A Novena to Saint Gertrude the Great
Legatus divinae pietatis
Given to the Monastery
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude arrived at the monastery of Helfta in Saxony at about five years old, around 1261; no record survives of her parents, birthplace, or the reason for her placement there.
The Grammarian
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude received a thorough education at Helfta in Latin grammar and rhetoric, and her later writings show extensive, fluent use of Scripture.
In Her Twenty-Sixth Year
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude dated a decisive change in her life to a January evening in 1281, in her twenty-sixth year, after which her writing turns from scholarly interests toward the mystical experience recorded in the Legatus divinae pietatis.
Not the Abbess
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude is often mistakenly identified as abbess of Helfta; that office was held for four decades by a different nun, Gertrude of Hackeborn, while the Gertrude honored in this novena held no administrative position and appears in no surviving charter of the house.
The Heartbeat
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude's writings describe a vision of resting near the heart of Christ at the Last Supper, a devotion to the Sacred Heart recorded roughly four centuries before the visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial.
A Book Written by Other People
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Of the five books of the Legatus divinae pietatis, only the second is generally accepted as written by Gertrude herself; the remaining four were recorded by the nuns of Helfta from what she told them, in some cases without her full knowledge.
Ill Most of the Time
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude was in poor health for much of her adult life, a detail she mentions in passing in her writing without treating it as a subject in itself.
The Prayer She Did Not Write
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
A prayer widely circulated under Gertrude's name, promising that a fixed number of souls would be released from purgatory each time it is said, does not appear anywhere in her authenticated writings; it first appears on a devotional card in the nineteenth century, and the Holy See has stated the promise has no basis in her work.
Helfta
The Novena Prayer
O blessed Saint Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a model of the virtues God asks of us, that assisted by thy prayers we may correspond with the grace of our own vocation. O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early choose that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge; obtain for us a like love of that divine Heart, that we may be found worthy of thine intercession.
Gertrude died at Helfta around 1302; the monastery was later destroyed and her grave lost, and no relic or shrine of her survives. Her cult was approved in 1677, and she remains the only woman in the Church's history given the title the Great.
The prayer above is a traditional novena prayer to Saint Gertrude, of unknown authorship and long in circulation, given here as it is commonly printed. Gertrude of Helfta (1256 – c. 1302) is known almost entirely from her own Legatus divinae pietatis, the Herald of Divine Love, of whose five books only the second is certainly in her hand; the rest was set down by the nuns who lived with her. Her Spiritual Exercises survive as well. What follows each day is a fact from her life or from the history of her cult, one per day.
