Novenas
Novena to St Gertrude The Great
The full novena to St Gertrude the Great — the prayer for the souls in Purgatory popularly attributed to her, the nine days' devotion, and the life of the Benedictine mystic of the Sacred Heart, kept before her feast on 16 November.
The novena to St Gertrude the Great is nine days of prayer to the Benedictine mystic of Helfta — the great saint of the Sacred Heart and of the holy souls — carrying at its heart her celebrated prayer for the souls in Purgatory: "Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus." It is prayed above all for the dead, and for our own union with the Heart of Jesus in life and death, and it is commonly kept over the nine days before her feast on 16 November — that is, from 7 to 15 November. Below we give the complete devotion: the daily prayer to St Gertrude, her famous prayer for the holy souls, the nine days' meditations, and the life of the saint the Church calls "the Great."
The heart of the devotion: St Gertrude and the holy souls
St Gertrude the Great is loved by ordinary Catholics above all for one short prayer. Popular devotion attributes this prayer to her and holds that Our Lord promised her that a great multitude of souls would be released from Purgatory each time it was said with a devout heart — the number commonly given as a thousand. We cannot verify either the prayer or the promise in the text of her Herald of Divine Love; it is a pious attribution, not a proved one.
The Church has never defined this promise as a matter of faith, and no prayer binds the mercy of God to a fixed count; but the prayer itself is entirely sound, for it offers the Father the Precious Blood of His Son in union with every Mass on earth, which is the surest of all pleas for the dead. Pray it as a true act of charity toward the departed, not as an arithmetic, and it will not return empty. If you are new to these devotions, see first our guide to what is a novena.
The full novena to St Gertrude the Great
Each of the nine days, begin and end with the Sign of the Cross, and say the following prayers, adding the day's meditation and your own intention. These prayers are a devotional composition, with no liturgical text and no approval of their own; the Church's prayer for her feast is the collect of 16 November.
Opening
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Lord Jesus, in union with that love which drew Thee down upon earth, and caused Thee to fulfil the work of our Redemption, I offer Thee this prayer.
The prayer to St Gertrude
O blessed St Gertrude, permit us to choose thee as a perfect model of those virtues which God requires, especially from all religious, that assisted by thy prayers, we may correspond with the grace of our vocation.
O seraphic spouse of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, thou didst early select that adorable sanctuary for thy dwelling and refuge. There thy angelic soul was purified, and raised by sublime contemplation to an intimate union with thy Divine Spouse. In that furnace of Eternal Love, where thy heart was consumed, and all thy sacrifices rewarded, thou didst enjoy a foretaste of Paradise, and such sweet consolations as seemed rather the portion of the blessed in Heaven than of the elect on Earth.
O favourite of Heaven, well didst thou feel how sweet it is to serve God, despising the world. Obtain for us, we beseech thee, the grace to love God as thou didst love Him, to serve Him as thou didst serve Him, and to be wholly His in life and in death. (Here name your intention.)
Present now, dear saint, our earnest petition to Jesus, and ask Him to unite us in life and in death to His Adorable Heart; who with the Father liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, world without end. Amen.
The prayer of St Gertrude for the souls in Purgatory
This is the prayer for which the saint is best known, though its attribution to her is popular rather than proved. It is said each of the nine days:
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal Church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.
A prayer for oneself
Then, asking through her for our own soul, we may add:
Accept, O compassionate Jesus, this my prayer with that exceeding love wherewith Thou didst endure a bitter Death, and didst offer it, together with all the fruit of Thy most sacred Humanity, to God the Father on the day of Thine Ascension; and by the depth of those Wounds which scarred Thy Flesh and pierced Thy Hands and Feet and Heart, I beseech Thee, raise me up, who am steeped and sunk in sin, and render me well-pleasing to Thee in all things. Amen.
Closing
St Gertrude the Great, pray for us.
