St. Gemma participated in all the torments of Jesus: His inner anguish, His sweating of blood, the Scourging with its many lacerations, the ill-treatment by demons, the deep penetration of the Crown of Thorns, the dislocation of the bones and the wounds from the nails.

Newsdesk (14/04/2023 19:55, Gaudium Press) Gemma Maria Humberta Pia Galgani had her name chosen by her uncle and godfather Maurice, who brought together in it the precious stone along with tributes to the Virgin, the King of Italy and the recently deceased Pope, as well as the family name.

Born on March 12th, 1878, she received Holy Baptism the following day, surrounded by several relatives who would never have imagined the future life of suffering for that girl who would become an outstanding saint in the Passionist family, founded by St. Paul of the Cross.

The personality of Saint Gemma

Several photographic records show Saint Gemma as gifted with an impressive depth of reflection. One can see that her thoughts are not of this world. One can see in her a  detachment from earthly things, united to an extraordinary dignity and a virginal chastity.

Childhood

Gemma, while still a child, witnessed the suffering of her mother Aurélia, a victim of tuberculosis (a disease that claimed many lives in the nineteenth century).

Aurélia figured at the beginning of Gemma’s mystical experiences, which occurred after her Confirmation, at which time she felt an inner voice asking her: “Gemma, will you give to me your mother?” The reply of the young girl, then only seven years old, was as follows: “Yes, if You take me with her.”

But the condition did not meet with agreement: “For the time being you will have to stay with your father. Your mother, I will take to Heaven. Will you grant this to me willingly?”

And Gemma, with no alternative, accepted, but Aurélia only departed for the House of the Father sixteen months later, after a long physical wasting away paralleled by a remarkable spiritual aggrandizement that prepared her to pass into eternity.

When she was nine years old, Gemma received her First Eucharist. In the days preceding the reception of this Sacrament, while attending catechesis given by a religious Sister, she felt a deep pity and compassion when she heard about the scourging of Jesus and His crowning with thorns. This experience caused her to develop a fever and left her bedridden the next day.

Falsely accused of pride

“Aunt, the Mother Superior told me: ‘Gemma, my little gem, this morning you committed a sin of pride.’ Aunt, tell me how does one commit a sin of pride?”

This fact, recorded by Gemma, was later witnessed by her aunt Elisa, who asked the little girl what she had done. “I don’t know! I don’t know what a sin of pride is.

This accusation, which was a great inner trial for the innocent Gemma, had been made by the Mother Superior only to try her, as she herself later clarified, but the defamation of the innocent girl as “haughty” had already spread among some people.

At Gemma’s canonization, the nun, Sr. Julia Sestini, was there to pay homage to the new Saint, whom she had wrongly labeled as proud…

Maintaining purity

At the age of eighteen Gemma took a private vow of chastity. At that age she began to consider her future in detail, wanting to give herself totally to Jesus. One day, as she gazed intently at the Crucifix, she experienced such intense suffering that she fell to the ground, having fainted.

“Our body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit,” Gemma heard from the preacher at her first spiritual retreat. She recorded in her autobiography: those words impressed me so much that I tried with all my strength to keep my body pure.

With this intention Gemma prayed three Hail Marys every day. Determined to belong completely to Jesus, she refused the matrimonial path and committed herself to preserve the angelic virtue to a very high degree.

Sufferings

Many were the moral sufferings that befell Gemma: insults, slanders, comments about her school performance, about her physical weakness, and many other things. She always accepted them in a spirit of sacrifice, asking God for other people’s conversion and salvation.

Her frail health provided Gemma with innumerable occasions to offer her sufferings to Jesus. She had the consolation of the visible presence of her Guardian Angel in the midst of mystical experiences.

Once her angelic companion answered her doubt: “If Jesus mortifies you in the body, it is to purify you more and more in the spirit”.

She even submitted (against her own desires, because she accepted sickness as suffering) to surgical procedures, even without anaesthesia, but she registered in her writings that the pain was nothing, but what made her suffer was to be almost naked in front of the doctors.

To persists in sin is the work of demons

Once she received a provocative letter from her sister Angela, to whom she replied in a humble but firm way:

I am writing to let you know that I have received your letter. Let it be said, however, that you do not deserve an answer, because I feel that you wrote it while in duress, without knowing what you were saying.

Listen to me once and for all. That I set you a bad example, that I taught you bad things, that I scandalized you? I know all this perfectly well! I have already confessed it and I hope you have forgiven me. Now you are only trying to vent your anger by remembering the time when we lived together. You should also know that if God wanted me to confess in public, I would not be afraid to do so, in a clear and strong voice, with no need to hide anything. I hope that this time you have understood me well.

I wish you a happy Christmas and happy holidays. I hope you understand that to sin happens to the saints, but to persist in sin is the work of demons…

Farewell, and try to be good. I am, your sister, Gemma.

Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows

In the midst of bodily sufferings she borrowed a book containing passages from the life of a young Passionist, Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows (now canonized), with whom she began to have mystical dialogues, one of which was followed by the imposition of the Passionist emblem on Gemma, whom he referred to as “my sister”.

