SAINT GERTRUDE THE GREAT: Mystic Benedictine nun, Herald of Divine Love, Helfta, Saxony, 1302

1302

 

ST. GERTRUDE THE GREAT, mystic, a nun at Helfta, Saxony, under the rule of St. Benedict.

She was entrusted to the sisters at five and at twenty-five had a vision of Christ, which made her realize for the first time in a meaningful way that Christ was a Person and that he took pleasure in dwelling within her “as a friend in living with a friend or a bridegroom with his bride” (Herald II, 23)

The experience was deepened before the feast of the Annunciation and again before Ascension, so that Christ’s familiar companionship during the remaining twenty years of her life was a vivid fulfillment of his promise: “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him” (Jn 14:23).

“I want your writings,” Christ told her, “to be indisputable evidence of my goodness” (Herald II, 10).

The presence of her feast in the calendar gives meaning to these words, for it was through her writings that Gertrude became known.

Saints have been inspired by her Herald of Divine Love – also called Revelations, Book Two is written by herself —  and her Spiritual Excercises , while scholars marvel at the wealth and rigor of the incarnational and trinitarian theology contained in her uninhibited outpourings of love and praise.

 

LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Father Augustine Kalberer, O. S. B.

November 16: Saint Gertrude the Great

Page 418

 

CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PEACE HISTORY 1302 – 2009