Venerable Gertrude van Oosten

The Venerable Gertrud e was born in Voorburch, a town in Holland situated at an equal distance from Delft and The Hague; her parents were simple peasants. Upon leaving childhood, she entered into service in Delft to provide for her subsistence. There she made the acquaintance of two other young domestic servants, as pious as she. When they had leisure time, the three friends would spend it singing on the city bridges a pious hymn beginning with these words: The Day rises in the East, in Dutch — Het daghet in den Oosten. — It is from the first noun of her hymn to God that the holy musician was called Gheertrude van Oosten, Gertrude of the East.

She had been betrothed to a young man who soon after abandoned her for a more fortunate rival. Our Saint returned good for evil: having indeed learned that she who had stolen the heart of her fiancé was being led to the gates of death by the pains of childbirth, she obtained from heaven both her delivery and her healing.

How many graces are attached to the forgiveness of offenses! Who knows if Gertrude of Oosten did not owe to this heroic forgetting of a particularly cruel kind of abandonment the exchange of her title as the wife of a perishable man for that of the bride of Jesus Christ?

Be that as it may, she entered the Begui nes and began a way of life even more perfect than the one she had led until then. Poor, she reduced herself to begging for her bread out of humility rather than necessity. Her needs, moreover, were reduced to very little, for early on she was favored with heavenly ecstasies, and more than once she remained for six weeks in a row in her little room, enraptured in heaven, a stranger to the earth. When she went out, the sweet odor of her virtues followed her. She took pleasure in visiting the servants whose condition she had shared and in speaking words of consolation as well as edification to them. When those whom she encouraged to lead a pure and fervent life said to her: "How are we to live?" she would answer them: "To serve God, it is enough to have good will and fingers that know how to hold a spindle."

She had thus lived for seven years in vigils and fasting. The demon could not see such persevering virtue without jealousy; having been unable to disturb her mind with impure thoughts and images, he attacked her in a tangible way: he went so far as to strip her of her cloak, to shake her violently by the arms, to lift her into the air and let her fall back down. But the arm of the Lord sustained her in these falls. Gertrude passionately loved little children; once, therefore, the devil took the form of one of these earthly angels and appeared to her all in tears; but the servant of God recognized the trap and repelled the tempter.

She practiced meditating every day on the Passion of Jesus Christ and the principal mysteries of our faith, according to the order of the times in which the Church celebrates them. She especially delighted in contemplating Jesus in the mysteries of his childhood.

This devotion to the Holy Childhood, which was to be renewed three c enturies later by the community of the Carmelites of Beaune, and which was to receive its full flowering in the 19th century, earned the little servant of Jesus Christ, Gertrude van Oosten, the most signal favors of the divine child.

And wonders followed wonders in this humble existence that delighted the choirs of Angels with admiration. On the evening of Maundy Thursday in the year 1340, she was immersed, with Jesus in Gethsemane, in the contemplation of the sufferings of her Savior, when suddenly she felt five pricks in both hands, both feet, and her side, then a stream of vermilion blood flowed from these five wounds: these were the stigmata of H is Passion with which J esus Christ had just marked His servant. The next day and the following days, the blood flowed seven times in the same day: the flow coincided with the seven canonical hours. This marvel attracted a large number of pilgrims and an even greater number of curious onlookers to the cell of the poor Beguine. Fearing therefore that a feeling of vain complacency might slip into her soul, she prayed to her Lord and her God to put an end to these visits, by withdrawing these sacred wounds from her. Our Lord granted her request and only the imprint of the stigmata remained on Gertrude. She lived for another eighteen years from that moment; but her body remained so weak that she had to take three breaks to get from her cell to the church.

It was in the final period of her life that she had the prescience of the future and a distinct view of events occurring far from her, for example, the battle fought in 1351, on the banks of the Meuse, between the Empress-Duchess and her son William. She read into consciences and more than once she used this gift of clear sight to bring back sinners or to reassure newly converted souls about their state. Her confessor—a holy man—intended to buy a house in Delft: "Do not be in a hurry," Gertrude told him, "for it will not be long before there are many houses for sale here, and at a low price." Indeed, a year after the death of the Saint, who was born for heaven on January 6, 1358, Albert of Bavaria came to lay siege to this city and caused the price of pr operties to drop. This prophecy was fulfilled in 1359. At the moment of expiring, she cried out: "My sisters, I am going home." As it was pointed out to her that she was already there, she replied: "It is not of this one that I speak, but of the house whose paving stones are of gold." She was buried in the parish cemetery, at the foot of the tower of the old church of Delft, on the south side.

We have extracted this Life from the Acta Sanctorum.