Lucie-Christine
LUCIE-CHRISTINE
French mystic whose identity is almost completely submerged in her pseudonym; b. France, Feb. 12, 1844;d. France, April 17, 1908. Lucie-Christine married at age 21, had five children, and became a widow after 22 years of married life. During the last 38 years of her life she completed 16 notebooks detailing her spiritual life for her director, the parish priest of the place where she lived. Although he had never known or met Lucie-Christine, Auguste Poulain, SJ, was given the task of editing and condensing these notes because of the prominence of his own book, The Graces of Interior Prayer.
Lucie-Christine began to receive extraordinary graces on April 25, 1873, while she sat alone at her needlework. From that day on she became increasingly adept at dovetailing the demands of her duties as wife and mother with the demands of the mystical life. She prayed in the streets of Paris, on trains, at the theater, and while entertaining her children. She contracted conjunctivitis which eventually resulted in total blindness.
Bibliography: a. poulain, ed. and tr., Spiritual Journal of Lucie-Christine (St. Louis 1915). j. verbillion, "Married Mystic: Lucie-Christine," Cross and Crown 9 (1957) 148–161.
[j. verbillion]