SAINT FEAST DAY 17 MARCH: ST GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES, VIRGIN AND ABBESS

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 17th of March

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST GERTRUDE OF NIVELLES, VIRGIN AND ABBESS

[Saint Gertrude's intercession is invoked against rats and mice since at least the 15th century, and, more recently, her prayers are asked in her function of patron saint called upon for cats.]

St Gertrude was daughter of Pepin, of Landen, mayor of the palace to the French Kings of Austrasia, and younger sister to St Begga. She was born in 626. 

SHE HAD MADE UP HER MIND

Her father’s virtuous palace was the sanctuary of her innocence, and the school of her tender piety. Being pressed to marry, she declared in presence of King Dagobert: "I have chosen for my spouse him, from whose eternal beauty all creatures derive their glory, whose riches are immense, and whom the angels adore." The king admired her gravity and wisdom in so tender an age, and would not suffer her to be any more disturbed on that account. 

Her mother, the blessed Itta, employed St Amand to direct the building of a great nunnery at Nivelle, in Brabant, for Gertrude. The virgin was appointed abbess, when only twenty years of age. Her mother, the blessed Itta, lived five years under her conduct, and died in the twelfth year of her widowhood, in 652. 

PRUDENCE AND ZEAL

Gertrude governed her monastery with a prudence, zeal, and virtue that astonished the most advanced in years and experience. She loved extreme holy poverty in her person and house; but enriched the poor. By assiduous prayer and holy meditation she obtained wonderful lights from heaven. She resigned her abbey to her niece Wilfetrude, and spent the three years which she survived, in preparing her soul for her passage to eternity, which happened on March 17, 659. Her festival is a holyday at Louvain, and throughout the duchy of Brabant. It is mentioned in the true Martyrology of Bede, etc.

(Excerpts from Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)