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No One Has Killed More Israelis Than the Israelis Themselves
Wars, including just wars, bring with them all manner of attendant evils. The fact even just wars include foreseen but unintended evils requires a statesman (seen any of those lately?) to weigh whether the prosecution of a just war to remedy a wound against justice might be immoral to pursue if the foreseen evil consequences are disproportionate to the good end sought.
As has been discussed in about a score of articles on this site over the articles over the past nineteen years, nine months, considerations of the foreseen but unintended evils attendant to the prosecution of a just war are governed by the moral principle of Proportionality. Here is a quick reminder of what this means:
The good end being sought must not be outweighed by the foreseen evil to be done. This is known as the Catholic principle of proportionality, which states that a good end can be rendered unjust to pursue if a judgment is made that the amount of the foreseen evil to be done in the prosecution of a just war will cause greater evils than the one the war is being waged to eradicate. Such judgments, of course, are made by mere mortals capable of making mistakes. However, it is nevertheless not impossible for a true Catholic statesman to weigh the considerations of proportionality by praying first to God the Holy Ghost to grant him wisdom and to beg His Most Holy Spouse, Our Lady, to send him the graces for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday to see reality clearly and to God’s Holy Will in all his work as one charged with the responsibility of defending a just order within his realm and among other kingdoms or nations.
This is different than the heresy of proportionalism (heretics use Catholic sounding phrases so as to connect themselves in the minds of Catholics as understanding Catholic principles), which asserts that a preponderance of "good intentions" and of the "relative exigencies of the moment" can make a moral act that is naturally evil capable of being pursued justly on the part of one who believes the weight of the evidence in his case justifies a subjective violation of an objective moral law to do good.
Thus, proportionalism, which has been propounded by the late Father Richard McCormick, S.J. (not to be confused with the priest from the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, who fomented dissent at the University of Notre Dame and in his nationally syndicated columns until his death three years ago, Father Richard McBrien), can be used by a woman to justify the killing of her preborn child. After all, McCormick contended, “more good” will be done in her life by killing the child than if she permitted him to interfere unduly with her life's goals. We can never commit an evil act in the prosecution of a just end, and the truth is that much evil has been done by the United States of America in the pursuit of unjust ends.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, the Zionists who have governed the State of Israel since its founding on May 1, 1948, do not pay much, if any attention, to the moral considerations of Proportionality as they consider the shedding of Jewish blood to be the most heinous crime that anyone can commit, which is why there is little discussion in so-called “Holocaust Studies” of the millions of non-Jews, especially Polish Catholics, who were killed by the Third Reich of Adolph Hitler during World War II. In fact, the Catholic priesthood was so decimated by both the Nazis and the Soviets during the war that Pope Pius XII gave permission for Eastern Rite priests to the sacramental needs of Latin Rite Catholics.
While, as noted in the “Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis” series, the attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Mohammedan terrorist organizations that claim to represent those who have been oppressed by the Zionists but who are simply interested in killing innocent human beings can never be justified as innocent human beings can ever be targeted deliberately at any time, including during warfare, no less in the use of raw terror to accomplish genocidal ends. Such attacks, of course, do not justify the slaughter of over ten thousand innocent Palestinian citizens by the Israeli Defense Forces nor the destruction of countless numbers of residential dwellings that will leave the survivors with no place to call home once (or is it if?) those forces end their combat operations and the occupation of Gaza that has begun in earnest.
When all is said and done, though, no one has killed more innocent Israelis than the Israelis themselves as the surgical execution of the innocent Israeli preborn children is said to number between 800,000 and 2,000,000 butchered babies/
Here is an article on an “evangelical”/Messianic Jewish website that discusses this Israeli genocide of their own babies (this article uses the term “holocaust,” but the facts about the surgical execution of innocent preborn children in Israel stand on their own):
The scourge of abortion here in the Jewish state is far worse than most Evangelical Christians around the world can probably imagine.
Some Israelis believe the total number of abortions performed since 1948 – legal and illegal – is close to 800,000.
Others believe the number tops 2 million.
It’s horrific either way, especially when you consider that the entire population of Israel today is only 10 million.
But let’s look more carefully at the numbers to better understand what’s really going on.
ABORTIONS BECAME LEGAL IN ISRAEL IN 1977
At the beginning of the new state in 1948, it was a criminal act to get an abortion.
But “terminating a pregnancy” was legalized here in 1977.
“Over the strenuous, sometimes impassioned objections of religious Jews, the Israeli Parliament today passed a law that legalized abortions but fell short of providing abortion on demand,” reported the New York Times on Jan. 31, 1977.
Women then – and now – have to request permission to get an abortion and give their reason for wanting one.
“The law permits termination of a pregnancy after approval by a three-member committee consisting of two doctors – one a gynecologist– and a social worker,” noted the NYT.