Say three times each: Our Father… Hail Mary… Glory be…
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The nine days' meditations
Add one of these each day, following the ascent of St Gertrude's own life from the cloister school to her death in the Heart of Christ.
Day 1 — The child of Helfta
St Gertrude entered the monastery school at five years old and grew up in the shadow of the altar. We ask, through her, the grace to love God from the ground of an innocent and studious heart, and we name our intention.
Day 2 — The bride of Christ
She gave herself wholly to God in the Benedictine life. We ask the grace to answer our own vocation, whatever it be, with an undivided heart.
Day 3 — The first vision
In her twenty-sixth year Our Lord broke into her life and drew her from mere learning into living union with Him. We ask to be turned from the surface of things to the presence of God within.
Day 4 — Holy friendship
With St Mechtild at her side she was helped and helped in return. We ask for holy friends and for the grace to be one, that we may draw one another to Heaven.
Day 5 — The faithful servant
Hidden in the round of the choir and the cloister, she served God without display. We ask fidelity in the small and unseen duties of each day.
Day 6 — The writings
From her union with Christ came the Herald of Divine Love, a fountain of doctrine for the whole Church. We ask that our own graces overflow to the good of others.
Day 7 — Charity to the suffering
She poured out her prayer for sinners and for the holy souls in Purgatory. We ask a wide and pitying charity, and we pray now especially for the dead.
Day 8 — The Sacred Heart
She rested in the wounded Heart of Jesus as her home. We ask to make that Heart our refuge in every trouble.
Day 9 — A holy death
She died in the embrace of the Divine Spouse she had loved so long. We ask the grace of final perseverance and a death in the friendship of God.
The novena for the holy souls in Purgatory
Because St Gertrude's prayer is offered first of all for the dead, her novena is one of the great devotions for the holy souls, and it falls fittingly in November, the Church's month of the faithful departed. Many pray it precisely as a novena for the dead — for a parent, a spouse, a friend, or for the souls no one else remembers. Name them each day within her prayer. The Precious Blood offered in union with the Masses of the whole world is the most powerful suffrage we can raise for them. For a devotion given wholly to the departed, see also our novena for the dead, and, for the same offering of the Blood of Christ, the Precious Blood novena.
The novena to St Gertrude for a specific intention
While the holy souls hold first place, St Gertrude may be asked for any grace. She was, in her own century, one of the earliest and purest apostles of devotion to the Sacred Heart — long before that devotion was spread through the world by St Margaret Mary. To bring her a personal petition is to place it in the Heart of Jesus through one who lived within it. Name your request within the prayer above, and join it, if you can, to the wider devotion of the novena to the Sacred Heart or the novena to the Immaculate Heart, whose treasures St Gertrude first opened to the Church.
How to pray this novena
The word novena comes from the Latin novem, nine, and recalls the nine days the Apostles and Our Lady spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost. To keep this one well:
- Begin on 7 November so that the ninth day falls on the eve of her feast, 15 November, and you come to 16 November having completed it. It may of course be prayed at any time of year, and especially in November for the dead.
- Pray at a fixed hour each day, the same prayers, naming the same intention throughout.
- Offer it with the Mass where you can — the prayer itself is joined to "the Masses said throughout the world," so to hear or offer a Mass for your intention crowns the devotion.
- Pray in submission. Ask plainly, but leave the measure of the answer to God: for the living, the grace He knows is best; for the dead, the swiftest entry into His peace.
Who is St Gertrude the Great?
According to the received account, St Gertrude was born on the feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 1256, in the heart of Germany; of her parentage and birthplace nothing certain has come down to us. At the age of five she was given to the monastery of Helfta, in Saxony, then a famous house of Benedictine nuns living under Cistercian influence, and educated in its school under the abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn. There she remained her whole life, a scholar of unusual gifts, steeped in Latin and Scripture — and, though she is often called an abbess by confusion with that elder Gertrude, she was in truth a simple choir nun to the end.
