Saint Gertrude of Eisleben

Such precious graces did not escape her superiors: convinced of her merit, they established her as abbess of the monastery of Rodersdorf, where she had made her profession, so that, being raised above the others, she might shed the rays of her virtues more abundantly upon the whole community. She did not, however, remain long in this monastery; she was charged shortly thereafter, for reasons unknown to us, with the conduct of that of Heidefs. One cannot worthily represent the fruits of grace and holiness that this admirable abbess produced in these two houses, during the forty years she was successively their superior, nor how many young virgins she formed in perfection. She spared nothing to advance their sanctification, and she worked at it with such skill and unction that the least fervent were obliged to enter into the paths she showed them. These happy successes did not prevent her from having very low sentiments of herself. She considered herself only a very great sinner; she said that she did not deserve to be suffered on earth, because anyone else would have made better use than she of the graces she received from the goodness of God. She was nevertheless very faithful in corresponding to them, and one need only read the works she composed to see what her delicacy of conscience and her exactitude in following all the aspirations of her divine Spouse were. She distrusted herself so much that, however enlightened she was, she did not fail to consult others in the slightest difficulties; she addressed herself above all to Saint Mechtilde, who was a nun in her monastery. She was sometimes assailed by vain and useles s thoughts, whic sainte Mechtilde Saint and mystic cited as having had a devotion to the Holy Face. h presented themselves to her mind; but, as she knew the corruption of our nature, and knew that all these involuntary ideas proceeded only from her own poor foundation, she was not astonished by them; she only tried to repress them.

The diversity of her occupations did not diminish her fervor in the least, because everything served as a subject and motive for her to raise herself to Jesus Christ. All the actions she performed in the morning, before communion, she offered to God as preparations to approach the holy Table more worthily; and for those that followed communion, she offered them to Him as so many acts of thanksgiving for the inestimable benefit she had received in communicating. Many people, knowing her experience in spiritual matters, consulted her on the times they should choose to approach Holy Communion; she herself had recourse to prayer, to learn from her divine Master how she should conduct herself on these occasions, and by an uncommon favor, this divine Savior assured her that He would communicate to her the necessary lights so as not to fail in the advice she would give on the matter, and that He would further grant to the persons to whom she advised to communicate, the graces they would need so as not to communicate unworthily. These extraordinary favors show the singular affection that this amiable Savior had for this dear Spouse; she was also, for her part, so inflamed with His love that she could not be for an instant without doing something she believed to be pleasing to Him. She desired and sought nothing in all things but His glory, and she had so imprinted it in her mind that she could think only of Him; as this divine Savior made known one day to His saint Mechtilde, in a vision where He appeared to her seated on a throne, and Gertrude at His side, who had her eyes so fixed upon Him that she did not turn them away for a moment: which this holy daughter took for an evident mark of the kindnesses that Our Lord had for His most worthy superior, and of the continual and indefatigable application that Saint Gertrude had to God present. Our Lord also revealed to one of her nuns the eminent perfection to which this holy abbess had attained. He declared to her that, as there was no one on earth who had a will as disinterested and an intention as pure as Gertrude, so there was no heart in this world where He dwelt with more pleasure than in that of this faithful lover. Indeed, one cannot explain the flames of divine love that He kindled in this heart that was entirely devoted to Him, nor the mysterious operations of grace that He produced in the depths of her soul; sometimes He made the same impressions there as if He had taken a new birth, making Himself felt there in the state in which He was at Bethlehem and in His childhood; sometimes He spiritually engraved there the wounds He had received on His body, in the Passion, in order to make her understand something of the excess of His pains; sometimes He placed rings on her fingers, as to His spouse, to mark the close alliance He was contracting with her; sometimes He presented Himself to her accompanied by His most holy Mother, assuring her that this blessed Virgin would also have a mother's tenderness for her; finally, sometimes He acted within her as if He had exchanged hearts with her, so that she would have no other affections, no other inclinations than His, and that she would love Him with a love perfectly purified from all things of this world.

All these extraordinary graces only served to exercise in her an ardent desire for suffering and an admirable zeal for the salvation of her neighbor. She could not live without feeling some pain. The time she spent without suffering was extremely tedious to her; she said that the spiritual man, who took pleasure in a state of quietude, had not yet made much progress in virtue, and she added that he who seeks this rest has not yet begun to work to acquire it. Hence it is that she ceaselessly practiced rigorous mortifications, and that one could not persuade her to take any relief in her illnesses, even the most violent ones, unless her divine Spouse assured her that He did not disapprove of them.