The Times added that “some of the reasons for which a legal abortion could be obtained are: If a mother is under 16 or over 40; if the pregnancy resulted from incest, rape or was out of wedlock; if it can be determined the child would be born physically or mentally handicapped, or if the birth would injure the physical or emotional health of the mother.”
The vast majority of requests are approved.
Various Israeli laws expanding access to abortion – and making them free or very low cost – have been passed over the years.
WHAT DO THE OFFICIAL NUMBERS TELL US?
According to the most recent statistics from official sources, the number of legal abortions performed each year in Israel ranges from 16,000 to 20,000.
A closer look at the data shows that between 1977 and 2021 there have been at least 778,454 legal abortions.
However, given the way the 1977 law was written, many Israeli women began seeking illegal abortions.
This doesn’t mean “back alley” or “do-it-yourself” procedures.
It means women privately paid doctors to perform abortions because they either didn’t want to appear before one of these committees or because their reasons for wanting an abortion were not legally valid.
For example, the law originally allowed women to get abortions if they successfully argued they could not afford to raise the children.
“However, two years after the enactment of the original bill, the fifth [reason] for abortion – known as ‘the socioeconomic clause’ – was repealed by the legislature and abortion approvals were ultimately restricted to only four permissible grounds,” noted a study of the historic legality of abortion in Israel published by the University of Haifa this year.
Today, official government data show that the main reason women cite for termination is ‘pregnancy out of wedlock,’” the study found, noting that this is the primary reason that younger, single Israeli women give, as they use abortion as a form of birth control.
However, the study also pointed to a steadily-rising trend in which married women in Israel are aborting their babies.
Sometimes this is because the pregnancy is the result of an adulterous relationship, or because the baby is discovered to have had some type of physical defect.
But the study found that many married women have been aborting their babies because they don’t think they can afford to keep these babies. Yet, they are lying to the committees and giving other reasons because “socioeconomic” factors are not legal grounds for terminating a pregnancy.
“According to the Ministry of Health’s statistics, nearly half (48%) of the abortion approvals were granted to married women in 2019,” the report stated.
But, again, many more Israeli women don’t want to have this conversation with these “termination committees” and thus choose to have their abortions illegally.
WHAT DO THE UNOFFICIAL NUMBERS TELL US?
Sadly, even in the earliest years of the Jewish state, illegal abortions were widely performed in Israel.
In a 1958 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers S. Halevi and A. Brzezinski, M.D., noted that “the purpose of the present paper is to calculate and to indicate, as far as possible, the incidence of abortions among Jewish women in Israel.”
They concluded that despite the fact that abortions were against the law at the time, “abortions are prominent as a cause of hospitalization in Israel.”
In fact, the researchers stated that “one out of every four women hospitalized women in the reproductive ages was admitted with the diagnosis of abortion.”
That’s a staggering and tragic figure – fully 25% of Israeli women in the 1950s were being hospitalized to get elective abortions, despite the fact that they were illegal.
Carefully analyzing statistics compiled by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) – and hospital records that used euphemistic language to mask the illegality of elective abortions – the researchers estimated that in 1952 alone there were 1,398 illegal abortions performed for Jewish women in Israeli hospitals.
In 1953, they estimated there were another 1,576 illegal abortions performed in Israeli hospitals.
If one takes an average of those two estimates and multiply that number by the 29 years spanning from Israel’s independence in 1948 and the legalization of abortion in 1977, it might be reasonable to believe that there were at least 43,123 illegal abortions performed for Jewish women in Israel during those three decades.
If so, that would bring the number of abortions in Israel since 1948 up to at least 821,577.
However, the 1958 study specifically made a point of stating that “there can be no doubt that a proportion of induced abortions are [conducted] at home or outside of recognized medical institutions, and therefore remain unreported.”
Regarding such “non-hospitalized abortions of all kinds,” the researchers stated their belief that the number “undoubtedly amounts at least to several thousand per year.”
If their educated guess was reasonable, that would mean there were an additional 2,000 illegal abortions outside of Israeli hospitals for each of the 29 years between 1948 and 1977.
This would suggest that another 58,000 babies had been killed in the womb over the first three decades of the Jewish state.
That would bring the total number of abortions performed in Israel since 1948 up to 879,577.'
Yet, even after abortion was legalized in 1977, panels did not approve all abortion requests.
Thus, many illegal abortions were performed for women who were turned down by their panel of doctors and chose to go to private clinics, paying for their own abortions, “under the table,” as it were.
ARE ILLEGAL ABORTIONS ACTUALLY HIGHER THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT?
