CHAPTER VII

1899

The Servant of God receives the Stigmata

FROM EVERY page of this story the reader has been able to see that Gemma’s chief thought, the ardent incessant desire of her heart, was to become like Jesus, and as the Son of God is the Man of Sorrows, that was enough for her: Jesum et hunc Crucifixum.

The Mysteries of the magnificence that faith shows us in our Savior did not seem to move her much. “Ah! my Beloved,” she kept repeating with the Spouse in the Canticles, “is for me a bundle of myrrh. I don’t want to see anything else in Him since He has not wished anything else for Himself. Let whoever wishes it contemplate Him on Mount Tabor; I will contemplate Him on Calvary with my dear Mother Addolorata.”

She did not even seem to make account of the images of our Lord; and in fact she did not wish to keep any by her through devotion except those that represented Him Crucified. “O Mamma,” we have heard her say to her Mother when quite little, “tell me of the Passion of Jesus.” And to her schoolmistresses: “Sisters, explain to me some point in the sorrowful Mysteries of Jesus” And we have seen the saintly child so moved at this explanation, that, for fear of seeing her faint and get ill, those good religious had to stop the devout exercises. This ardent desire kept on increasing until it had effected the perfect transformation of this chosen virgin into Christ Crucified. God Himself is about to show to heaven and earth by wonderful means that Gemma is truly crucified with Jesus. When Gemma had left the Convent a mysterious voice seemed to say to her: “Rise, take courage, abandon thyself without reserve to Jesus, love Him with all thy being, offer no obstacle to His designs, and you shalt see the great strides He will cause thee to make in little time without thy knowing how. Fear nothing; for the Heart of Jesus is the throne of Mercy, where the miserable are the most readily received.”

Comforted by these words the Servant of God turning to an image of the Sacred Heart exclaimed: “O my Jesus how greatly I wish to love you, but I don’t know how!” And the same Voice replied: “Do you wish to love Jesus always? Never cease even for a moment to suffer for Him. The cross is the throne of true lovers; the cross is the patrimony of the elect in this life.”

At last one day after Holy Communion, she hears Jesus say to her: “Gemma, courage! I await thee on Calvary, on that Mount where thy course is directed.” To that noble appointment He had directed those numberless contradictions, those torturing pains, those spiritual exercises in the Convent, that extraordinary contrition for her sins, and that General Confession made with such compunction, of which matters we have already spoken.

It was the 8th of June, 1899. After Communion our Lord let His Servant know that the same evening He would give her a very great grace. She ran at once to tell her confessor of it. She wished to receive again from him the absolution from all her sins. Then with her soul overflowing with unaccustomed joy and peace and her mind full of engrossing thoughts she went home. Now let us hear what happened from her own lips:

“We were on the Vigil of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, Thursday evening. All of a sudden, more quickly than usual, I felt a piercing sorrow for my sins; but I felt it so intensely that I have never since experienced anything like it. That sorrow, I might say almost brought me to death’s door. Next I felt all the powers of my soul in recollection. My intellect knew nothing but my sins and my offences against God; my memory recalled them all, and set before me all the torments that Jesus had endured to save me; my will moved me to detest them all and willingly suffer everything to expiate them. A world of thoughts turned in my mind and they were thoughts of grief, love, fear, hope, encouragement.”

This recollection was quickly followed by a rapture out of my senses, and I found myself in the presence of my dear heavenly Mother who had my Angel Guardian on her right. He spoke first, telling me to repeat the act of contrition, and when I had done so my Holy Mother said: My child, in the name of Jesus may all thy sins be forgiven thee. Then she added: My Son Jesus loves thee beyond measure, and wishes to give thee a GRACE; wilt you know how to render thyself worthy of it?”

“My misery did not know what to answer. Then she added: I will be a mother to thee; wilt you be a true child?” She then opened her mantle and covered me with it. At that moment Jesus appeared with all His Wounds open; but from those Wounds there no longer came forth blood, but flames of fire. In an instant those flames came to touch my hands, my feet and my heart. I felt as if I were dying, and should have fallen to the ground had not my Mother held me up, while all the time I remained beneath her mantle. I had to remain several hours in that position. Finally she kissed my forehead, all vanished, and I found myself kneeling; but I still felt great pain in my hands, feet and heart.

I rose to go to bed, and became aware that blood was flowing from those parts where I felt pain. I covered them as well as I could, and then helped by my Angel I was able to get into bed. In the morning I found it difficult to go to Holy Communion, and I put on a pair of gloves to hide my hands. I could not remain standing and felt every moment that I should die. Those pains did not leave me until three o’clock on Friday—Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” This wonderful event took place at No. 3 Via del Biscione, in St Fridian’s Parish where Gemma was then living with her family. We note this fact because we believe that some day this house will become a Sanctuary like the Verna where St. Francis received the Stigmata. Gemma, thus divinely adorned, was from that day forward able to say: Let no man molest me; for I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus in my body.