One cannot believe with what fervor she strove to procure the salvation of the souls that the Savior acquired for Himself through the merits of His blood. She shed torrents of tears for them at the foot of the cross and before the Blessed Sacrament; she made, with ardor and with the zeal of a seraph, exhortations capable of touching the most hardened hearts; she wrote pressing letters and spiritual Treatises filled with the unction of divine love which she sent everywhere, so that the reading of the salutary maxims that these writings contained might convert some, instruct others, and lead everyone into the paths of perfection and holiness. It is by this means that she won a great number of people to Jesus Christ, some of whom left the world to retire into the cloister, and others, already being religious, rose to a very high degree of prayer and union with God.

We shall not speak here of her prophecies or her miracles, which would detain us too long; the reader may see the details in her own works and in her life, which various authors, very enlightened in spiritual matters, have placed at the beginning of her books. After she had amassed inestimable treasures of merit on earth for about seventy years, it pleased Our Lord to give her the reward for them in heaven. She fell into a very acute illness that lasted no less than five months. During this time, she did not show the slightest sign of impatience or sadness; on the contrary, she was all the more content as her pains were more violent. As she lost the power of speech and the nuns could not know her needs, they often gave her the very opposite of what she required for her relief; but she never complained, and she was as cheerful and as tranquil as if she had been given all the comforts that nature could desire. She showed by signs that in the midst of her sufferings her heart was completely flooded with celestial consolations. Indeed, she entered into such a perfect union with her Spouse that it seemed her spirit was transformed into that of Jesus Christ and that she had no other spirit but His; and this is why, during the twenty-two weeks that she remained without speaking, one could nevertheless hear her say these words: Spiritus meus; — « my Spirit ». And Our Lord made known by revelation, to a nun of her monastery, that the painful illness He had sent her was only to exercise her patience, in which He found wonderful pleasure; and that, if He had taken away her use of speech, it was so that, having no more conversation with men, she would have no other conversation but with Him. Her daughters, to whom the loss of such a mother could only be infinitely painful, had recourse to Saint Lebuin to obtain her healing through the merits of his intercession; but this illustrious martyr, appearing to a nun, told her that as the King wished to crown the Queen, it did not befit a saint Lébuin Martyr who appeared in a vision to announce the imminent death of Gertrude. soldier to try to prevent it.

Finally, the day of her death having arrived (1334), she saw her celestial Spouse descend from the highest heavens, accompanied by the Blessed Virgin, Saint John the Evangelist, to whom she had always been very devoted, and a great number of other blessed spirits who came to lead her into the glory that was prepared for her. She also saw near her bed several saint Jean l'Évangéliste Saint to whom Zita had a great devotion. demons in hideous and horrible forms, but shamefully chained, to contribute by the victories and trophies she had won over them to the pomp of her triumph. At the moment she died, the nun who had been the faithful repository of all her secrets perceived her soul going straight to the heart of Jesus Christ, her beloved, as to the center of all her affections, and this heart opened to receive her. It was in this chariot of glory that she was happily transported to heaven, to be eternally immersed and lost in the joy of her God. Some pious persons also had a revelation that at the same hour several souls from purgatory had been delivered by her merits, in order to keep her company in her triumphant entry into the abode of the Blessed.

Saint Gertrude of Eisleben is represented either with a heart slightly opened and serving as a throne for the infant Jesus, or with the heart in her hand. This is an allusion to the words of Our Lord: "You will find me in the heart of Gertrude"; and the Church has preserved the memory of this in the collect of her feast day. ## CULT AND RELICS. ## WRITINGS AND SPIRIT OF SAINT GERTRUDE. The feast of Saint Gertrude of Eisleben is celebrated on different days in the Ord er of Saint Benedict: Ordre de Saint-Benoît Religious order occupying the monastery of Honnecourt. some monasteries observe it on April 12, others on November 12, and others finally on the 15th of the same month; the Roman Breviary prescribes it for this last day. Mabillon speaks of the relics of Saint Gertrude which were said to have been transported to Mont-Sainte-Marie. Her mantle is also said to be kept in Neustria; but nothing very positive is known about all this, nor about her tomb. The Lipsanographia or Catalogue of relics ke pt in the electoral palace of Brunswick palais électoral de Brunswick-Lünebourg Place housing a reliquary containing the saint's remains. -Lüneburg mentions a beautiful reliquary that contains the sacred remains of Saint Gertrude.