A 1990 study published by the Israel Journal of Medical Sciences – and excerpted in English by the National Library of Medicine – examined the number of illegal abortions performed in Israel from 1980 to 1983 and discovered that the number of illegal abortions was significantly higher than other researchers had found.
“It would appear that about 6,000 illegal abortions [every] year are performed in Israel,” the researchers noted.
That estimate is three times higher than the 1958 study.
We must consider, then, the possibility that in the years following the 1958 study, an additional 4,000 illegal abortions were performed in Israel every year above and beyond what we had previously estimated.
This trend may have spanned the period from 1960 through about 2020.
More recently, it is believed that illegal abortions have tapered off as Israeli abortion laws have become more permissive and the abortion panels are now approving upwards of 99% of all requests, according to the most recent evidence.
Over the course of these 60 years, then, this evidence suggests there could have been an additional 240,000 illegal abortions above and beyond the previous estimates.
This would mean that over the past 75 years, the total number of abortions – legal and illegal – performed in Israel could total 1,119,577.
PRO-LIFE LEADERS IN ISRAEL SAY THE NUMBER OF ABORTIONS IS VASTLY HIGHER
However, some pro-life leaders in Israel believe that even this figure still woefully underestimates the number of abortions performed in the Jewish state.
They argue the number of abortions performed annually is actually 30,000 to 50,000 – not 16,000 to 20,000, as tabulated by official statistics.
And they cite various sources, dating back to the Jan. 31, 1977 article in the New York Times referenced above.
In 2017, the Times of Israel reported that an estimated 15,000 illegal abortions were performed annually in Israel, above and beyond the 20,000 or so legal abortions done each year, suggesting an annual total of 35,000 abortions.
What’s more, Haaretz reported that “for teenagers and soldiers serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, abortions are fully funded by the state. And in a revision of the national health coverage law in 2014, abortions became free to all women between 20 and 33 regardless of their circumstances, in order to help young women who cannot afford to pay even a heavily subsidized fee for the procedure.”
Many Israeli women, Haaretz confirmed, “opt for private abortions, thus avoiding the committee process,” adding that “if a woman has several hundred dollars, obtaining a private abortion in a doctor’s clinic rather than a public hospital is the more efficient route. Though technically such physicians are breaking the law, the practice is common and widespread, allowing any woman — regardless of her marital status, age or personal situation — to obtain an abortion discreetly and far more quickly than the official process. No doctor has ever been prosecuted for doing so.”
During the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, and after the United States Supreme Court legalized all abortions in 1973 in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, many women all over the world – including in Israel – became far more interested in using abortion as a form of birth control, whether it was legal in their countries or not.
In addition, Israeli pro-life advocates note that new drugs have become available in recent years to induce an abortion without a woman having to go to a public or private hospital, or even to a private clinic.
Such factors have led some to believe the total number of abortions in Israel may approach – or even top – two million.
“One For Israel,” a Messianic Jewish ministry based in Netanya, also argues that upwards of two million unborn babies have been aborted since the founding of the Jewish state.
Ultimately, only the God of Israel Himself knows how many innocent unborn babies have been murdered within the wombs of the women in the land of Israel.
A single abortion is horrible.
But 800,000 is a terrible Israeli tragedy.
And two million is even worse.
The blood of these children cries out for justice, and the Bible is clear that one day the Lord will sovereignly administer such justice.
“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
Justice requires that we vigorously defend the rights of all unborn children.
Each child has a God-given right to life.
The government’s job is to protect their rights, whether this is popular or not. (How many Israeli babies have been aborted since 1948? Estimates range from 800,000 to 2 million.)
To amplify the points made in the article quoted just above, a report from 2015 detailed how the Christophobic Benjamin Netanyahu’s then health minister helped to make it more possible for Israeli mothers to have their own babies butchered under cover of the civil law:
Israel, a nation with a forceful religious lobby and a conservative prime minister, is poised to offer its female citizens some of the most liberal abortion coverage in the world.
The nation’s Health Ministry commission, led by Dr. Yonatan Halevy, last week announced its state-subsidized “health basket,” the package of medications and services that all Israeli citizens are entitled to under the nation’s health care system. It was approved by the cabinet on Sunday. The health basket is analyzed and amended on an annual basis, and among the many additional treatments to be offered to Israelis in 2014 are free-of-charge abortions for women ages 20-33.
Israel has always had a liberal stance on abortion, allowing women facing medical emergencies or those who are victims of rape or abuse to receive subsidies to help them terminate their pregnancies. Outside of those regulations, women can apply for abortions for reasons ranging from an emotional or mental threat caused by the pregnancy or for not being married to the baby’s father. All women who seek to end a pregnancy must appear before a three-member committee to state their case, but 98 percent of requests are approved. Women under the age of 20 or over the age of 40 were also previously eligible for subsidized abortions, regardless of the reason.
