CHAPTER III

1888–1894

At School Gemma’s Character and Virtues Develop and become better Known

WE HAVE seen with what fervor Gemma performed the solemn act of receiving her first Communion. Immediately after it she resumed her school duties, and due to her wonted diligence, piety, and engaging ways Gemma became daily more dear to her mistresses and companions. “She was the soul of the school”—these are the words of another mistress. “Nothing was done without her during the whole time she was with us. All her companions bore her the greatest affection, and wished to associate her in their festivities, and in everything they did. And all this notwithstanding that her disposition was reserved, her words concise, and her action resolute, even sometimes apparently rude.”

No doubt one would occasionally so conclude from external appearances. It could not however be said with truth that such was her disposition. She spoke little, through fear, as she often quite ingenuously told me, that, yielding to her natural impulses, she might transgress and offend God. And as she knew well how to master self so as to make that which was the fruit of virtue appear in her to be natural, it happened that a friend seeing her so serious and unwilling to speak, accused her of haughtiness and pride, and she smiling answered: “What could pride have to do in the matter? I am not even thinking of it; I don’t answer because I don’t know what to say; I don’t know if I should answer rightly or wrongly, so I keep silent and there is an end to it.”

When she was a little older, remembering to have been accused of pride, she observed with her inimitable candor and humility: “Yes, truly I was guilty of that sin; but Jesus knows if I was aware of it. I have often gone to the Mistresses, to my companions, and to the Mother Superior to ask them to forgive my pride; then in the evening and often during the night I wept on account of it; still I did not know it.”

Oh! Humble pride! A marked feature of Gemma’s disposition was her vivacity; and whoever observed her closely and attentively could easily see that she was of a sanguine temperament and all impetuosity. For this reason, if it were not for the violence that she continually did herself, she would have been, as indeed was said of her by some, a perfect madcap; and with mental gifts so prompt and piercing she would have been able to domineer over others. How often did I not myself behold her suppressing the first risings of that mental fire, and for that purpose using even muscular exertion! And how often have I not been filled with wonder at seeing virtues so generous, so constant and so prompt in a mere child!

Others have the same to say about her: “She was of vivacious temperament,” says one, “but quiet; for she always conquered herself.” She never lost her temper, never argued; and when others contended with her, or even abused her, her way of answering was with an amiable glance, followed by a smile so sweet that not rarely her adversary was forced to throw her arms around her neck, and hug her affectionately.

“Occasionally,” observes another, “It happened that someone, attributing a disorder in the house to Gemma, scolded her angrily for it. Then she, having listened in silence, whether right or wrong, used to say: ‘Don’t get angry. Don’t let it trouble you. You will see, I will be good, and won’t do it again.’”

So great was the command this angel had of herself. As to her apparent rudeness, that came from her natural and characteristic candor and sincerity. With her, yes was yes, and no was no, white was white, and black was black; there were not double meanings, no folds in that heart; as she felt within her, so she spoke and so she acted, without seeking any middle terms, whatever her aim might be, no matter with whom she might be speaking. That which passes in the world as ceremony was unknown to her. Accordingly, content with the observance of the essential rules of civility, she did not wish to be informed of any others; she spoke openly to all, and could not imagine how such sincerity could displease anyone.

When this candid child wished to hold a long conversation, a thing that seldom happened, it was so interesting that one could remain listening and talking to her for any length of time without feeling tired. This sometimes happened at the school, where all the pupils loved Gemma so dearly. And when she fell ill and had to leave school there was general grief among her companions. In like manner because of her singular reserve in conversation and her constant inner thoughts some imagined her timid and others pronounced her dull. Gemma however paid not the least attention to opinions and remarks, and when forced to answer them she would modestly say: “Am I obliged to try to please people? I am certainly stupid, and what harm if others think me so? It does not matter in the least to me.”

On one occasion when ill she was visited by a doctor; and he, seeing her so modest and collected and averse to being touched, took her to be an oddity. Accordingly when the visit was over he ventured to make her some propositions based on worldly maxims, with a view to convince her of mistaken views. Gemma, who up to then had remained silent, rose to the occasion, and with such promptness and force of reason attacked one by one and demolished his feeble arguments, that the learned gentleman found himself silenced, to his great confusion, and to the wonder of all who were present.

