Vigils Reading

THE WOUND OF LOVE
From the writings of St Gertrud the Great4
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I had laid a certain person under an obligation to slip these words on my behalf into her daily prayer before the crucifix. She was to say, ‘By your heart that was wounded through and through, most loving Lord, pierce her heart with… your love, so much so that it may be unable to possess anything that is of this earth, but may be possessed by the unique power of your divinity’. It was these prayers, I believe, that spurred you into action…

Out of the overflowing generosity of your goodness and by the permission of your mercy I was coming to receive the sacrament of your most holy body and blood, when you infused me with an earnest longing which compelled me to break out and say, ‘Lord, I admit that, as far as my merits go, I am not worthy to receive the least of your gifts. But by the merits and earnest longing of all those around I beseech your loving-kindness to pierce my heart with the arrow of your love’. Soon I became aware that the force of these words had reached your divine Heart, as much because of an inflow of inner grace as because of the manifestation of an unmistakable sign on an image of your crucifixion.

For when I had received the life-giving sacrament, and had returned to my place in choir, it seemed to me as if something like a ray of the sun came out from the right-hand side of the crucified Christ painted on the page, that is, from the wound in the side. It had a sharp point like an arrow and, astonishingly, it stretched forward and, lingering thus for a while, it gently elicited my love. But my longing was not thus satisfied until the following Wednesday when, after mass, the faithful honor the generous gift of your incarnation and annunciation, which all must adore. I too, although less worthily, was concentrating on this devotion. Suddenly you were there unexpectedly, opening a wound in my heart with these words: ‘May all your emotions come together in this place; that is may the sum total of your delight, hope, joy, sorrow, fear and your other emotions be fixed firmly in my love’.

I immediately remembered that I had sometimes heard that wounds should be washed, anointed and bound up. At that time you had not yet taught me, once and for all, how to do this. But after a while you revealed it more fully to me, by means of someone who to your praise… has attuned her inner ear much more reliably and more sensitively than I have… to catch the continual flow of your loving whispers. Her advice to me was that, while worshiping with constant devotion the love of your Heart hanging on the cross, I should draw water of devotion, to wash away every offense… so that I might direct all my thoughts, words, and deeds, given strength by love, toward you, and in this way cling inseparably to you.

I offer you mourning for my far too numerous offenses against your divinely noble goodness, which I have assaulted so variously, in thought, word and deed; but especially in that I made such faithless, careless and disrespectful use of the gifts of yours. For if you had handed over to me, unworthy as I am, a hempen thread in memory of yourself, I should rightly have treated it with more conscientious respect!… Therefore, Giver of gifts… give the reader of these words… pity for you, in that your passion for souls has for so long confined a jewel… to the muddy bilge-water of my heart! While offering prayer and thanksgiving, may [the reader] extol your mercy… In this way some reparation may be made to you for my deficiency.

4 St Gertrud the Great of Helfta. The Herald of God’s Loving-Kindness: Books 1& 2. CF 35. Trans. Alexandra Barratt. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991. 112-115.
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