With the newly amended health care package, however, funding will now be available for more than 6,000 additional women seeking to terminate their pregnancies, at the cost at some NIS 16 million ($4.6 million). No medical reason for the abortion is required.
Halevy, director general of Shaare Tzedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, rejects the idea that the health commission’s move is in any way radical, and is quick to point out that the boost in abortion funding is but one small piece of several alterations to Israel’s state-sponsored health care, ranging from mental health care to the treatment of diabetes and beyond.
“We want large families in Israel. We definitely encourage birth,” he says. “But when pregnancy occurs and it is undesired or inadvertent, I think we should supply the means to end the pregnancy properly." (Israel's Abortion Law Now Among World's Most Liberal.)
It matters not to the card-carrying “Christian Zionists” in the United States Congress and in the “conservative” media and blogosphere that Benjamin Netanyahu has the blood of the innocent on his hands or that he has made possible the shedding of more innocent blood even in his own country when his own health minister made it more possible to kill innocent preborn babies on demand in the Zionist State of Israel. For all the understandable concern about terrorist groups attacking Israeli civilians, you see, the Israelis themselves have killed more of their people than have the terrorists over the space of the past seventy-five years.
I suppose that the blood of innocent preborn Israeli babies is expendable whereas the blood innocent civilians after must be avenged by imposing death and destruction on other innocent human beings in the name of crushing a terrorist organization that is probably gaining more recruits by the day as the Israel campaign continues. Those who can discount the blood of innocent children should not expect others to have any more regard for their own lives than they have had for those butchered, dehumanized children.
Even just wars are chastisements from God to help men to quit their sins and to reform their lives, and it would be no exaggeration to state that the current conflict between the State of Israel and Hamas in which the armed forces of the United States of America have been inserted without any constitutional authorization from the Congress of the United States of America (that is, a declaration of war, not simply the passage of an appropriation bill to aid the State of Israel, which has plenty of arms and money of their very own) is in large part a chastisement upon the Israelis for the slaughter of their own babies, to say nothing of the manner in which the agenda of the homosexual collective has taken root in Israel, and for the disbelief of both the Israelis and the Mohammedans in Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Catholic Church, outside of which there can be no salvation nor any just social order within nations and peace among them.
The blood of innocent human beings from conception through death is on the hands of all the leaders of the so-called “civilized” West in addition to being on the hands of the likes of Communists such as Xi Jinping, Kim Jung Un, Nicolas Maduro, or Daniel Ortega, noting that a supposedly former Communist, Vladimir Putin, has the pronounced tendency to make his enemies just disappear after they have “accidents” of one kind or another, and that the celebrity stooge of globalism, Volodymyr Zelensky had has no problem shedding the blood of innocent Russians anymore than Putin has had with targeted innocent Ukrainians.
No kind of “peace” can be built on the shedding of innocent blood that is protected under the cover of the civil and deemed to be an “international human right” in the case of the global slaughter of innocent babies in their mothers’ wombs.
Conscious of the fact that we must make reparation for our sins, which deserve God’s chastisement as a means by which we can make reparation for them and to offer up our being reproved under His loving but just hand, we must pray always for the conversion of all men and all nations to the true Faith, begging Our Lady through her Most Holy Rosary for our own final perseverance so that we can pass through this mortal vale of tears into an unending Easter Sundy of glory in Paradise.
On the Feast of Saint Gertrude the Great
Saint Gertrude the Great is one of the greatest lights of the Order of Saint Benedict who was blessed with numerous mystical experiences that made her an Apostle of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus four centuries before Our Lord asked Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque to promote devotion to His Most Sacred Heart publicly and with a solemn liturgical feast to combat the coldness of Jansensism that had dried up the wellsprings of mercy and Christian compassion in the hearts of so many Catholics, especially in France and Ireland.
Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., summarized Saint Gertrude of Helfta’s life as follows in The Liturgical Year:
The school which is founded upon the rule of the great Patriarch of the Monks of the West began with St. Gregory the Great. Such was the independent action of the Holy Spirit who guided it that in it women have prophesied as well as men. It is enough to mention St. Hildegarde and St. Gertrude, with whom we may fitly associate St. Mechtilde and St. Frances of Rome. Anyone who has tried modern methods will find, on making acquaintance with these ancient writers, that he is breathing another atmosphere, and is urged onward by a gentle authority which is never felt but which allows no rest. He will not find that subtlety, that keen and learned analysis, he has met with elsewhere, and which rather weary than aid the soul.
