On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis
released his encyclical, Dilexit Nos (“He Loved Us), on the Sacred Heart
of Jesus. In the letter, he recounts “Saint Gertrude of Helfta, a Cisterian
nun, tells of a time in prayer when she reclined her head on the heart of
Christ and heard it beating.”[1]
She wondered why the Gospel of John does not describe a similar spiritual experience,
and concluded that “the sweet sound of those heartbeats has been reserved for
modern times, so that, hearing them, our aging and lukewarm world may be
renewed in the love of Christ.”[2]
The pope concludes in the letter that this might hold for our times too. I
contend that Gertrud’s spirituality can speak to the current modern age, in
which that of Gertrud—the thirteenth century—hardly seems modern, but not in
terms of focusing on Jesus’ resurrected heart; instead, Gertrud can point us
beyond the limits of marital-union imagery with Jesus to experience that
transcends the use of imagery that may say more about us and our world than
that which transcends even the limits of the human imagination. Turning to the
criticisms of Gertrud’s spirituality (and intelligence) by Thomas Merton and William
James, I intend to salvage Gertrud in order to uncover her spiritual maturity.
The full essay is at "Faith Seeking Understanding."
1. Pope
Francis, Dilexit Nos, October 24, 2024, para. 98.
2. Ibid.