Nothing could exceed Gemma’s pain and perplexity at finding herself marked externally with the signs of our Redemption. She wished to keep it all hidden; but she was in the midst of the world, surrounded by inquisitive people, obliged to go out of doors at least twice a day to church, and meanwhile her wounds remained bleeding freely. What was to be done? She thought all night and in the morning tried to rise; but on putting her feet to the ground, so excruciating was the agony she suffered that she thought she would die of it. She got up however, and dragging herself rather than walking she went to the Church for Communion.

On coming home, besides her anguish at not being able to hide what had happened, her perplexity was great at not knowing what the wounds on her body meant. She believed then that all who were espoused to Christ Our Lord by vow bore those marks. Accordingly with modest and ingenuous trepidation, she went from one to another asking them if they had ever had such and such wounds or lacerations; but she got no information. Meanwhile how was she to hide those deep bleeding impressions?

When she had thought it over, she resolved to go to her Aunt, and presenting herself with outstretched arms and covered hands, “Aunt,” she said, “see what Jesus has done to me.” Her Aunt was thunderstruck at the sight, and at Gemma’s words. She could not realize what had happened; it was a mystery to her, but later on she came to understand it.

The reader will no doubt wish me to give particulars of the Stigmata of the Servant of God—how they were formed and how they continued to show themselves. Assuredly if this phenomenon were unique I should find great difficulty in undertaking to satisfy inquiries. But, although very rare, it has been made manifest in different Saints, from St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, to the Belgian Ecstatic, Louise Lateau in the nineteenth. In the case of the last-named Servant of God in particular, this prodigy was witnessed for a long time by thousands of persons. It was studied from a physiological point of view by most learned medical men, both Catholics and rationalists, and from a theological standpoint, by eminent professors distinguished alike for their piety and learning. These and others have written volumes on this subject; hence it is easy by means of opportune comparisons to arrive at a satisfactory knowledge of what was seen in Gemma of Lucca.

The phenomenon began in the way that we have seen. And since Gemma was thus favored as—so far—the only witness, there is nothing to be added to her literal account of it.

From that day forward periodically it continued to repeat itself on the same day every week, namely on Thursday evening about eight o’clock, and continued until three o’clock on Friday afternoon. No preparation preceded it; no sense of pain or impression in those parts of the body affected by it; nothing announced its approach except the recollection of Spirit that preceded the ecstasy.

Scarcely had this come as a forerunner than red marks showed themselves on the backs and palms of both hands, and under the epidermis a rent in the flesh was seen to open by degrees; this was oblong on the backs of the hands and irregularly round in the palms.

After a little, the membrane burst and on those innocent hands were seen marks of flesh wounds; the diameter of these in the palms was about half an inch, and on the backs of the hands the wound was about five-eighths of an inch long by one-eighth wide.

Sometimes the laceration appeared to be only on the surface; at other times it was scarcely perceptible with the naked eye; but as a rule it was very deep, and seemed to pass through the hand—the openings on both sides reaching each other. I say seemed to pass, because those cavities were full of blood, partly flowing and partly congealed, and when the blood ceased to flow they closed immediately, so that it was not easy to sound them without a probe.

Now this instrument was never used; both because of the reverential delicacy inspired by the Ecstatic in her mysterious state, and because the violence of the pain made her keep her hands convulsively closed; also, because the wounds in the palms of her hands were covered by a swelling that at first looked like clotted blood, whereas it was found to be fleshy, hard, and like the head of a nail raised and detached, and about an inch in diameter.

In her feet, besides the wounds being large and livid around the edges, their size in an inverse sense differed from those of her hands; that is, there was a larger diameter on the instep and a smaller one on the sole; furthermore, the wound on the instep of the right foot was as large as that on the sole of the left. Thus it must certainly have been with our Savior, supposing that both His Sacred Feet were fixed to the Cross with only one nail.

I have said that the opening of these wounds was effected by degrees, that is in five or six minutes, beginning underneath the skin and ending with its bursting asunder. At times however this was not the case; their opening was then instantaneous, and came from the exterior like a violent transfixing. Then it was agonizing to see the dear martyr, thus stricken all of a sudden, and trembling in every fiber of her body.

Now about the wound in her side. This was seen directly by very few persons and very seldom. For it did not seem right to those good ladies to examine that virginal body too closely, with the sole aim of gratifying their curiosity however devout. I took the same view of it and accordingly deprived myself of the consolation of being thoroughly informed on all the details.