The pious and learned Father Faber has brought out, with his characteristic sagacity, the advantages of that form of spirituality which gives the soul breadth and liberty, and so produces in many persons effects which some modern methods fail of producing: “No one,” says he, “can be at all acquainted with the old-fashioned Benedictine school of spiritual writers without perceiving and admiring the beautiful liberty of spirit which pervades and possesses their whole mind. It is just what we should expect from an order of such matured traditions. St. Gertrude is a fair specimen of them. She is thoroughly Benedictine … a spirit of breadth, a spirit of liberty, that is, the Catholic spirit; and it was eminently the badge of the old Benedictine ascetics. Modern writers for the most part have tightened things, and have lost by it instead of gaining. By frightening people, they have lessened devotion in extent; and by overstraining it, they have lowered it in degree.” (Faber, 1855, All for Jesus)
In any case, there are many ways, and every way is good which brings men back to God by a thorough conversion of heart. But we are sure that those who may be led to commit themselves to the guidance of a saint of the old school will not lose their time; and that if they meet with less philosophy and less psychology on their way, they will be subdued by the simplicity and authority of her language, and be moved and melted as they contrast their own souls with that of their saintly guide. And this blessed revolution will take place in almost every soul that follows St. Gertrude in the week of Exercises she proposes to them, if only they really desire to draw yet more closely the ties which unite them to God, if their intention be fixed aright, and their souls truly recollected in God. We may almost venture to assure such persons that they will come forth from these Exercises transformed in their whole being. They will return to them again and again with ever increasing pleasure; for they will have no discouraging memory of fatigue, nor of the slightest constraint laid upon their liberty of spirit. They will feel confounded, indeed, to be admitted so near the inmost heart of so great a saint; but they will also feel that they have been created for the same end as that saint, and that they must bestir themselves, and quit all easy, dangerous ways, which lead to perdition.
And if we be asked whence comes that wonderful influence which our Saint exercises over all who listen to her, our answer would be: from her surpassing holiness. She does not prove the possibility of spiritual movement and advance; she moves and advances. A blessed soul, sent down from heaven to dwell awhile with men, and speaking the language of the heavenly country in this land of exile, would doubtless utterly transform those who heard its speech. Now St. Gertrude was admitted to such familiar converse with the Son of God, that her words have just the accent of such a soul; and this is why they have been and are like winged arrows, which pierce and wound all within their range. The understanding is enlarged and enlightened by her pure and elevated doctrine, and yet St. Gertrude never lectures or preaches; the heart is touched and melted, and yet St. Gertrude speaks only to God; the soul judges itself, condemns itself, renews itself by compunction, and yet St. Gertrude has made no effort to move or convict it.
And if we ask what is the source of the special blessing attached to the language of St. Gertrude, the answer is that it blesses because it is so impregnated with the divine Word, not only with the revelations which St. Gertrude received from her heavenly Spouse, but with the sacred Scriptures and the liturgy of the Church. This holy daughter of the cloister drank in light and life day by day from the sources of all true contemplation, from the very fountain of living waters which gushes forth from the psalms and the inspired words of the divine Office. Her every sentence shows how exclusively her soul was nourished with this heavenly food. She so lived into the liturgy of the Church that we continually find in her revelations that the Savior discloses to her the mysteries of heaven, and the Mother of God and the saints hold converse with her on some Antiphon, or Response, or Introit, which the Saint is singing with delight, and of which she is striving to feel all the force and the sweetness.
Hence that unceasing flow of unaffected poetry which seems to have become quite natural to her, and that hallowed enthusiasm which raises the literary beauty of her writings almost to the height of mystical inspiration. This child of the thirteenth century, buried in a monastery of Suabia, preceded Dante in the paths of spiritual poetry. Sometimes her soul breaks forth into tender and touching elegy; sometimes the fire which consumes her bursts forth in transports of fervor; sometimes her feelings clothe themselves quite instinctively in a dramatic form; sometimes she stops short in her sublimest flights, and she who almost rivals the seraphim, descends to earth, but only to prepare herself for a still higher flight. It is as though there had been an unending struggle between the humility which held her prostrate in the dust and the aspirations of her soul, panting after Jesus, who was drawing her, and who had lavished on her such exceeding love.
In our opinion the writings of St. Gertrude lose nothing of their indescribable beauty, even when placed beside those of St. Teresa. Nay, we think that the saint of Germany is not unfrequently superior to her sister of Spain. The latter, full of impetuous ardor, has not, it is true, the tinge of pensive melancholy which colors the writings of the former; but St. Gertrude knew Latin so well, and was so profoundly versed in the letter and the spirit of the holy Scriptures, that we do not hesitate to pronounce her style superior in richness and in force to that of St. Theresa.