I myself, more than once, wished to try the experiment by proposing to her a variety of sophisms; but I had always to acknowledge myself worsted by her answers, so animated, wise and conclusive were they. Let me return to the School, and to the Religious. In a long attestation of Sister Julia Sestini, from which some of the particulars so far noted have been taken, I find also the following words, showing the admiration in which Gemma was held by her teachers:

“With regard to her mistresses—including the Reverend Mother Superior, Mother Guerra, who was her mistress in her finishing course in 1891–92—they all esteemed and loved her greatly. By reason of my office I had occasion to be with her more than the other sisters, and was constantly struck by her solid piety and childlike candor. Nay, from the very first days that I knew her, she impressed me as being a soul most dear to God, yet hidden from the world. I noticed later when urging the children to the practice of a little mental prayer in the morning, and examination of conscience in the evening, that she, who was already advanced in these exercises, took them always more to heart than her companions. But I never could get her to tell me how much time she devoted to them, and only from a few curt answers she gave when questioned on the subject was it made evident that she employed much time in meditation. Gemma longed to hear the Word of God, and showed the greatest satisfaction on the days when the priest—the Rev. Raphael Cianetti—came to explain the Catechism. The same may be said with regard to the sermons that were preached in the Institute on various Feasts of the year. She had resolved to become a Saint, like the Venerable Bartholomea Capitanio, and reminding her of this I often said to her, Gemma, remember that you have to become a truly precious jewel.”

As there cannot be true sanctity unless it is acquired at the foot of the Cross, God put into Gemma’s soul an ardent desire to know this mystery of the Redemption. To this end she applied to her mistress, and besought her so often to explain this great mystery to her, that the Sister consented to do so on the days on which her disciple should get the maximum of good marks both in lessons and work.

“What better reward than this?” said Gemma to herself, and setting to work with redoubled diligence she succeeded from that day in almost always gaining the highest number of marks; and thus very often secured the desired instruction. “How many times,” she said to me when talking over these things, “did not the thought, of the love of Jesus in suffering so much for us who are so ungrateful, force the Mistress and me to weep together!”

The good Religious also taught her how to practice some little mortifications, in order to compensate Jesus for her many backslidings. She spoke to her of various instruments of penance, whereupon the fervent child procured some and fitted them for herself; but, notwithstanding all she said and did, she was not allowed to use them. Meanwhile under the guidance of the same Religious, she made up for the refusal by a rigid mortification of her eyes, her tongue, and her senses; and particularly of her will. In this exercise she became truly admirable during the rest of her life, as we shall see.

Things went on in this way until March 1888, when God was pleased to call to Himself this pious Mistress, Sister Camilla Vagliensi, a religious of rare holiness of life. Then Gemma was placed under the direction of another equally virtuous teacher, Sister Julia Sestini, who was gifted with a singular spirit of prayer.

“Under this Mistress,” said Gemma to me, “I too began to have a great desire for prayer. Every evening immediately on coming home from school, I shut myself in my room and said the whole Rosary on my knees; also several times during the night I rose for about a quarter of an hour and recommended my soul and its needs to Jesus.”

This Angelic child, persevering in her good dispositions and full of fervor, continued during the whole of that year (1888) to attend the same school, and began to take her younger sister, Angiolina, with her. The Gospel words, written of Our Blessed Savior, could well be applied to her—she continued to grow in wisdom and grace before God and man. But the way of the just on earth is often strewn with thorns, and it rarely happens that Our Lord does not subject His chosen ones even while young to suffering, thus preparing them step by step for great spiritual battles with the powers of darkness—battles too, of sympathy, love, union.

We have seen that it was so with Gemma when seven years of age. A hundred times more severe was the trial awaiting her, that of spiritual desolation called by ascetic writers the inner martyrdom. Previously she had many consolations, heavenly attractions and incentives to the perfect exercise of every virtue. Now instead weariness, sadness, repugnance to prayer; no longer that abhorrence of all that savored of the world. Her Jesus is no longer to be found, and those loving meetings with Him of the past seem now but a dream.

This trial was not of a few days but lasted nearly a year. Yet for her it was not lost time; nay, it was a great gain; for feeling herself as it were abandoned by her God Whom she so loved, she sought with greater earnestness to find Him, detaching her affections more from earthly things, frequenting Holy Communion with renewed ardor and striving at greater perfection in the practice of virtue.

She strove to establish in her heart that horror of sin which increased with her years, and a greater sorrow for those venialities of the past that appeared to her great faults. The members of her family not knowing that God was leading her to the most exalted sanctity showed their displeasure at the evident change in her exterior. They wanted her to seek amusement, and hindered her going out early in the morning and so often to the church; in the evening they wished her to join them in their walks dressed like her sisters, and in other ways pained her greatly. But God came to her aid, through the death of her grandfather and Uncle Maurice in 1890. This caused two of her aunts, her father’s sisters, to come from S. Gennaro to live with him and his family.

