Chapter 42: For the Tuesday in Whitsun Week

How the Sacred Host supplies for all our negligences, and how the Holy Spirit unites Himself in Communion to holy souls.

ON Tuesday in Whitsun week, St. Gertrude offered the Host to God, in satisfaction and reparation for her defi ciency in gratitude for the favour which He had bestowed on her of uniting her more closely to Himself than others, and because she had not detached herself from everything else to attach herself entirely to Him. And as she did this with a perfect and full intention of suffering the penalty which she considered due to her negligence and weakness, our Lord — who is full of goodness, and who esteems a good will even as an act * — appeared fully satisfied ; and the Holy Spirit, concentrating all the virtues of this most Holy Sacrament, entered with the Host into the soul of Gertrude at the moment of Communion ; and God then united Himself closely and inseparably to her.