St. Gertrude the Great

St. Gertrude (1256–c.1302) is the only woman saint the Church calls "the Great." Nothing is known of her family. At four or five years old she was placed in the care of the nuns at the monastery of Helfta in Saxony, Germany, a house famous for learning, and she grew into a gifted student of Latin, Scripture and the Fathers of the Church.

When she was twenty-five, Gertrude went through a deep conversion. She later wrote that Christ appeared to her and drew her from a love of study for its own sake to a love of God himself. From then on she gave herself to prayer, to the liturgy of the monastery and to Scripture. Her visions and reflections fill "The Herald of God's Loving-Kindness" and her "Spiritual Exercises," among the treasures of medieval mystical writing. She is one of the earliest great witnesses to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Gertrude was never formally canonized, but her holiness was honored for centuries, and her feast was later extended to the whole Church. She is not to be confused with St. Gertrude of Nivelles, a 7th-century abbess.