At the Offertory
A historical devotional prayer from the 1861 English edition of Preces Gertrudianae.
Historical edition. Historical claims and instructions are preserved as historical context.
O MOST merciful Father, in union with that unimaginable love wherewith thy only Son offered to thee the whole influx of the Godhead into his Humanity, and thus with ineffable gratitude referred it back to its immeasurable, unfathomable source, I offer thee whatever gifts and graces thou hast ever bestowed on me of thy sovereign and unutterable goodness; and I lay them on thine altar, together with the merits and graces of the same thy Son, as a sacrifice of everlasting praise, and a pledge and expression of my boundless gratitude to thee. More especially, I offer thee my heart, all too defiled and loathsome as it is; and I plunge it into this Chalice, to the end and with the desire that all the prayers and benedictions which shall be spoken over this Chalice may be spoken also over my heart, and that by the virtue of the ineffable consecration whereby thou changest this wine into the Blood of thy Son, it may be wholly turned to the perfect and constraining love of thee.
And that I may obtain these my petitions, I unite myself to all the love and the gratitude with which thy Son endured all his sorrows; and I offer to thee whatever sorrow or affliction thy fatherly love has ever laid on me or any son of man in order to our salvation, beseeching thee that they may come up before thee in union with this sacrifice as a sweet-smelling odour, and may avail for our salvation.
Finally, in union with the resignation of thy only Son I offer and resign myself to thy most holy will, beseeching thee with my whole heart that thy adorable good pleasure may always in all things be done in me and by me and in all that concerns me. To this end I lay at thy feet, O thou King of kings and my Lord, all my substance and being, my body and my soul, to serve thee henceforth and evermore to the glory of thy most worshipful Majesty. Amen.