The Prayer of St. Gertrude the Great

This prayer is one of the most famous of the prayers for souls in purgatory. St. Gertrude the Great was a Benedictine nun and mystic who lived in the thirteenth century. According to tradition, our Lord promised her that 1000 souls would be released from purgatory each time it is said devoutly. 

Eternal Father, I offer Thee 

the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, 

in union with the masses said throughout the world today, 

for all the holy souls in purgatory, 

for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, 

those in my own home and within my family. 

Amen.

If you say this prayer devoutly 5 times each day, then in a year you help release 1,825,000 souls from purgatory.

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A brief information about St. Gertrude the Great 

(1256-1301)

Born on 6 January 1256, on the feast of the Epiphany in Eisleben in Thuringia. Gertrude join Cistercian monastery school of Helfta in Saxony at 5, and since then as "Gertrude of Helfta". She was a woman of vast knowledge and intellect, spending most of her youth dedicated to her education. On 27 January 1281, Gertrude saw Jesus in the form of a marvellous adolescent and He said to her, "I have come to comfort you and bring you salvation". By this event's remembrance, Gertrude wrote, "Jesus, my Redeemer, you have lowered my indomitable head to your gentle yoke, preparing for me the medicine suited to my weakness" and after which, she was solely devoted with living in full intimate communion with Jesus (the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In another message Jesus reveal and said to her, "It would be good to make known to men and women how they would benefit from remembering that I, the Son of God and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, always stand before God for the salvation of the human race, and that should they commit some sin through their weakness, I offer my unblemished Heart to the Father for them". 

Gertrude transformed all this into an apostolate as she devoted herself to writing and popularizing the truth of faith with clarity and simplicity, with grace and persuasion, serving the Church faithfully and lovingly so as to be helpful to and appreciated by theologians and devout people. In one vision, Jesus said to her, "He longs for someone to ask Him to release souls from purgatory", just as a king who imprisons a friend for justice's sake hopes that someone will beg for mercy for his friend and he ended the message with, "I accept with highest pleasure what is offered to Me for the poor souls, for I long inexpressibly to have near Me those for whom I paid so great a price. By the prayers of thy loving soul, I am induced to free a prisoner from purgatory as often as thou dost move thy tongue to utter a word of prayer." In a following message to Gertrude he gave Gertrude a prayer that would release 1000 Souls from Purgatory every time it is said with love and devotion. "Eternal Father, I offer You the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus Christ, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, those in the Universal Church, in my home, and in my family."

16 November is dedicated to the feast celebration in honour of St.Gertrude the Great in remembrance of her death.. In preparation of her death, St Gertrude wrote: "O Jesus, you who are immensely dear to me, be with me always, so that my heart may stay with you and that your love may endure with me with no possibility of division; and bless my passing, so that my spirit, freed from the bonds of the flesh, may immediately find rest in you. Amen" n 1301, she was call back to her bridegroom to rejoined Him in His eternal Kingdom. Pope Benedict XIV gave her the title "the Great" to distinguish her from Abbess Gertrude of Hackeborn and in recognition of St.Gertrude's deep spiritual and theological insight. St. Gertrude is the only woman among the saints to be called "the Great".