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St. Gertrude said to our Lord: Teach me, O my Lord, how I may show my devotion and love to thy blessed Mother, since I am unable to recite her office. Then our Lord taught her the following prayers; and when she recited them she seemed to see him offering his divine Heart in likeness of a vessel of gold, of which, when she had drunk, she appeared filled with gladness. Hence she learned that whenever these prayers are recited, our Lord thus presents his Heart to the lips of his blessed Mother, and that in the fulness of her maternal delight she graciously rewards those who recite them. 

Most compassionate Jesus, I praise thee with the tuneful praise which thine own sweetest Heart gives forth, for the innocence of that most spotless virginity whereby thy peerless and ever-blessed Mother was a Virgin in her conception of thee, a Virgin when she brought thee forth, and ever remained a Virgin most inviolate after thy sacred birth; imitating thus thine own innocence, when in the early dawn thou wast seized and bound for the redemption of our captive race, and buf-