Francesca Clara da San Livino

FRANCESCA CLARA da SAN LIVINO. - Mystic, in the world Livina Sanders, b. in 1629, d. in 1652. At the age of 20 she became a nun in the convent of the Penitent-Recollectines at St-Pierre-Sez-Gand (Flanders), where she died in the fame of sanctity. Her brief life was a combination of mortifications and extraordinary graces, visions, ecstasies, stigmata.

By order of her director, in a small treatise, Van de Woonste Gods in de Ziel, she describes the various ways in which God acts in souls; but it is, nevertheless, among her writings, the least personal. The letters, with which she urges her fellow sisters to total detachment and to a life of prayer, were published, together with her life, by Fr. F. Cauwe (1677, 1685, 1710) and translated into French by Fr. Gilles Laoureux (1696). Particularly noteworthy is her special devotion to the 5 Wounds of Our Lord and to the Sacred Heart, in honor of which she founded a confraternity long before the revelations of Paray-le-Monial. For F. the whole spiritual and mystical life generally presents itself under the symbol of the spiritual dwelling in the Five Wounds of Our Lord, culminating in the dwelling of His Sacred Heart, where the highest mystical union is accomplished.