aeternus

I love today’s Saint, Margaret of Scotland, a woman who emulates the virtues of charity and familial love. She was a woman of such great influence to her people and who taught her husband by her own great example how to lead a life of holiness. A very honorable woman, and in St. Louis we have one of the greatest parishes in the city dedicated to her. They have a choir which is absolutely wonderful and no one can deny their outstanding quality of musicianship. They are an inspiration to all the mass goers there for sure!

But let me put that aside and focus instead on another “Saint of the day” because today is also the feast of a great mystical Saint, Getrude the Great.

Gertrude’s life was not lead out on the open as a ruler of a country like Margaret. Instead she lead a hidden life of mystical prayer in a Benedictine cloister uniting herself with Jesus through His Sacred Humanity and had a great devotion to the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Gertrude was so loved by St. Teresa of Avila that Teresa took this mystic as her devotional and spiritual exemplar. Both women were so entranced in the mystery of our Lord’s most Sacred Heart.

In a prayer Gertrude wrote:

O Sacred Heart of Jesus,
fountain of eternal life,
Your Heart is a glowing furnace of Love.
You are my refuge and my sanctuary.

O my adorable and loving Saviour,
consume my heart with the burning fire
with which Yours is aflamed.
Pour down on my soul those graces
which flow from Your love.
Let my heart be united with Yours.
Let my will be conformed to Yours in all things.
May Your Will be the rule of all my desires and actions.

Amen.

In a book entitled: “Spiritual Works of Louis of Blois” by Louis of Blois he writes of Gertrude:

The Lord sensibly imprinted on her heart the glorious stigmata of His five Wounds, and He prepared for Himself in her so pleasing a dwelling, and so sweetly manifested to her His Heart, that if men did not know the power and goodness of the Lord to be boundless, they could hardly believe that He had shown as much familiar friendship to His most holy Mother on the earth as He showed to her.

Gertrude indeed had many mystical dreams and visions one of which I will include here below. It is from the same book by Blois:

St. Gertrude saw the soul of a certain man of a religious order well known to her, as it were sitting at a table, sad, and with a dejected countenance, as not being yet purified nor worthy to enjoy the blissful contemplation of God. On this table were presented all the Masses, the Office of the Church, the prayers, and other pious works that were offered for that soul, and by these the soul was wonderfully strengthened. The Lord also, moved by his own loving-kindness, and the supplication of intercessors, always added something, in virtue of which that soul rejoiced, being greatly strengthened and relieved. In like manner the Blessed Virgin Mary seemed to place something upon it, that the soul might receive more consolation, which had, while it was in the body, worshipped her with especial devotion. Those also of the Saints whom the soul had more particularly venerated on earth, added to the table in proportion as the soul being in the body had deserved by its greater or less labour and devotion. By all which means the soul, becoming more and more soothed from hour to hour, began more and more to lift its eyes to the most sweet light of the Divinity, which to behold in open vision is in truth to have laid aside the sad memory of all sorrows, and to have found the abundance of all good and of all joy.

Chapter XIII. On the Pains of Purgatory.
Spiritual Works of Louis of Blois by Blois, Louis

Now, most importantly for us today is to remember the prayer our Lord gave to Gertrude. I think you will obviously recognize parts of this prayer which were given to her in the early part of the 14th century because they are so similar to those he gave to dear Saint Faustina in the early middle of the 20th century!

“Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.”

Our Lord told St. Gertrude the Great that this prayer would release 1,000 souls from Purgatory each time it is said. O.K. like that is 1,000 souls! So, for the love of these souls I am sure you will write this prayer down and say it MANY times today and each day thereafter! (Of course, this is no magical incantation. The prayer, as all prayers, must come from the depths of your heart united to His most Sacred Heart…)