The venerable Lukarda of Oberweimar shares her spiritual riches with her convent

Lukarda of Oberweimar was a Cistercian nun from the female branch of the order founded by Saints Robert of Molesmes, Alberic of Cîteaux and Stephen Harding in the 11th century. The female Cistercian monasteries were founded in 1125. The venerable Lukarda belonged to the monastery of Oberweimar, in Hesse (Germany). Virtually unknown today, she was famous during her lifetime in her homeland for the mystical gifts she received. She kept those secret for a long time. When her sisters in religion discovered them, they became, with the agreement of Lukarda and the other nuns, a common good for their community, pointing the way to God. After witnessing so many wonders, Lukarda d'Oberweimar died on 22 March 1309.

Representation of Lukardis on the pulpit of the collegiate church of Baumgartenberg, Upper Austria / © CC BY-SA 3.0, BSonne.

Les raisons d'y croire :

We have a biography of Lukarda of Oberweimar, written by an unknown cleric shortly after her death and published by the Bollandists. It is clear that the author obtained information directly from the nuns of the Oberweimar convent about the strange phenomena that filled her life.

Lukarda's biographer reports that her poor health, since childhood, made it difficult for her to live in a community (Vita, ch. 5 and 6, in Analecta Bollandiana, volume 18, 1899, p. 312-313). To compensate for Lukarda's solitude, Our Lady visited her. She explained to Lukarda the meaning of her life and promised her the consolation of her Son Jesus (Vita, ch. 3, ibid., p. 311-312).

The young nun received a material gift and the verbal assurance of her special election. Saint John the Baptist appeared to her in prayer and placed a golden ornament around her neck: her Lord Jesus Christ, he explained, wanted her to be adorned at all times (Vita, ch. 4, ibid., p. 312). The jewel represented the divine homage paid to her virginity and the gift of herself she had made to Jesus.

Lukarda bore the stigmata for about thirty years. She saw Christ on the Cross, still alive, shedding his blood. As she rushed to her knees before him, she heard him say to her: "Join your hands to mine, your feet to mine, and join your side to mine." Lukarda adopted the posture requested, forming with her body a replica of the crucified Lord. She immediately felt a bitter pain, like an inner wound, in the limbs she was holding together with those of the Lord. At first, no visible marks appeared on the outside.
Two years later, Christ appeared to Lukarda again, in her cell. She accepted to have her stigmata made visible - up until then they had been invisible. These were a token of the special love Christ had for her, to which she responded with all her might and heart (Vita, ch. 10, ibid., p. 315-316).

Lukarda was well aware that her mystical experiences would disrupt daily community life, so she initially kept silent about the sensitive manifestations that God favoured her with. It was a nun who was serving her who unexpectedly noticed the marks of flagellation and the stigmata on her body (Vita, ch. 11, ibid., p. 316).

But once the divine favours were known to her sisters, Lukarda wanted everyone to benefit from them. A nun from the same convent, Sister Agnes, who lived a holy life, had a great wish to remain permanently united to Jesus Christ in the intimate way that sacramental communion provides. A voice told her to have recourse to her sister Lukarda, who had permission to receive communion more frequently than she did. Sister Lukarda agreed to her request, and mystically shared with her the communion she had just received...and Sister Agnes actually tasted the host on her tongue as if it had been a regular communion (Vita, ch. 51, ibid., pp. 337-338).

The mystical experiences of Lukarda, which had become a common property of the monastery, were not meant to spread outside, because they were proportionate and adapted to the holy friendship that united the women who lived there: they had all chosen to live in common and to renounce their own will in order to conform each day to the divine will. But one Sunday, when an important person demanded permission from the abbess to be allowed to witness Lukarda's mystical transports, and as the abbess reluctantly agreed (it was the last time she would give in to such a request), Lukarda did not shy away from being seen and this person, from outside the monastery, was an additional witness to the divine manifestations. However, because of her humility, Lukarda later felt very embarassed about it (Vita, chapter 36, ibid., p. 328).

Sisters Agnes and Lukarda, both illuminated by divine intelligence, read each other's souls like an open book. Agnes thanked God for the heavenly banquet that constantly satiated Lukarda's soul, and Lukarda thanked him for Agnes' ever-present desire to be united with him (Vita, ch. 51, ibid., p. 337-338).

In this way, the venerable Lukarda did not keep the benefits of God's intimacy for herself; on the contrary, she spread them around her in concentric circles, to elevate the soul of each of her companions, and in this way, like the leader of a climbing party, she lifted the whole convent towards Heaven.

Synthèse :

Lukarda of Oberweimar was a Cistercian nun at the Oberweimar abbey near Weimar, Thuringia, in modern-day Germany. She belonged to the female branch of the order founded by Saints Robert de Molesmes and Alberic of Cîteaux, and organised by Saint Stephen Harding in the 11th century and saintly lived out by Saint Bernard in the first half of the 12th century. The Cistercian nuns came into being under the abbatiate of Saint Stephen Harding, in 1125, when a group of Benedictine nuns left their priory at Jully-les-Nonnains and moved to the abbey of Tart, in Burgundy. This abbey subsequently became the mother abbey of the female branch, which by the beginning of the 13th century numbered eighteen monasteries in France. Over the following decades, the Cistercian nuns spread to Belgium, Germany, England, Denmark and Spain. Saint Hedwig in Poland, Sts Mecthilda of Hackeborn and Gertrude of Helfta in Saxony, messengers of the love of Christ's heart that brings those who contemplate him into the life of the divine Trinity, and finally St Juliana of Liège, famous for having obtained from Pope Urban IV the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi - all Cistercian nuns or at least nuns affiliated to Cistercian spirituality - are the best known.