Saint Gertrude traced the portrait of her soul in the book of her Revelations or Pi ous Insinuations. It Insinuations pieuses Major work by Gertrude recounting her communications with God. is nothing other than the account of her communications with God. We shall extract a few passages from it for the edification of our readers:

In a revelation of Jesus Christ to our Saint, it was said to her that, just as the ring is the sign of the covenant between spouses, so too is adversity, both bodily and spiritual, the most authentic sign of divine election and, as it were, the covenant of the soul with God.

One day, when, uniting herself with the priest at the moment of the elevation of the holy host, she herself offered this spotless host to God the Father as worthy reparation for all her sins, she felt that Jesus Christ had deigned to present her soul to his Father, and she strove immediately, at the sight of such goodness, to pay to God a just tribute of thanksgiving. Then she received from Jesus Christ himself the understanding of this truth: that every time someone assists with devotion at the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and carefully directs their attention to the God who offers himself in this sacrament for the holy communion of all men, that person is truly looked upon with favor by God the Father, because of his complacency in the thrice-holy host that is offered to him. Such would be, for example, one who, coming out of darkness, would walk in the midst of the sun's rays and would suddenly find themselves irradiated with splendors. And then she addressed this question to the Lord in these terms: "Is it true, Lord, that as soon as someone falls into sin, they also lose this happiness at the same time, like one who, from the midst of the sun's rays, returns into darkness and loses the pleasant clarity of the light?" — "No," replied the Lord; "although the one who sins obscures in some way for their soul the light of divine favors, nevertheless my goodness always preserves for them some remainder of this felicity for eternal life, which felicity man increases and accumulates as many times as he assists with devotion at Mass and the other sacraments."

Another day, after having received holy communion and while she was reflecting in her mind with what attention one must observe one's tongue, which is among the other members of the body the one destined to receive the precious mystery of Christ, she was instructed from above by this comparison: "If someone, who does not watch over their mouth regarding vain, false, shameful, slanderous, or other similar words, approaches holy communion without repentance and without penance, that person receives Jesus Christ (as much as it is in them) in the same manner as one who would overwhelm with a hail of stones the guest who comes to their home, at the moment of crossing the threshold of their house, or who would break their head with an iron hammer. Let the one who reads this comparison," she adds, "consider with a deep feeling of compassion the relationship that exists between such great cruelty on our part, and such great goodness on the part of the Lord; let them look to see if the one who comes for the salvation of man with such sweetness deserves to be pursued by those he comes to save with such harsh barbarity: and the same can be said of all other kinds of sins."

Another day when she was to receive communion, while she considered herself less well prepared than usual and the moment of communion approached, she spoke to her soul in these terms: "Behold, the Bridegroom is already calling, and how will you dare to go to meet him, being in no way adorned with the ornaments of merits, which would make you worthy of him?" But then, reviewing her unworthiness even more, distrusting herself entirely, and placing all her hope in the infinite charity of God, she said to herself: "What is the use of delaying, since even if you had a thousand years to apply yourself, you could nevertheless not prepare yourself worthily, having absolutely nothing of your own that could suffice for a preparation so magnificent and so difficult; but I will advance, on the contrary, to meet him with humility and confidence, and when he has seen me from afar, my sweet Savior, touched by his own love, will be powerful enough to send toward me that which I need to present myself worthily and in perfect preparation"; and advancing, indeed, with this disposition, she kept the eyes of her heart fixed on her deformity and ugliness.

