OUR LORD revealed that the place on earth where He most delighted to be, after the Blessed Sacrament, was \"in the heart and soul of Gertrude, My beloved.\" Therefore, we do not wonder that among all the most remarkable women Saints of the Church, St. Gertrude is the one who carries the extraordinary title "The Great."
The Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great form one of the classics of Catholic writing. And although they would have to be classified as \"mystical literature, \" their message is clear and obvious, for this book states many of the secrets of Heaven in terms that all can understand.
Recorded here are St. Gertrude\'s many conversations with Our Lord, wherein He reveals His great desire to grant mercy to souls and to reward the least good act. In the course of their conversations, He reveals wonderful spiritual \"shortcuts\" that will help everyone in his or her spiritual life. Moreover, the Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great actually open a window onto Heaven, where we can see the specific ways in which prayer, good works and liturgical celebrations on earth have very definite effects in Heaven-among the Saints and Angels and even with God Himself.
The Revelations of St. Gertrude were authorized by Our Lord (pp.536-537) and they have been published in many editions, in various languages; they have inspired both clergy and laity for centuries. Surely the present generation of English-speaking Catholics will profit equally from this new edition of "The Life and Revelations of St. Gertrude the Great," who found such high favor with Our Lord that He chose to dwell in her heart in a special manner and to reveal to her many of the intimate secrets of His supernatural love for soul.

This book is a translation, the only one from the Latin, of the Preces Gertrudianae, a manual of devotions compiled in the seventeenth century from the Suggestions of Divine Piety of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde, nllns of the Order of St. Benedict. Of this work Alban Butler says, in his life of St. Gertrude, that it is perhaps the most useful production, next to the writings of St. Teresa, with which any female saint ever enriched the Church. Care has been taken to preserve, not only the substance, but, as far as might be, the form, of the original prayers; and a few others, well known and much valued, have been added as an Appendix. Let us consider this advice: When you are distracted in prayer, commend it to the Heart of Jesus, to be perfected by him, as our Lord Himself taught St. Gertrude. One day, when she was nluch distracted in prayer, he appeared to her, and held forth to her his Heart with his own sacred hands, saying: Behold, I set My Heart before the eyes of thy soul, that thou mayest commend to it all thine actions, confidently trusting that all that thou canst not of thyself supply to them will be therein supplied, so that they may appear perfect and spotless in my sight. Remember always to say the Gloria Patri with great devotion. The hermit Honorius relates that a certain monk who had been accustomed to say his office negligently appeared to another after his death and being asked what sufferings he had to undergo in punishment of his carelessness, he said that all had been satisfied for and effaced by the reverent devotion with which he had always said the Gloria Patri.