The venerable Lukarda was the contemporary of these nuns. According to her biographer, she entered the monastery at the age of twelve, in accordance with the custom at the time of entrusting monks and nuns with the education of children who had a possible religious vocation. Her inexperience with monastic customs led to her being reprimanded several times (Vita, chapter 1, in Analecta Bollandiana, volume 18, 1899, p. 310); perhaps for this reason, her companions generally didn't seek her company. The absence of attention from her community is the involuntary means by which she drew divine attention: heavenly light responds to our darkness (Vita, ch. 6, ibid., p. 313). Lukarda associated her physical sufferings, which lasted ten years, as well as the eleven years she spent in bed, almost paralysed, to the Passion of Christ: for her, these sufferings became proofs of God's special love for her (Vita, ch. 7, ibid., p. 314). The torments caused by her illness, which she nevertheless offered by an act of the will to Jesus, became for her means of knowing God better: the passive purification they produce in her by detaching her from earthly things brings her closer to God by spiritualising her affections.

The mysticism of these women is rooted in the works of Saint Augustine and Saint Bernard. It is an incarnate mysticism, which seeks to reach intelligible realities by ascending from sensible beings. For Saint Augustine, the whole of creation is the work of the Trinity and therefore bears his mark, just as the style of an architect is recognisable in the products of his art. Once purified by asceticism - which is why the ascetic dimension is very present in these saints, in their writings as well as in their lives - the memory, the intelligence and the will can use the five senses to know and love the invisible realities, the highest of which is God. Conversely, God manifests himself to these faculties in a sensible way: he makes his perfections and his love perceptible through sight, touch and the other senses. He does this because he created man as body and spirit: bodily perceptions, through the knowledge they bring, are the means to spiritual intelligence. God therefore respects the order in which he established the beings he created.

But God, because he is pure Spirit, then calls on mankind to go beyond the level of material sensations and enter the invisible, impalpable world of the spirit. This is impossible with human powers alone, but God provides for it by elevating man to the point of touching something within him: this divine action is what we call his grace. The sacramental order is therefore mystical by definition: a sacrament is a sensitive sign that produces or increases the life of God in us. Mysticism in the precise and technical sense belongs to the order of the sacraments, but is accompanied by extraordinary external manifestations: chapter 14 of the Vita mentions that Lukarda received holy communion every Sunday and on feast days, as well as every Friday of the year and throughout Lent (Analecta Bollandiana, volume 18, 1899, p. 317).

One Sunday during Easter, when the priest in charge of offering mass was delayed, Jesus satisfied Lukarda's intense spiritual desire and gave her communion with his own hand (Vita, ch. 29, ibid., p. 324-325). It was a miraculous communion, but also a sensitive communion at the same time: the sacraments are the means God uses to communicate himself to the one he loves who in return wants to devote every moment of his life to God.

Lukarda's confessors, both Dominican priests, are well known: they were Brothers Henri of Mühlhausen and Eberhard (Vita, ch. 92, ibid, p. 363). The anonymous author or authors of the Vita (possibly the nuns of Oberweimar themselves) deplore the fact that they both died before being able to make Lukarda's holy life known outside her convent, through their contacts.

Charismatic manifestations are not to be sought for their own sake, since the sacraments bring divine grace with complete certainty to those who sincerely desire it. Moreover, the venerable Lukarda aspired only to receive the gift of grace (Vita, ch. 7, ibid., p. 314). So what is their meaning and purpose? To console those who receive them, in response to their physical and moral torments, to manifest God in a visible way to those who have not yet reached the same degree of union with God as the favoured soul, and to point out that soul to others as a sure compass.

Vincent-Marie Thomas holds a doctorate in philosophy and is a priest.

Aller plus loin :

Michael Wieland: "Die selige Lukardis, Cistercienserin zu Oberweimar", in Cistercienser-Chronik, volume 10, 1898, p. 193-199.

En savoir plus :

Vita venerabilis Lukardis monialis ordinis Cisterciensis in Superiore Wimaria, edited by Joseph de Backer in Analecta Bollandiana, volume 18, 1899, pp. 305-367. The text has not yet been translated into French.
Sandra Gelbe, "Lukardis von Oberweimar OCist (1274-1309). Verehrt - vergessen - wiederentdeckt", in Cistercienser-Chronik, volume 128,^no 1, 2021, pp. 17-26.
Piroska Nagy, "L'historien de l'émotion de l'autre côté du miroir ? Affective experience in Oberweimar's Vita de Lukarde", in Vínculos de Historia,^no 4 (2015), pp. 91-105.
Piroska Nagy, "Pleurer chrétiennement. Une histoire médiévale", in Communio 2021/5 (^no. 277), pp. 62-73.