About the book: As iron when it is plunged into fire becomes itself fire, this soul, all on fire with divine charity, became herself charity, desiring nothing but that all men might be saved. - Book 1, Chapter 4 (The Herald of Divine Love)
From her entrance to the Benedictine abbey of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony, as a child of four in 1260, until her twenty-sixth year, Gertrude lived what she was later to consider a lax and worldly life, following the monastic observance outwardly, but applying her brilliant mind and boundless enthusiasm to secular studies.
Then, when she was twenty-five, all was changed.
The Lord appeared to her in the form of a beautiful youth inviting her to a conversion of life and to close union with himself.
Thenceforth for Gertrude God was all, and her neighbour all in God, and she flung herself into his service with the same wholeheartedness which she had previously brought to her secular studies.
She was continually granted extraordinary mystical favours, including an intense awareness of God's loving presence in her soul; and despite her great humility and consequent reluctance she understood that she had been granted these graces for the good of others and was therefore required to make them known.
Gertrude of Helfta: The Herald of Divine Love (1993) is translated and edited by Margaret Winkworth and is dedicated to His Holiness Pope John Paul II.
About Gertrude of Helfta: Gertrude the Great (or Saint Gertrude of Helfta) (1256-c1302) was a German Benedictine, mystic, and theologian. She is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, and is inscribed in the General Roman Calendar, for celebration throughout the Latin Rite on November 16.
Little is known of the early life of Gertrude. Gertrude was born on the feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 1256, in Eisleben, Thuringia (within the Holy Roman Empire). At the age of four, she entered the monastery school at the monastery of St Mary at Helfta (with much debate having occurred as to whether this monastery is best described as Benedictine or Cistercian), under the direction of its abbess, Gertrude of Hackeborn. It is speculated that she was offered as a child oblate to the Church by devout parents. Given that Gertrude implies in the Herald that her parents were long dead at the time of writing, however, it is also possible that she entered the monastery school as an orphan.
Gertrude was confided to the care of St Mechtilde, younger sister of the Abbess Gertrude, and joined the monastic community in 1266. It is clear from her own writings that she received a thorough education in a range of subjects. She, and the nun who authored Books 1 and 3-5 of the Herald, are thoroughly familiar with scripture, the Fathers of the Church such as Augustine and Gregory the Great, and also in more contemporary spiritual writers such as Richard and Hugh of St Victor, William of St Thierry, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Moreover, Gertrude's writing demonstrates that she was well-versed in rhetoric, and her Latin is very fluent.
In 1281, at the age of twenty-five, she experienced the first of a series of visions that continued throughout her life, and which changed the course of her life. Her priorities shifted away from secular knowledge and toward the study of Scripture and theology. Gertrude devoted herself strongly to personal prayer and meditation, and began writing spiritual treatises for the benefit of her monastic sisters. Gertrude became one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher St Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called "nuptial mysticism," that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ.
Gertrude died at Helfta, near Eisleben, Saxony, around 1302. Her feast day is celebrated on 16 November, but the exact date of her death is unknown; the November date stems from a confusion with Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn.
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