FRANCESCA CLARA da SAN LIVINO. - Mystic, Livina Sanders in the world, born in 1629, died in 1652. At the age of 20 she became a nun in the convent of the Penitenti-Recollectines at St-Pierre-Sez-Gand (Flanders), where she died with a reputation for sanctity. Her brief life was a succession of mortifications and extraordinary graces, visions, ecstasies, and stigmata.
By order of her director, in a short treatise, Van de Woonste Gods in de Ziel, she describes the various ways in which God acts in souls; this is, however, the least personal of her writings. The letters by which she urges her fellow sisters to complete detachment and 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 whose honour she founded a confraternity long before the revelations of Paray-le-Monial. For F., the whole spiritual and mystical life is generally presented under the symbol of spiritual dwelling in the
Five Wounds of Our Lord, culminating in the abode of His Sacred Heart, where the highest mystical union is accomplished.