15/11/2025
Saints Margaret of Scotland &
Gertrude the Great, pray for us!
Today, November 16, we remember Saints Margaret of Scotland and Gertrude the Great.
Saint Margaret's name signifies “pearl”, “a fitting name” says Theodoric, her confessor and her first biographer, “for one such as she.” Her soul was like a precious pearl. A life spent amidst the luxury of a royal court never dimmed its luster, or stole it away from him who had bought it with His blood. She was the granddaughter of an English king; and in 1070 she became the bride of Malcolm, and reigned Queen of Scotland until her death in 1093.
How did she become a saint in a position where sanctity is so difficult? First, she burned with zeal for the house of God. She built churches and monasteries; she busied herself in making vestments; she could not rest until she saw the laws of God and his Church observed throughout her realm. Next, amidst a thousand cares, she found time to converse with God—ordering her piety with such sweetness and discretion that she won her husband to sanctity like her own. He used to rise with her at night for prayer. He loved to kiss the holy books she used, and sometimes he would steal them away, and bring them back to his wife covered with jewels. Lastly, with virtues so great, she wept constantly over her sins, and begged her confessor to correct her faults. Saint Margaret did not neglect her duties in the world because she was not of it. Never was there a better mother nor queen. She spared no pains in the education of her eight children, and their sanctity was the fruit of her prudence and her zeal. She was the most trusted counselor of her husband, and she labored for the material improvement of the country. But, in the midst of the world’s pleasures, she sighed for the better country, and accepted death as a release. On her deathbed she received the news that her husband and her eldest son were slain in battle. She thanked God, who had sent this last affliction as a penance for her sins. After receiving Viaticum, she was heard repeating the prayer from the Missal, “O Lord Jesus Christ, who by your death did give life to the world, deliver me.” At the words “deliver me”, says her biographer, she took her departure to Christ, the Author of true liberty.
[Saint Gertrude the Great]
Gertrude was born in the year 1256 at Eisleben in Germany, of a noble Saxon family, andat the age of five placed for education in the Benedictine abbey of Helfta in Saxony. Her strong mind was carefully cultivated, and she wrote Latin with unusual elegance and force; above all, she was perfect in humility and mortification, in obedience, and in all monastic observance. Her life was crowded with wonders. In obedience, she recorded some of her visions, in which she traces in words of indescribable beauty the intimate converse of her soul with Jesus and Mary. Gertrude had her first vision of Christ at the age of twenty-six. Her mystical experiences are recorded in her Book of Extraordinary Graces. She joined Saint Mechtilde in writing prayers to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She was gentle to all, most gentle to sinners; filled with devotion to the Saints of God, to the souls in purgatory, and above all to the Passion of our Lord and to His sacred Heart. She ruled her abbey with perfect wisdom and love for forty years. Saint Teresa of Avila sought her intercessory prayer often. Her life was one of great and almost continual suffering, and her longing to be with Jesus was not granted until 1302.
