From: trudie.Miller@cox.net   
      
   November 16th - St. Gertrude the Great   
      
    (1256-1302 A.D.)   
   Few men have merited the title, "the Great"; fewer women. I know of only one   
   nun so honored, St. Gertrude of Helfta, a mystic whose spiritual writings   
   have remained influential up to the present.   
   Nothing is known of this German woman's family background. When five years   
   old, she was entrusted to the sisters of Helfta Abbey to be educated. From a   
   very young age she gave evidence of her brilliance and quickly outstripped   
   her companions. In her teen years she asked to join the community.   
   Therefore, she probably spent her whole life from childhood on within the   
   abbey walls.   
      
   Her love for secular studies made the common life wearisome, pride and   
   vanity ate away at her soul and she soon became an unhappy young woman until   
   Christ appeared to her. The day was branded in her memory, it was in her   
   26th year, when as she says "in a happy hour, at the beginning of twilight,   
   thou O God of truth, more radiant than any light, yet deeper than any secret   
   thing, determined to dissolve the obscurity of my darkness." From then on   
   her biographer tells us "she became a theologian instead of a grammarian."   
   She did not give up her intellectual ardor but now, all her labors were for   
   her sisters, to cure what she termed "the wound of ignorance". Her many   
   gifts and mystical graces did not prevent her from giving herself   
   wholeheartedly to the common life with its joys and sorrows. In fact many of   
   her special graces came to her as she took part in the ordinary routine of   
   convent life. She felt keenly for those whose burdens involved them in   
   distracting duties, for example those responsible for meeting the debts of   
   the monastery.   
      
   She prayed that they might have more time to pray and fewer distractions.   
   The Lord's answered "It does not matter to me whether you perform spiritual   
   exercises or manual labor, provided only that your will is directed to me   
   with a right intention. If I took pleasure only in your spiritual exercises,   
   I should certainly have reformed human nature after Adam's fall so that it   
   would not need food, clothing or the other things that man must find or make   
   with such effort."   
      
   Many of her writings are lost, but fortunately she left to the world an   
   abundance of spiritual joy in her book The Herald of Divine Love, in which   
   she tells of the visions granted her by our divine Lord. She wrote this   
   excellent, small book because she was told that nothing was given to her for   
   her own sake only. Her Exercises is an excellent treatise on the renewal of   
   baptismal vows, spiritual conversion, religious vows, love, praise,   
   gratitude to God, reparation, and preparation for death.   
      
   She began to record her supernatural and mystical experiences in what   
   eventually became her Book of Extraordinary Grace (Revelation of Saint   
   Gertrude), together with Mechtilde's mystical experiences Liber Specialis   
   Gratiae, which Gertrude recorded. Most of the book was actually written by   
   others based on Gertrude's notes. She also wrote with or for Saint Mechtilde   
   a series of prayers that became very popular, and through her writings   
   helped spread devotion to the Sacred Heart (though it was not so called   
   until revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alocoque).   
      
   Gertrude is inseparably associated with the devotion to the Sacred Heart.   
   The pierced heart of Jesus embodied for her the Divine Love, an   
   inexhaustible fountain of redemptive life. Her visions and insights in   
   connection with the Heart of Jesus are very enlightening. In one such   
   intellectual vision, she perceived the unceasing love of Christ for us in   
   two pulsations of his Heart - one accomplished the conversion of sinners,   
   the other the sanctification of the just. Just as our own faithful heart   
   keeps right on whether we advert to it or not, these pulsations will endure   
   till the end of time despite the vicissitudes of history.   
      
   Our Lord wishes people to pray for the souls in purgatory. He once showed   
   Gertrude a table of gold on which were many costly pearls. The pearls were   
   prayers for the holy souls. At the same time the saint had a vision of souls   
   freed from suffering and ascending in the form of bright sparks to heaven.   
      
   In one Vision, Our Lord tells Gertrude that he longs for someone to ask Him   
   to release souls from purgatory, just as a king who imprisons a friend for   
   justice's sake hopes that someone will beg for mercy for his friend. Jesus   
   ends with:   
      
   "I accept with highest pleasure what is offered to Me for the poor souls,   
   for I long inexpressibly to have near Me those for whom I paid so great a   
   price. By the prayers of thy loving soul, I am induced to free a prisoner   
   from purgatory as often as thou dost move thy tongue to utter a word of   
   prayer."   
      
   In another vision she was given the Prayer which Our Lord told her would   
   release 1000 Souls from Purgatory every time it is said with love and   
   devotion. "Eternal Father, I offer You the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine   
   Son, Jesus Christ, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today,   
   for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, those in the   
   Universal Church, in my home, and in my family."   
      
   To her was granted the privilege of seeing our Lord's Sacred Heart. The   
   graces flowing from it appeared like a stream of purest water flowing over   
   the whole world. In many of the visions of the Sacred Heart, we find St.   
   John the Beloved Disciple present. He who leaned back against Jesus' chest   
   at the Last Supper. On his own feast day, St. John appeared and placed   
   Gertrude near the wounded side of the Savior, where she could hear the   
   pulsations of the Sacred Heart. "Why is it, O beloved of God", she asked   
   him, "that you who rested on His bosom at the Last Supper have said nothing   
   of what you experienced then? St. John told her "It was my task to present   
   to the first age of the Church the doctrine of the Word made flesh which no   
   human intellect can ever fully comprehend. The eloquence of that sweet   
   beating of His Heart is reserved for the last age in order that the world   
   grown cold and torpid may be set on fire with the love of God."   
      
   These visions continued until the end of her life. Jesus said to her at the   
   last: "Come, my chosen one, and I will place in you My throne."   
      
   Saint Gertrude was "the Great" because of her single-hearted love for the   
   Sacred Heart of Jesus and the souls in purgatory. Though she was never   
   formally canonized, Pope Clement XII in 1677 directed that her feast be   
   observed throughout the Church. It is interesting to note that Saint Teresa   
   of Avila had a great devotion to Gertrude.   
      
   This version taken from:   
   http://www.mtep.com/index.htm   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
      
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