Still we pray the reader not to be frightened at the thought of being placed under the guidance of a seraph, when his conscience tells him that he has still so much to do in the purgative way, before he can venture to enter upon paths which may never open to him on earth. Let him simply listen to St. Gertrude, let him fix his eye upon her, and have faith in the end she proposes to him. When the holy Church puts in our mouths the language of the Psalms, she knows full well that that language is often far beyond the feelings of our soul; but if we wish to bring ourselves up to the level of these divine hymns, our best method is certainly to repeat them frequently in faith and humility, and await the transformation they will assuredly effect. St. Gertrude detaches us gently from ourselves, and brings us to Jesus by going before us herself, and by drawing us after her, though at a great distance. She goes straight to the heart of her divine Spouse, and she might well do so; but will it not be an inestimable blessing if she bring us to his feet like Magdalen, penitent and transformed by love?
Even when she writes for her sisters alone, let us not suppose that these exquisite pages are useless to those of us who are living in the midst of the world. The religious life, when expounded by such an interpreter, is a spectacle as instructive as it is striking. Need we say that the practice of the precepts of the Gospel becomes more easy to those who have well pondered and admired the practice of its counsels? What is the Imitation of Christ but a book written by a monk for the use of monks; and yet who is not familiar with its teaching? How many seculars delight in the writings of St. Teresa; and yet the holy Carmelitess makes the religious life the one theme of her teaching.
We will not now speak of her wonderful style of expression. We are so unused to the decided and elevated language of the ages of faith that some readers, accustomed to modern books alone, may be startled, and even pained, by St. Gertrude. But what is the remedy for this inconvenience? If we have unlearned the language of that antique piety which fashioned saints, surely our best way is to learn it again as soon as we can; and St. Gertrude will give us wonderful help in doing so.
The list of the devoted admirers of her writings would be long and imposing. But there is an authority far higher still—that of the Church herself. That mother of the faithful, ever guided by the Holy Ghost, has in her holy liturgy set her seal upon St. Gertrude. The Saint herself, and the spirit which animated her, are there forever recommended and glorified in the eyes of all Christians, in virtue of the solemn judgment contained in the Office of her festival. (Gueranger, Exercises of St Gertrude (1865), Preface.)
The life of Gertrude the Great, as she has merited to be distinguished among the Saints of the same name, was humble and obscure. (1256-1302). At five years of age she entered the Abbey of Helfta near Eisleben, and there she remained hidden in the secret of God’s face. (Psalm 30:21) For several centuries, by an error which has also found its way into the Legend of the feast, she was confounded with the Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn, who governed the monastery during our Saint’s lifetime, and was herself favored with divine gifts. It was not until Gertrude’s sublime Revelations, contained in the five books of the Legatus divinæ pietatis, or Legate of divine love, had at length been published, that in 1677 her name was inscribed in the Roman Martyrology. In the following century (1738) Clement XII ordered her feast to be celebrated, as a Double, by the whole Church. The West Indies chose her as patroness; and a town in New Mexico bears her name. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Time After Pentecost, Book IV, Volume 15, pp. 274-279.)
The Divine Office for the Feast of Saint Gertrude the Great contains a summary her life and incomparable work:
Gertrude was born of a noble family at Eisleben, in Saxony, (about the year of our Lord 1264.) At five years of age she offered her virginity and herself to Jesus Christ, in the Benedictine nunnery at Rodalsdorf. From that time forth she was utterly estranged from earthly things, ever striving for things higher, and began to lead a kind of heavenly life. To learning in human letters she added knowledge of the things of God. In the thought thereof she earnestly desired, and soon reached, the perfection of a Christian soul. Of Christ, and of the things in His life, she spoke oftentimes with movings of spirit. The glory of God was the one end of all her thoughts, and to that her every longing and her every act were given. Though God had crowned her with so many and so noble gifts both of nature and of grace, her belief regarding herself was so humble that she was used to number as among the greatest of the wonders of His goodness that He had always in His mercy borne with one who was so utterly unworthy.
In the thirtieth year of her age she was elected Abbess of Rodalsdorf, where she had professed herself in the religious life, and afterwards of Heldelfs. This office she bore for forty years in love, wisdom, and zeal for strict observance, so that the house seemed like an ideal example of a sisterhood of perfect nuns. To each one she was a mother and a teacher, and yet would be as the least of all, being in sooth in all lowliness among them as she that served. That she might be more utterly God's only, she tormented her body with sleeplessness, hunger, and other afflictions, but withal ever true to herself, stood forth a pattern of innocency, gentleness, and long-suffering. The salvation of her neighbours was her constant earnest endeavour, and her godly toil bore abundant fruit. The love of God oftentimes threw her into trances, and she was given the grace of the deepest contemplation, even to union of spirit with God.