And when she had approached a little, the Lord appeared to her, looking at her with an air of mercy, nay, of affection, and he sent to meet her, to prepare her worthily to appear before him, that innocence which she asked for, and with which he covered her as with a soft tunic shining with all whiteness, and then he gave her his humility, that humility by which he deigns to associate himself with us so unworthy, so that she might cover herself with it as with a violet robe; and his hope then, that hope by which he himself desires and burns to receive the embraces of the soul, to clothe herself with it as with a green ornament. Then his love, that love with which he is penetrated toward the soul, and which he gave her as a gold-colored mantle to adorn her. Moreover, his joy, that which he himself tastes in the bosom of the faithful soul and which he had her put on as a crown adorned with precious stones and pearls. Finally his confidence, which he himself deigns to inspire, making himself the support of the vile clay of human fragility and placing his delights in living among the children of men, so that she might make it her footwear and that thus adorned on all sides, she might present herself worthily before him.

After having received communion, and while she was recollected in the deepest part of herself, the Lord presented himself before her in the form of a pelican piercing its heart with its beak, as one is accustomed to represent this bird, which giving her admiration, she said to God: "Lord, what do you wish to try to persuade me of by this vision?" The Lord answered her: "I intend to make you consider that in offering you such an august gift, I am pressed by such great feelings of love that, if it were not unseemly to speak in this way, I would dare to advance that after having made this gift to men, I would prefer to remain dead in the tomb than to see the loving soul abstain from this fruit of my liberality; it is, finally, to make you envision how excellent is the manner in which your soul is vivified for eternal life by taking this divine food, since it is so in the manner of the pelican's young which receives life from the blood that flows from its father's heart."

While she was in prayer and inquiring of the Lord about the utility of her prayers for her friends, since, praying so often for them, she saw that they felt no profit from it, the Lord deigned to instruct her by this similitude: "When a child is adopted by an emperor, and is enriched with the immense inheritance of his domains, who is there among those who see this child who perceives, by his size and shape, the effect of this donation, when the witnesses however know very well who he is, and how great he will be one day through such abundant riches?" Do not be astonished, therefore, not to notice with the eyes of the body the fruit of your prayers, which I dispose in my eternal wisdom for a greater profit: and the more one prays for someone, the more one makes them happy, since no prayer of the faithful soul will remain without effect, even if men do not see the manner of it.

Another time, before receiving communion, she said to the Lord: "O Lord! what are you going to give me?" The Lord answered her: "Myself entirely, with all my divine essence, as the Virgin, my mother, received me in her womb!" And then she added: "What would I have more than those who received you well with me and who abstain today, since you always give yourself entirely!" To which the Lord replied: "If, among the men of this century, one who has received the dignity of the consulship twice must prevail in honor over one who has been invested with it only once, how would that one not prevail in glory in eternal life, who will have received me several times on earth?" Then, groaning within herself, she said: "Oh! by what great glory the priests of the Lord will therefore prevail over me, they who by state communicate every day?" And the Lord said to her: "It is true, those will shine with great glory who approach it worthily; but nevertheless one must judge very differently of the affection and love of the one who approaches it, than of the external glory that appears in this mystery. Thus, therefore, different is the reward granted to those who approach it by desire and with love; different is that which is reserved for those who take it with fear and reverence, and different also is that which is received by those who prepare themselves to receive it by the application of all their practices and exercises, while none of these rewards is destined for the one who celebrates only by habit."

One day when she was examining her conscience and found something of which she would have confessed with pleasure, if she had not lacked a confessor, she had recourse, according to her custom, to her only consoler, the Lord Jesus Christ, and exposed to him with some anxiety the impediment she was experiencing; and the Lord answered her by saying: "Why do you trouble yourself, my beloved, since every time you desire this from me, I myself, sovereign priest and true pontiff, will be at your disposal, and each time I will renew in your soul the seven sacraments at once? I myself, indeed, will baptize you in my precious blood; I will confirm you by the very virtue of my victory; I will marry you by the very fidelity of my love; I will consecrate you by the perfection of my most holy life; in the excess of my mercy I will unbind you and absolve you of your sins; in the superabundance of my love I will nourish you with myself, and in enjoying you, I will be satiated, and finally in the sweetness of my spirit, I will penetrate all your interior with a cooking so effective, that through all the senses and pores will flow without interruption an abundance of piety, by which you will become from day to day more perfect and more holy for eternal life."

We have completed the account of Father Gtry with Godescard, the Characteristics of the Saints, by Father Cablot, and the Spirit of the Saints, by Mr. the Abbé Grimes. — Cf. Resolutions of Saint Gertrude, printed in Latin in 1664, and translated into French in 1676.