St. Gertrude the Great

Who they were

Gertrude was given to the monastery of Helfta at five, orphaned or simply handed over, the record does not say, and grew up inside the most intellectually alive women's community of the medieval world. A brilliant and restless student, she described her twenties as lukewarm until, at twenty five, an experience of Christ turned scholarship into prayer. Her Herald of Divine Love is among the great works of Christian mysticism, warm where the era was often severe, and centered on the Sacred Heart centuries before that devotion had a name.

She prayed constantly for the dead. The famous prayer that circulates under her name, with a promise attached about releasing a thousand souls, is a later attribution and is not found in her writings. What is authentic is better: a theologian of confidence in God's tenderness, who treated the dead as still family and still reachable.

Why people turn to St. Gertrude the Great

The holy souls, alongside Nicholas of Tolentino, with her feast landing in mid November, the month of the dead. And people whose prayer has gone cold and formal, since her whole story is the thaw.

How to ask their intercession

Pray for the dead most in need of mercy, the ones with no one left to pray for them, and ask Gertrude to carry the list you do not know.