ARE YOU AMONG THE SOULS OUR LORD PROMISED SAINT MECHTILDE WOULD NEVER BE SEPARATED FROM HIM?

St Mechtilde was a German Benedictine nun who lived in a cloistered convent in the latter part of the 1200s. She lived a hidden life, her body wrapped in the folds of her blackest-of-black habit, but Our Lord afforded her the most colorful visions and revelations. After Our Lord had privileged her with unique insights, she turned 50, and she was devastated to find out that the two nuns who she had believed were her trusted friends - in whom she had confided the revelations given her by Our Lord Jesus - had in fact gone behind her back and had written a book with all the juicy details from her talks with Our Lord!

The book they had cobbled together was complete with an exact transcript of the dialogue between Our Lord and Mechtilde. After Our Lord had spoken to Mechtilde, Mechtilde confided the conversations to two other nuns who in turn wrote down the mystical conversation word for word, but without Mechtilde's consent. When Mechtilde confronted the other nuns, they were diffident and told her to ask Our Lord, Who, they were sure would enlighten Mechtilde as to why they had seemingly conspired against her.

All the same the two other nuns' lack of forthcoming (and the small fact that they had broken her trust) left Mechtilde very shaken and very hurt. Nonetheless she did as they suggested, and she had a vision of Our Lord Who had in His hand the book of her revelations written by the two other nuns,  and He told Mechtilde that this book had been written in accordance with His will, "All this has been committed to writing by My will and inspiration."  Christ enlightened her that because it was within His will she had no basis to be hurt, "You have no cause to be troubled about it." He gently told her that the revelations given her were not for her alone, but were to help as many souls as possible, and Our Lord even told her that the book scribbled without her knowledge was to be called, The Book of Special Grace.

Among these sterling revelations are those concerning souls such as you and I who may be devoted to the Holy Face. Our Lord declared to Mechtilde that of the souls who honor His Holy Face, "Not one of them shall be separated from Me." More than 500 years later when Our Lord spoke to the French nun, Sr Mary of St Peter He elaborated on how precisely these souls were not to be separate from Him, He told Sr Mary that, He will defend such souls before His Father. Sr Mary related that at the time of their death, "He will purify their souls by effacing all the blots of sin and will restore them their primitive beauty."  That which Our Lord told Mechtilde and Sr Mary of St Peter are the same: He will not allow souls devoted to His Holy Face to be separate from Him because He will blot out their sin, which otherwise would separate them from Him.

In this revelation, Mechtilde was, like Gertrude the Great, another forerunner of Sr Mary of St Peter, because Gertrude was told that those who honor the Holy Face are given a bright ray of Jesus's Divinity.  But Mechtilde and Gertrude were not strangers. They were the opposite. Mechtilde was the spiritual mother of Gertrude. You see, as a little girl of 5, Gertrude came to live in Mechtilde's convent and from that time Gertrude was under Mechtilde's black-cloaked wing. There's more: one of the two other nuns who wrote that book without the permission of Mechtilde was none other than Gertrude.