The rule of St. Benedict for a daily life, learning to listen to God with a discerning heart.

I'm Chris McGregor.

Trust Before God, Episode 38.

We now stay with St. Gertrudeau the Great, but we moved more directly into the trust that

marks her whole spiritual life. That trust didn't arise in a vacuum. It grew in a Benedictine

world of liturgy, scripture, adoration, and long fidelity, and it became more and more deeply

centered on the mercy of Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI's, noted that St. Gertrude's spirituality is deeply biblical, liturgical,

patristic, and Benedictine, and that a relationship with the Lord is marked by a particularly

vivid love for his humanity and his heart. For St. Gertrude,

trust is the soul's answer to a mercy that has already been offered. She doesn't place the weight

on the soul's ability to reach God. She places it on Christ, who has already drawn near,

already loved, and already opened his heart.

That is why her confidence is so tender and so strong.

From the writings of St. Gertrude the Great,

The soul that places its trust in God finds him more ready to forgive than the soul is to ask.

St. Gertrude's clarity here is so beautiful because it cuts through one of the deepest fears in the spiritual life.

So many souls still approach God as though he were reluctant,

easily offended, or slow to receive them. St. Gertrude doesn't speak that way. She presents

him as already turned toward the sinner in mercy. The soul doesn't have to overcome God's resistance. It has to let go of its

own hesitation. That is where trust begins, not in self-confidence, and not in the illusion that sin

doesn't matter, but in the truth of who God is. The heart comes before him as it is, with weakness, shame,

...