In her twenty-sixth year, in 1281, according to her own account, Our Lord appeared to her for the first time, and from that day the learned nun became a great mystic. Under the guidance of her friend and teacher St Mechtild, she entered upon that "nuptial" union with Christ which fills her writings, and she was granted a lifetime of visions. Above all she was drawn into the mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus — she is, with St Mechtild, among the first saints to whom that devotion was revealed, four centuries before it was given in fuller form to St Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial. From her union with Christ came the Herald of Divine Love (the Legatus Divinae Pietatis) and her Spiritual Exercises, which remain among the treasures of Catholic mystical writing.
She died at Helfta on 17 November 1302. Her cult was old and continuous; Pope Innocent XI inscribed her name in the Roman Martyrology in 1677, and Clement XII extended her feast to the universal Church, fixing it on 16 November, where the traditional 1962 calendar keeps it. She is the only woman saint the Church commonly honours with the title "the Great." She is invoked as a patroness of the souls in Purgatory, and by tradition of the West Indies.
Her whole life is a single lesson: that the way into the Heart of God is love, and that this love overflows upon the living and the dead. Among the other great women of prayer she stands near St Teresa of Avila, and, in her own Benedictine family, beside St Scholastica under the Rule of St Benedict.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is St Gertrude the Great?
She is a German Benedictine nun and mystic of the monastery of Helfta (1256–1302), one of the earliest apostles of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the author of the Herald of Divine Love. She is the only woman saint ordinarily called "the Great," and is best known today for her prayer for the souls in Purgatory.
What is the St Gertrude prayer for the souls in Purgatory?
It is the prayer that begins "Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory…" It offers the Precious Blood of Christ, joined to every Mass on earth, for the dead, for sinners, and for our own households. It is the heart of her novena and may be said on its own at any time.
Does the St Gertrude prayer really release 1,000 souls from Purgatory?
Popular devotion — not a text we can verify in her writings — holds that Our Lord promised the release of a great number of souls — commonly given as a thousand — each time the prayer is said devoutly. This is a pious belief, not a defined doctrine, and no prayer binds God to a fixed number. Pray it as a genuine act of love for the dead; its power lies in the Precious Blood it offers, not in counting.
When is St Gertrude the Great's feast day?
Her feast is kept on 16 November, both in the traditional 1962 calendar and today. She died on 17 November 1302; the feast was fixed on the 16th and extended to the whole Western Church by Pope Clement XII. The novena is therefore prayed from 7 to 15 November.
What is St Gertrude the Great the patron saint of?
She is invoked as a patroness of the souls in Purgatory above all, because of her great charity toward the dead, and by long tradition also of the West Indies. More widely she is a patroness of nuns and of all who seek union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Can I pray the St Gertrude novena at any time, or only in November?
You may pray it at any time of year for any intention. But it falls most naturally in November, the month of the holy souls, and is commonly kept over the nine days before her feast on the 16th. Praying it for the dead in November unites your suffrages with the whole Church's remembrance of the departed.
How is St Gertrude connected to the Sacred Heart?
She is one of the first saints to whom devotion to the Sacred Heart was revealed. Her visions centre on resting within the wounded Heart of Jesus as in a home, and her writings opened that mystery to the Church long before it was given in its familiar form to St Margaret Mary in the seventeenth century. To pray her novena is to enter the same devotion at its source.
The Iter Fidei app carries this novena — St Gertrude's prayer for the holy souls, the daily prayer, and the nine days — with day-by-day reminders and audio, in Latin and your own language. Join early access here.
Sources. The Life and Revelations of St Gertrude the Great (Herald of Divine Love) and her Spiritual Exercises; the devotional novena prayer to St Gertrude and the prayer for the souls in Purgatory attributed to her (Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood) as carried in prayer-books; the feast of St Gertrude the Great (16 November), extended to the universal Church by Pope Clement XII; her inscription in the Roman Martyrology by Pope Innocent XI (1677).