Christ Himself, to show what such a bride was to Him, revealed that He had in the heart of Gertrude a pleasant dwelling-place. The Virgin Mother of God she ever sought with deep reverence as a mother and warden whom she had received from Jesus Himself, and from her she had many benefits. Toward the most Divine Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the sufferings of the Lord, her soul was moved with love and gratitude, so that she sometimes wept abundantly. She helped with daily gifts and prayers the souls of the just condemned to the purifying fire. She wrote much for the fostering of godliness. She was glorified also by revelations from God, and by the gift of prophecy. Her last illness was rather the wasting of a home-sickness to be with God than a decay of the flesh, and she left this life (to live the undying life in Him, upon the 17th day of November,) in the year of our Lord 1292. God made her bright with miracles both during her life and after her death. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Gertrude the Great.)
Father Andrew Prevot explained Saint Gertrude the Great’s intimacy with her Divine Spouse by recounting an exchange Our Lord had with her during one of her mystical experiences:
Now, as the end of time approaches, He says to us what He once announced by the beloved Apostle of His Sacred Heart [Saint Gertrude the Great]: "Let him who thirsts for happiness, grace, and peace, come to My Divine Heart, their source, and draw from it 'gratis' whatsoever he will. My merciful Heart, which desires before the end of time to glorify itself by a supreme manifestation, and to love men to the utmost bounds of affection, has arranged all for this end.
"Let these languid souls come only to Me, confide in My goodness, and abandon themselves to My love. Let them be at rest in the meekness of My Heart, unite themselves to My humility and obedience, and they will no longer feel the weight of My yoke through the abundant consolation with which I will favor them. Come, then, without fear or delay, and abandon yourselves lovingly and for ever unto Me." (Father Andre Prevot, Love, Peace and Joy: Devotion to the Sacred Heart According to St. Gertrude, published originally in 1911.)
Let us repose in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we approach this Font of Mercy and of Love through the Heart out of which It was formed, the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary. Let us accept the chastisement of the moment, a chastisement each of us deserves most richly because of our sins, and use it as a means of making reparation for our sins and those of the whole world by defending the Catholic Faith without any compromises with the naturalists of the false opposites of the "left" or of the "right." Let us proclaim Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order as we pray as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, seeking only to plant a few seeds as we give honor and glory to the Most Holy Trinity through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Saint Gertrude the Great will teach us humility as we approach the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. She will teach us to have gratitude for the graces that we have received as seek to imitate the meekness with which the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus bears with our offenses, our ingratitude, our lukewarmness, our inconstancy. She will teach us to imitate the mercy of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as we extend to others the same forgiveness that is given to us so freely in the Sacred Tribunal of Penance by an alter Christus acting in persona Christi.
Although we see dimly here in this life because of our fallen estate and the damage that we have done to our souls by means of our sins, our goal in life to see God clearly in Heaven. Saint Gertrude the Great will help us to see Him more clearly in this life if we place our trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that beats in unison with the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Saint Gertrude will teach us most especially to spend time with Our Beloved in His Real Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament. We receive infused graces from spending time with Our Eucharistic King. These infused graces will enlighten the mind and strengthen the will as our hearts are purified more and more to desire only the possession of the Most Blessed Trinity for all eternity in Heaven. Eucharistic piety is, of course, a very foretaste of the glories of Heaven itself.
Saint Gertrude adored Our Lord in His Real Presence in these words:
Hail, Most Glorious Body, a most precious Blood of my Lord Jesus Christ, here truly present beneath these sacramental species; I adore Thee with all that devotion and awe wherewith the nine choirs of angels worship and adore thee. I prostrate myself before Thee in the spirit of humility, believing and professing that Thou, my Lord and my God, are herein most truly contained.
Hail, most glorious Body of Jesus Christ my Saviour, true Victim immolated upon the cross. I adore Thee in union with that adoration with which Thy Humanity adored Thy Godhead, and I give Thee thanks with all the love of all thy creatures, that Thou dost deign to remain hidden in this tabernacle for our salvation.
Hail, compassionate Jesus, Word of the Father, Brightness of His glory, Ocean of pity, Salvation of the world, most august and sacred Victim. Hail, Jesus Christ, Splendour of the Father, Prince of Peace, Gate of Heaven, True Bread, Son of the Virgin, Shrine of the Godhead.
I most firmly believe that Thou, my God, are here present, and that Thou are looking out upon me from behind the veil of the sacrament, and dost behold all the most secret recesses of my heart. I believe that under this species of bread are contained not only Thy Flesh and Thy Blood, but also Thy Divinity and Thy Humanity. And although this mystery surpasses my understanding, I nevertheless believe it so firmly that I am ready to give my life and my blood in defense of its truth.
