. . . an even more explicit vision,
given on the Saturday after Easter, Christ breathed upon Gertrude and said: “Receive
the Holy Spirit. Whosoever sins you remit shall be remitted” (John
20:22-23). And Gertrude said: “How can this be since the power of binding and
loosing belongs only to priests?” Christ said to her: “Those whom you,
discerning through my spirit, judge to be not guilty will surely be accounted
innocent before me, and those whose case you judge to be guilty, will I appear
such to me, for I will speak through your mouth.” Gertrude said: “Oh God of
mercy, since your dignity has assured me of this gift so many times, what
profit is it to give it to me again?” Christ replied (and the analogy is surely
no accident): “When anyone is consecrated into the diaconate and then into the
priesthood, far from losing his office as deacon he just acquires a greater
honor from the priesthood; so when I give a gift several times to a soul, truly
it is established in it more firmly by repetition and its blessedness is
thereby increased.” (Legatus, bk. 4, chap. 32, pp. 394-95) (Caroline Walker
Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages [Berkley:
University of California Press, 1982], 205-6)
