The One Thing Necessary

The impressionist painter Claude Monet said, “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” I can easily imagine God voicing a variation of this sentiment: “Everyone discusses the nature of my being and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

Many Christological and Trinitarian treatises, books, and homilies have been written through the centuries. However, Richard Rohr, OFM, says that we come to know God by loving God. St. Gertrude the Great, whose Feast we celebrate today, demonstrated the truth of that insight. St. Gertrude is usually depicted holding a heart because of her mystical connection to the heart of Jesus, which is a clear and vivid image of Christ who became flesh out of love for us.

While some of the saints leave us with an impression of a rather severe, joyless life, Gertrude saw herself as “happy, carefree, and liberated.” Her wholehearted devotion to God allowed her to empty herself to make possible the Spirit’s in-dwelling, which gave her an inner freedom to overcome fear and worries and unconditionally follow her convictions.

We might not have mystical visions as St. Gertrude did, but we can follow her example of emptying ourselves of all that keeps us from God so we can love God wholeheartedly and without fear. Then we too will bear great fruit and, as it says of the wholehearted in Psalm 37, God will watch over our lives and give us an inheritance that lasts forever—an inheritance in the life and love of the Trinity.