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The Herald of Divine Love (Classics of Western Spirituality), by Gertrude of Helfta. Paulist Press, 1992.
From her entrance to the Benedictine abbey of Helfta near Eisleben in Saxony, as a child of four in 1260, until her twenty-sixth year, Gertrude lived what she was later to consider a lax and worldly life, following the monastic observance outwardly, but applying her brilliant mind and boundless enthusiasm to secular studies. Then, when she was twenty-five, all was changed. The Lord
appeared to her in the form of a beautiful youth inviting her to a conversion of life and to close union with himself. Thenceforth for Gertrude God was all, and her neighbor all in God, and she flung herself into his service with the same wholeheartedness which she had previously brought to her secular studies. She was continually granted extraordinary mystical favors, including an intense awareness of God's loving presence in her soul; and despite her great humility and consequent reluctance
she understood that she had been granted these graces for the good of others and was therefore required to make them known.
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St. Agnes: January 21. d. 258.
Almost nothing is known of this saint except that she was very young—12 or 13—when she was martyred in the last half of the third century. Various modes of death have been suggested—beheading, burning, strangling.
Legend has it that Agnes was a beautiful girl whom many young men wanted to marry. Among those she refused, one reported her to the authorities for being a Christian. She was arrested and confined to a house of prostitution. The legend continues that a man who looked upon her lustfully lost his sight and had it restored by her prayer. Agnes was condemned, executed, and buried near Rome in
a catacomb that eventually was named after her. The daughter of Constantine built a basilica in her honor.
Calendar of Saints
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