Stigmata of the Lord’s Passion

On the eve of the feast of the Sacred Heart in June 1899, Gemma lost consciousness and, on waking, found herself in the presence of the Blessed Virgin, who said to her: “My Son, Jesus, loves you very much and wishes to grant you a great grace; will you show yourself worthy of it?” The saint did not know what to answer. Our Lady continued, saying: “I will be a mother to you. Will you show yourself to be a true daughter?” Then She stretched out Her mantle and covered her with it.

At that moment, Jesus appeared to her. With the simplicity proper to innocent souls, Gemma recounts what happened: “His wounds were open, but no blood gushed out; burning flames issued from them. In the twinkling of an eye those flames touched my hands, my feet and my heart. For a little while longer she remained under the mantle of the Queen of Heaven. Mary then touched her on the forehead and disappeared, leaving the young girl kneeling with great pain in her hands, her feet and her heart, from which blood was pouring out: Saint Gemma Galgani had received the grace of the Sacred Stigmata.

The phenomenon was repeated every week. On Thursday, the wounds would open at night, remaining until three o’clock on Friday afternoon. By Saturday, or Sunday at the latest, only a few whitish marks remained.

Conversion of a sinner during an ecstasy

Disconcerted by the phenomena that happened to Gemma, Msgr. Volpi (who had become a diocesan bishop) asked Father Germano of St. Stanislaus to analyse them, and he even suggested the possibility of performing an exorcism on her.

Gemma received him joyfully, and in the middle of dinner, sensing ecstasy, she rose and retired to her room. Some moments later, called by the sister of the owner of the house (where Gemma was residing) to enter the room, the priest found the young woman in full ecstasy, talking to Jesus and urging him to convert a sinner whose name she pronounced clearly: “Jesus, I want to ask You for that sinner… Save him, Jesus! Why do You not have mercy on him? I will not get up until You promise to save him.

Her petitions multiplied with insistence, but it seemed that Jesus was telling Gemma that this sinner had already gone beyond the limits: “Jesus, I know that he has committed many sins, but I have committed more, and You have had compassion on me.”

And still the petitions continued, now being presented through the intercession of Mary Most Holy, until the moment came when Gemma changed her appearance and joyfully exclaimed: “He is saved! Jesus, You have won! You always triumph like this!”

Afterwards, at his quarters, Father Germano received a request to attend to a person who wanted to make confession: it was that very sinner converted by Gemma’s pleading. At the end of the confession, the priest told him what he had witnessed, obtaining permission from the penitent to disclose what had happened to him.

The Cross is the patrimony of the elect

Once, Christ Crucified became visible to her and said: “Look, my daughter, and learn how to love. See this Cross, these thorns and nails, this bloodied flesh, these bruises and wounds? Everything is the work of love, and of infinite love. This is how much I have loved you. Do you truly want to love me? Then learn to suffer: suffering teaches love.

On another occasion, while she was asking God for the grace to love much, she heard a supernatural voice say to her: “Do you always want to love Jesus? Don’t stop suffering for Him for a moment. The Cross is the throne of those who truly love; the Cross is the patrimony of the elect in this life”.

Those visions, while intensifying her pain for her sins, brought her great consolation and increased in her the desire to love Jesus and to suffer for Him.

At the age of 25, on Holy Saturday 1903, after a life of many humiliations, Gemma gave her soul to the Creator, devoured by suffering, but asking – until the last moment – for more pain.

Dressed in the Passionist habit – which had been denied her during her lifetime because her health was not compatible with the rigours of community life – Gemma’s body was venerated by family and friends.

Buried the following day, her body was exhumed fifteen days after her death, and her heart (which showed no signs of decomposition) was removed. It was placed in a reliquary and is currently venerated in the shrine dedicated to her in Madrid, Spain.

The story continues in Brazil …

An older brother of Gemma’s – Heitor – had moved to Brazil after the death of his father to seek his fortune, fleeing the impoverishment that had befallen his family in Italy, having travelled with numerous fellow countrymen in search of a new homeland.

He determined to return to Italy only when he reached the goal he had set for himself. He settled in the interior of the state of São Paulo, but lost all the possessions he already had. He did not get married in the Church (only procuring a civil marriage), and he scandalously distanced himself from God and religion, even losing contact with his relatives back home.

But Providence delivered a picture of Gemma into his hands, and so Heitor put it in a frame, not because of her reputation for holiness, but simply because she was his sister.

In 1923, during a Redemptorist mission to Araraquara, a priest who was visiting the sick went to Heitor’s house.

When he saw a picture of Gemma Galgani (to whom he had devotion), he was told by the sick man that she was his sister, which caused the visiting missionary to be astonished, happy with the encounter, but not understanding how this person, so indifferent to matters of religion, could be the brother of a saint.

The priest told Heitor various aspects of Gemma’s life of heroic virtue, of the extraordinary phenomena that manifested themselves in her, and of the miracles that God worked through his sister, who had died twenty years earlier.

Heitor was amazed: “my sister, a saint, and I so far from the Church?” Touched by grace Heitor decided to go to church immediately, and the faithful present were astonished to see that person arrive there whose way of life was so out of keeping with good morals and holy religion.

He prepared himself to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and his example multiplied in that place, showing that through Gemma’s intercession not only her brother was converted, but also numerous other inhabitants who were touched by Heitor’s example.

The mission, which in the first four days seemed destined to bear little fruit, after that remarkable conversion developed into a phenomenal success.

Text adapted from arautos.org

Compiled by Roberta MacEwan