
Yes, yes. We're gonna have to do another episode on praying with Saint Ludgardis because there's so much there and this idea of the. The beginning of bringing our awareness to love and to venerate, to adore our Lord's humanity and to realize, yeah, he has a human heart and he loves all of us with a great and inexhaustible love. Does she actually have any writings that were left behind? Or does what we know about her come from others? Or are there quotes that we know for sure? I mean, these visions that are being handed on, they came from her. So maybe they were passed on through oral tradition.
- [09:18]
C
Yeah. This is a topic of scholarly debate. Like many of the medieval saints and saints in general, we're largely reliant upon hagiographies or written accounts of the saints, usually after they've died. And as a result, we don't have, to my knowledge, any written writing, any sources of St. Lougardi's herself, things that she wrote. Okay. But a lot of it is tradition. It's been handed down from people who knew her, in the case of Thomas of Cantin Pre, the biographer, or others. So we don't have any specific writings that I can tell.
- [09:54]
B
And you know us moderns, we're very obsessed with writings Right. I mean, it's been only a few hundred years where we have wanted, okay, this person left this writing. But before that, that's how knowledge was preserved and passed on. There was this great oral tradition. I know this person. They said this. And so it did have a great weight, especially if you were getting this testimony from an eyewitness or from. I mean, look at the Gospels, right? We have the witnesses. We don't have Jesus actually writing something down. We have people who remembered.
- [10:25]
C
And a lot of medieval women, of course, were illiterate. They were not able to read or in some cases, write. I don't know if that was the case with St. Lou Gardius. But that was also an obstacle for them to be able to leave writings. You got to be able to write and be able to express yourself. And so that might have been something going on here, too.
- [10:40]
B
Yeah, that's true. What would you say is a legacy that St. Louis Gardius has left for the church today? Or what is she most remembered for? Or maybe we've sort of forgotten. Right. And what should we remember her for?
- [10:56]
C
So she had, as I've said before, really profound witness to Christ in this period of medieval history. And we often forget, I think, about some things. We know St. Francis a lot better than we know her. And one reason I think it's important to know her, especially those of us who might have a devotion to the Sacred Heart, is we think of the Sacred Heart as originating with St. Margaret Mary Alcoke. Right. Much, much later, centuries later. But some historians trace the beginning of that devotion to Saint Ludgardius. That makes her very important for Jesus, desire to share his heart with his disciples, those who he did not walk with in the flesh, but who he dwells with in the Eucharist. Right. And so I think that's really important. Also, it's important to remember that much of our prayer traditions, women, had a profound role, especially in the Middle Ages, in shaping these things, and in the modern period, too, with St. Therese and others. And so I think we would do well to learn more about these saints, because I think a lot of us might sometimes feel, well, you know, some saints I relate to, maybe more so than others, a lot of them tend to be men. But there's a lot of women out there as well that we should learn more about, because they. Their profound witness and their intercessions can be very powerful for us, I think.
- [12:10]
B
Yeah, absolutely. What kinds of lessons does she teach us about, maybe even from her own personal life that we know of? What can we learn from her in terms of virtue or character or living the good life?
- [12:28]
C
Yeah, I think to get to that, let me tell a couple stories. So one, she, during her time at Avier as a Cistercian nun, she fasted for two seven year stretches. So according to her biographer, she did this in reparation for the sins of others, in union with Christ's heart. So this is her way of living out that beloved union she received from Christ. And also towards the end of her life, she was struck with blindness. So she was not able. Yeah, I think it was the last seven to ten years of her life. She was unable to see. And so what lessons can we learn? Well, I think on the one hand, having Christ's heart within us means offering up our suffering for others. That there's a necessary component of being a Christian that means offering up your prayers and your own sufferings for the salvation of other people through fasting as well. In many ways, that's a real call that we all have, regardless of whether we're religious or not. If we're going about our daily lives, we can and should continue in our time of prayer with Jesus to ask for ways we can fill up what is lacking, as St. Paul says, in the suffering of Christ. Colossians 1:24. So that's the first thing. Second thing with blindness, just remember that no matter what we go through in our life, Jesus wants our heart and that's the only thing he wants. That's all we have to give. I mean, that's who we are at the bottom level. It's the essence of who we are. So Saint Lugardis, can I think through her intercession, help us find out ways in which maybe we haven't given ourselves fully over to the Lord or ways in which we still need to asking Lord, you know, how can I give you all of my heart? That's something I think I ask a lot or I should ask more. And I think it's something we could all ask more.
- [14:14]
B
Yeah, I love that. Do you have any closing thoughts for us about St. Luke? Gardi's?
- [14:18]
C
Yeah, I think just again, taking some time. It's important to take time to offer yourself to Christ. We talk about a morning offering, offering the day. I think one thing I've learned from studying Saint Lugardi's is the importance of offering yourself. Not just your day and what you have to do, your to do list, but your very self and asking the Lord to open up the places in your heart where you still need to surrender. Give more to him. So that's what I would encourage all of us to do with the life of Saint Lagardes as our guide.
- [14:52]
B
And it's beautiful that her feast day falls during the month of the Sacred Heart so that we can all really foster a deeper love for our Lord. And we ask this through the intercession of St. Luke Gardis. St. Luke Gardis, pray for us.
- [15:09]
A
Thank you for being a dedicated listener to the Catholic Saints podcast. Your support truly uplifts us. For those seeking additional thought provoking content, go to formed.org It's a platform brimming with resources, including insightful videos that align seamlessly with our podcast themes. If you're finding value in our podcast, please consider taking a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback serves as a cornerstone for our growth and outreach.
- [15:42]
C
Sam.