Here is a poor French Visitandine, of the rank of servants, who had the pains of the Passion.
Daughter of honest merchants, Gertrude Elisabeth d’Origny was born in Troyes. Entering the monastery of Saint-Denis, near Paris, she spent her life in the kitchen and other manual offices. Favored by an extraordinary gift of prayer, she was so absorbed in God that she had difficulty explaining what was going on in her. Her confessor, fearing some illusion, advised her to pray the mysteries of the Passion. She went, at the end of the confessional, to throw herself at the feet of the crucifix which was in the cloister, and there she received an impression so strong of the sufferings of Jesus crucified that, in a transport of love, she was not to be without a single moment of suffering. From that moment, sciatica and cruel pains of gout became her share and never left her.
She often came back to pray and meditate at the foot of the same crucifix. One day when she was there, immersed in a deep contemplation, she heard this word inwardly: Thou shalt crown me with flowers, and I will crown you with thorns. Since then, with the permission of her superior, she adorned her dear cross with bouquets; and every Friday, from noon to three o’clock, she burned a candle in front, to honor the agony of our Lord. This divine master had remarked to her that this devotion would be very agreeable to Him, and that he would give particular graces to the persons who would contribute to it.
One evening, Sister Gertrude learned that the Reverend Benedictine Fathers were to offer to the veneration of the community the Holy Nail kept preciously in their monastery; she spent all night and all morning in a transport of joy and love; and when she found herself in the choir to venerate the relic, she was urged to ask Our Lord to make her share in what he suffered in her body and soul during the crucifixion. Nothing can give any idea of the intensity of the pains felt immediately by this lover of Calvary: she was so overwhelmed and found herself so absorbed in God that she could not take part in the ceremony, and did not return to herself until everything was over. From this day, and for several years, every week, from Wednesday to Friday at three o’clock in the evening, there was a tremor throughout her body, with a new impression of the sufferings of Jesus Christ.
Until the end of her life she could not hear of the mystery of the Passion without bursting into tears. Sister Gertrude died on September 17, 1724, aged seventy, and Professed forty-six.