These aunts were both devout women and very fond of their brother’s children. They came at a most opportune time; inasmuch, as some members of the household, not understanding the extraordinary change wrought in Gemma by her First Communion, had begun to put repeated obstacles in her way. But, when her good aunts came to live with them, Gemma found herself entrusted to them, and thus emancipated. She went with them every morning to hear Mass before going to school, and, in the evening, to visit the Blessed Sacrament. With them she used to pray and talk about holy things. In a word, it seemed to her almost as if she had returned to those happy days when her mother was alive. Thenceforth, she never omitted her Communions. At first, she approached the Holy Table three times a week, as her confessor objected to her going more frequently; later on, she went to Holy Communion every day; and, as she grew in the spiritual life, she herself with candid simplicity thus puts it: “Jesus made His presence felt in my poor soul more and more. He said so many things to me, and often made me feel the greatest consolations”

Gemma, now thirteen years of age (1891), has already surmounted heights of virtue that others are scarcely able to reach after long years of assiduous labor. Yet all she had done seemed to her but little, and like the Apostle, not looking back but keeping her eyes fixed on the perfection to which she felt called by God, she labored with great energy at her spiritual advancement.

About this time the Sisters of St Zita were having their biennial course of Spiritual Exercises in which the externs among their pupils took part.

“I saw,” said Gemma, “that Jesus sent me this opportunity of acquiring a better knowledge of myself, and in order to purify my soul and please Him more.” And in her little book of notes she wrote: “Exercises of 1891 in which Gemma must change and give herself all to God.” Later when referring to the same Exercises she wrote as follows: “I remember the preacher’s sermon on sin. Then indeed I came to know that I deserved to be despised by all; I saw my ingratitude to God, and beheld myself covered with sins. We then made the meditation on Hell. I recognized how I deserved it, and resolved to make also during the day repeated acts of contrition.”

Here it would appear that she was already accustomed to make those acts frequently during the night, and she added that after the meditation on the humility, sweetness, obedience, and patience of Jesus, she made the following resolutions:

1. “To make every day a Visit to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, speaking to Him more with my heart than with my tongue.

2. “I will make every effort never to speak of indifferent things, but often of the things of heaven.”

Let no one think that on account of her lengthened prayer and assiduous attention to spiritual things, Gemma was led to neglect her school duties. On the contrary, she was most diligent, and at the yearly examination carried off the highest prizes. In the scholastic year 1893–94 she won the great Gold Prize for religious knowledge, which is given only to those pupils who in the whole course of the year have always had the highest number of marks—ten—in the lessons of Christian Doctrine.

At the school exhibitions the Sisters sometimes succeeded in overcoming this humble child’s great repugnance to display, and made her exhibit compositions, verses, exercises in French, arithmetic, etc. This is a proof of her ability and proficiency in such studies. We are even told that her own family, seeing her so intent on her books, often reproved her saying: “What need of so much study? You know so much already, and yet it does not satisfy you.”

Another great loss for the poor child was pending. Her brother Gino whom we have already mentioned, having fallen a victim to the disease of which his mother died, was at the point of death. Gemma and he loved each other tenderly. They were two souls in one—seeing and feeling alike especially in all that regarded piety; hence they became inseparable in this last extremity. The devout youth, the moment he became aware that his sister was in the house, wished to have her at his bedside. She saw clearly the danger of contagion; but regardless of her own life, she remained close by his pillow day and night, serving and comforting him, and suggesting holy thoughts to prepare him for eternity.

This innocent youth died an enviable death, in September, 1894, and soon after Gemma fell ill of a dangerous complaint that kept her in bed for three months. Nothing could exceed the anxiety of her family about her. “I cannot give an idea,” she said, “of the care they all lavished on me, especially Babbo whom I often saw crying and begging of God that he rather than I might die.”

It would seem that Heaven heard his prayer; within two years he died. As God willed it she recovered; but her sickness left her so weak and shaken that it was found necessary to forbid her to study. With her usual resignation to the Will of God and to her father’s wish that she should leave school, she calmly returned to the solitude of her home, being then in her fifteenth year.

In this way God is wont to chequer the lives of His Elect between roses and thorns. There is no consolation coming from Him whose sweetness is not soon followed by the bitterness of some cross. Blessed are they, who like Gemma know how to accept both consolations and crosses—roses and thorns—with equal resignation and courage!