BL. GERTRUDE OF ALTENBERG, ABBESS

BL. GERTRUDE OF ALTENBERG, ABBESS - 13 AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 13th of August

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.

BL. GERTRUDE OF ALTENBERG, ABBESS

Blessed Gertrude was Abbess of the Premonstratensian convent of Altenberg, near Wetzlar, in the diocese of [Limburg], Germany; she was born about 1227; she died August 13, 1297.

HER ARRIVAL AT ALTENBERG

She was the youngest of three sisters of Louis VI, margrave of Thuringia, and his wife St Elizabeth of Hungary. Gertrude’s father died on his way to the Holy Land shortly before she was born. She was scarcely two years old, when St Elizabeth brought her to the convent of Altenberg, where she afterwards became a nun.

SHE RULED THE ABBEY FOR FORTY-NINE YEARS

In 1248, being then only twenty-one years old, she was elected Abbess of Altenberg, over which she ruled forty-nine years. With the inheritance which she received from her uncle, the Margrave of Meissen, she erected a church and a poorhouse. She took personal charge of the inmates of the poorhouse and a led a life of extreme mortification.

PRAYER AND ACTS OF MORTIFICATION

When Urban VI published a crusade against the Saracens, Gertrude and her nuns took the cross and obliged themselves to contribute their share to the success of the crusade by prayer and acts of mortification.

SHE WAS ONE OF THE FIRST TO INTRODUCE THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI INTO GERMANY

In 1270 she began to observe the feast of Corpus Christi in her convent, thus becoming one of the first to introduce it into Germany. Clement VI permitted the ecclesiastical celebration of her feast to the convent of Altenberg and granted some indulgences to those who visit her relics at that convent.

(From Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913)

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