ABSTRACT
Similarly ambiguous but particularly arresting are Gertrud' s accounts of experiencing rhythmic pulsation emanating from the divine Heart. In Book I the Lord tells someone who was praying for Gertrud, "I am wholly hers; for I have given myself up to her embraces with complete delight. The love of my godhead has united her inseparably to me . . . The beatings of her heart are unceasingly mingled with the beatings of my love. But I am holding back the full force of my own heart-beats until the hour of her death" (1.3 .4). Book III relates how "the Lord let her lie on his Heart, so that the heart of her soul was placed next to his divine Heart. When her soul had taken sweet rest there for a while, she felt in the Lord' s Heart two wonderful and intensely delightful beats" (III.5 1 . 1) . She approaches the Lord, who "showed her a truly lovely resting-place prepared at his right hand, saying to her: 'Come, my chosen one, repose above my Heart and prove whether my restless love may allow you to rest. ' And when she had thus reclined above the honey-sweet Heart of the Lord [she] was experiencing its most delightful heartbeats quite powerfully" (III.52.3). On another occasion, in a passage that epitomizes Gertrud' s impulsive fervor, we are told how she, "dashing between the Lord's hands in fervor of spirit, fled to that sweetest Heart in which she knew lay concealed abundance of all good, searching to know what was his most praiseworthy will. Receiving her courteously and gently embracing her the Lord laid her to rest on his Heart" (III.53 . 1 ) .