"For what fault have you suffered most?" He replied: "For self-will and self-opinionatedness; for when I did any kindness for others, I would not do as they wished, but as I wished myself; and so much do I suffer for this, that if the mental agonies of all mankind were united in one person, he would not endure more than I do at present." She replied: "And what remedy will be the most efficacious for you?" He answered: "To perform acts of the contrary virtue, and to avoid committing the same fault." "But, in the meantime," inquired Gertrude, "what will afford you the greatest relief?" He replied: "The fidelity which I practiced toward others when on earth consoles me most. The prayers which are offered continually for me by many friends solace me as good news would solace a person in affliction. Each tone of the chant at Mass, or in the vigils which are said for me, seem to me as a most delicious reflection. All that is done for me by others, with a pure intention for God's glory, such as working, and even sleeping or eating, affords me great relief and shortens my sufferings, on account of the fidelity with which I labored for others." (The Life and Revelations of Saint Gertrude the Great, republished by TAN Books and Publishers in 1987, p. 341.)
One of the great tragedies of the conciliar era is that the lives of such mystics as Saint Gertrude the Great have been obscured entirely and/or misrepresented and distorted to make them appear to be veritable prophets of the conciliar apostasies. Such efforts are hideous in the sight of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, which is why it is important for us to make reparation for our own many sins by pleading with Saint Gertrude the Great to help us remain ever steadfast in the true Faith by placing our own trust in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Which confided to her Its innermost secrets of love for us erring men.
Dom Prosper Gueranger’s prayer to Saint Gertrude the Great summarizes our need to rely upon the heavenly assistance of the holy Abbess of Helfta every day of our lives:
O revealer of the Sacred Heart, what better prayer could we offer in thine honor than to say with thee to the Son of the Blessed Virgin:
O thou my soul’s calm untroubled Light! O dawn of morning, soft-gleaming with thy beauteous light, become in me the perfect day. O my Love, who dost not only enlighten but deify, come unto me in all thy might; come and gently melt my whole being. May all that is of me be destroyed utterly; may I wholly pass into thee, so that I may no more find myself in time, but may be already and most intimately united to thee for all eternity.
Thou hast first loved me; it is thou who hast chosen me, and not I who have first chosen thee. Thou art he who of his own accord runneth towards his thirsting creature; and on thy kingly brow gleams the fair splendor of the everlasting light. Show me thy countenance, and let me gaze upon thy beauty. How mild and full of charms is that face, all radiant with the rosy light of the dawn of the divine Sun! How can the spark live and glow far from the fire that gave it being? Or how can the drop of water abide far from the spring from whence it was taken? O compassionate Love, why hast thou loved a creature so defiled and so covered with shame, but that thou hast willed to render it all fair in thee? O thou delicate flower of the Virgin Mary, thy goodness and thy tender mercy have won and ravished my heart. O Love, my glorious noontide, to take my rest in thee, gladly would I die a thousand deaths.
O Charity, O Love, at the hour of my death thou wilt sustain me with thy words, more gladdening far than choicest wine. Thou wilt then be my way, my unobstructed way, that I may wander no more nor stray. Thou wilt aid me then, O love, thou queen of heaven; thou wilt clear my way before me to those fair and fertile pastures hidden in the divine wilderness, and my soul shall be inebriate with bliss; for there shall I see the face of the Lamb, my Spouse and my God. O Love, who art God, thou art my best beloved possession. Without thee neither earth nor heaven could excite in me one hope, nor draw forth one desire: vouchsafe to effect and perfect within me that union which thou thyself desirest: may it be the end, the crown, and consummation of my being. In the countenance of my God thy light beameth soft and fair as the evening star. O thou fair and solemn Evening, let me see thy ray when my eve shall close in death.
O Love, thou much-loved Evening-tide, at that dread moment let the sacred flame, which burneth evermore in thy divine essence, consume all the stains of my mortal life. O thou my calm and peaceful Evening, when the evening-tide of my life shall come, give me to sleep in thee in tranquil sleep, and to taste that blissful rest which thou hast prepared in thyself for them that love thee. With thy serene, enchanting look vouchsafe to order all things and prepare all things for my everlasting espousal. O Love, be thou unto me an eventide so bright and calm that my ravished soul may bid a loving farewell to its body, and return to God who gave it, and rest in peace beneath thy beloved shadow!” (Gueranger, Exercises of St Gertrude, Ex. V, “To enkindle in the soul the love of God.”) (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Time After Pentecost, Book IV, Volume 15, pp. 274-279.)
May we beg Our Lady in these waning days of the liturgical year to help us to realize that the mysteries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that were revealed to Saint Gertrude the Great can provide us with much food for meditation every day as we pray her Most Holy Rosary, a fidelity to which, after all, is a sign of predestination to Heaven itself. This is why Catholics must, as consecrated slaves of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, always offer up everything they suffer and whatever good works they are able to do by means of the graces won for us by Our Lord and that flow into our hearts and souls through her own loving hands as the Mediatrix of All Graces.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Gertrude the Great, pray for us.