O Adonai

O ADONAI, Ruler of the house of Israel, Who in the burning bush appeared to Moses and on Sinai gave him the Law, come!  Stretch forth your arm to redeem us!
 
 
St. Gertrude’s entire spirituality was shaped by the liturgy and flowed from it.  Adoration and endless praise, the wonderful tabernacle, the sanctuary of the heart, the cry of Holy, Holy, Holy, the fire and the cloud---this was the world in which she flourished.  Her recorded experiences of the mysteries of Christ’s life as it unfolds in the liturgical year attest to the spiritual depths to which the liturgy brought her.  In Gertrude we find an acute sense of the whole cosmos around God: Mary, the angels, the saints, the souls in purgatory, the Church on earth.  This world of relationships was constantly open to her, and through the liturgical cycle she became familiar with all the precious moments and persons of Sacred History.  To Moses of the burning bush and of Sinai she prays:
“O Moses, dear to God, obtain for me that spirit of mildness, peace, and charity which made you worthy to hold discourse face to face with the Lord of majesty.”

And before the God of the burning bush and of Sinai she loses herself in wonder praying:
“O Adonai, blessed are you in the firmament of heaven. Let all the marrow and virtue of my spirit bless you. Let all the substance of my soul and body bless you. Let all that is within me glorify you….When, oh when will my soul go into the place of your wonderful tabernacle so that my mouth may praise you along with these most blessed ones, proclaiming in great merriment for eternity ‘holy, holy, holy’ before your face.”

Let us trust with Gertrude that God will stretch forth his arm to redeem us from our narrow vision; that he will open to us the real world of his countless friends who are also our friends to whom we can turn for help and care; and that every day he will bring us  into the wide open spaces of his Heart through the prayer of the Church and the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.