Paperback: What Are These Wounds? The Life Of A Cistercian Mystic Saint Lutgarde Of Aywières (1950, 2014) is dedicated to the Cistercian nuns who are trying to love the Sacred Heart of Jesus in twentieth-century America as He was once loved by their great Patroness, St Lutgarde of Aywières.
It is especially fitting that St Lutgarde of Aywières' feast should occur in June, the month of the Sacred Heart. St Lutgarde was one of the great precursors of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Seven hundred years ago, and some four hundred years before St Margaret Mary laboured and prayed and suffered for the institution of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, St Lutgarde of Aywières (1182-1246) had entered upon the mystical life with a vision of the pierced Heart of the Saviour, and had concluded her mystical espousals with the Incarnate Word by an exchange of hearts with Him.
But there are other facts which make St Lutgarde worthy of the attention of the theologian, the Church historian, and of all religious souls. She was a contemporary of St Francis, the first recorded stigmatic, and she too had received a mystical wound in her heart which historians have not hesitated to class as a stigma. This places her among the very earliest Christian stigmatics.
What Are These Wounds? The Life Of A Cistercian Mystic Saint Lutgarde Of Aywières was written with no other purpose than to help American Catholics to love the Sacred Heart with something of that same purity, and simplicity, and ardour.
About the author: Thomas Merton OCSO (1915 -1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On 26 May 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis". He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US. It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.
Merton is particularly known for having pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama; Japanese writer D. T. Suzuki; Thai Buddhist monk Buddhadasa, and Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He traveled extensively in the course of meeting with them and attending international conferences on religion. In addition, he wrote books on Zen Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and how Christianity related to them. Merton also explored American Indian spirituality. He wrote a series of articles on American Indian history and spirituality for The Catholic Worker, The Center Magazine, Theoria to Theory, and Unicorn Journal. He explored themes such as American Indian fasting and missionary work. This was highly unusual at the time in the United States, particularly within the religious orders.
Merton's influence has grown since his death and he is widely recognized as an important 20th-century Catholic mystic and thinker. Interest in his work contributed to a rise in spiritual exploration beginning in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. Merton's letters and diaries reveal the intensity with which their author focused on social justice issues, including the civil rights movement and proliferation of nuclear arms. (Source: Wikipedia)
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