Saint Gertrude, who is called the Great, was a brilliant and holy little German girl who entered religion at the age of five. She was born in the town of Eisleben, which later gave the world the heretic, Martin Luther. The Order she joined was the Benedictines. She was so brilliant in her earliest years that all the simple and clear truths of Divine Revelation became part of her thoughts and her speech. Though she was capable of learning all secular sciences, Our Lord appeared to her and told her to love no other books but the Bible and the works of the Fathers of the Church. Saint Gertrude was the first great apostle of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. On the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, she was taken by him to Jesus and permitted to rest her head on His Sacred Heart. Saint Gertrude was forty-six years old when she died. Two saints especially devoted to Saint Gertrude were Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint Francis de Sales.
See also: Saint Mechtilde
Saint Gertrude, by Miguel Cabrera (1695–1768) source