Certainly if we are to judge by the excruciating pain that Gemma suffered from this wound, not only near the surface but in the center of her heart, we may reasonably hold that it reached the very heart itself. Besides, if God’s end in working such wonderful miracles is to reproduce in some of His chosen servants the reality of what His Own Divine Son, Jesus, suffered for us in His Passion and Death, there is no reason to suppose that He would only do this partially.

I read in the Biography of the Servant of God, Johanna of the Cross, that in the examination of her body after death the Surgeons wished to follow the course of the mysterious wound in her side, and found that passing through the lung it in reality reached her heart. An examination was also made of Gemma’s body thirteen days after her death, and of this I shall have to speak later on. If the miracle of the Stigmata, as seen exteriorly, had not ceased two years before her death, we should now without doubt have, in another palpable example, the clear evidence of what I here state as simply probable.

The opening in Gemma’s side was in the form of a half-moon in a horizontal direction with the extremities turned upwards. Its length in a straight line was quite two inches, and its width at the center about a quarter of an inch. This wound also was produced in two different ways; that is, instantaneously from the exterior as if by the stroke of a lance, or else from the interior, gradually by the opening in that part of minute reddish pores that showed themselves beneath the cuticle, and increasing in number ended by bursting the skin, thus forming the fearful wound that we have described.

I wondered greatly at the crescent form of this opening, so unusual in other stigmatics of whom we have particulars, until I read the Life of the Venerable Diomlira Allegri, a Florentine of the sixteenth century. She had a wound like Gemma’s, as is shown by the sworn deposition made in the process of her Beatification by medical men officially appointed, and several eyewitnesses.

Now as it does not seem reasonable to think that the shape of a wound so well defined in two different cases three centuries apart happened by chance, one would be led to suppose that the lance which pierced our Savior’s Side was of such a shape that striking obliquely it would have opened a curved wound. Blood flowed in abundance from Gemma’s side as was evident from her underclothing being saturated by it.

The humble, modest Virgin did what she could to hide it, using for this purpose many folds of linen cloths which she applied repeatedly to her side. In less than an hour they became saturated and she hastened to hide them in order to wash them secretly. The flow of blood however was not continuous, but intermittent at irregular intervals, thus allowing the blood to congeal and giving time to cleanse the parts. In this way the raw flesh, after washing, remained as in a wound when healing naturally. But this was not a case of a natural phenomenon; and therefore on a fresh kindling of the interior mysterious fire the wound suddenly became inflamed and the blood began again to flow in great abundance.

On one of the many occasions on which that happened she wrote thus: “This morning about ten o’clock my heart was seeking, seeking. . . . I felt my senses leave me. . . . To the agony in my heart was added an excessive pain through all my members. . . . But before and above all was my sorrow for sin. Oh! excruciating this pain! Were it any greater I could not have outlived it; and I may say the same of the stroke I received.”

She meant the stroke of the lance that opened the wound in her side. “My little heart,” she said, “could no longer bear the restraint and has begun to send forth blood in quantities.” And in another letter: “Jesus has made His strength felt in my soul and my heart not being able to resist it, the wound in that part has opened and poured out blood.”

On this account it was never possible to ascertain how often, apart from the regular days, this wonderful phenomenon manifested itself, nor to calculate the quantity of blood lost by this victim during the twenty hours more or less that it lasted. It can however be stated that the quantity was large; as those who lived with and assisted her are prepared to declare on oath, that from her side alone there came so much blood, that, if not stopped, it flowed down to the ground. The same thing may be said of the other Stigmata of her hands and feet.

This blood too was fresh, of rich color, and in all respects the same as flows from a newly opened wound; and so it remained after it had dried on the skin, the clothes, or the floor. The way in which the Stigmata disappeared was not less wonderful. As soon as the ecstasy of the Friday was over the flow of blood from all the five wounds ceased immediately; the raw flesh healed; the lacerated tissues healed too, and the following day, or at latest on the Sunday, not a vestige remained of those deep cavities, neither at their centers nor around their edges; the skin having grown quite uniformly with that of the uninjured parts. In color however there remained whitish marks showing that there had been the wounds of the day before—which would be opened again as at first, in five days, and closed in the same way.

Two years after this marvel of the Stigmata had ceased that is at the time of Gemma’s death—those marks still remained and were then easily observed on her body, particularly on her feet which in her lifetime would only with great difficulty be uncovered during her ecstasies.

Before the prohibition of her directors, the phenomenon of the Stigmata was constant and unvarying on all Thursdays and Fridays. Nor was it ever, except once, manifested on any other days or Feasts—however solemn they might be—even though on such Feasts the ecstasies of the seraphic girl were repeated in a more extraordinary way than usual. There was only one exception to the days on which Gemma always received the Stigmata, and I will give the account of it in another chapter.

I spoke of the sweat of blood when treating in another place of Gemma’s love of God and of her horror at knowing that He was offended, particularly by the accursed sin of blasphemy. Here, as the opportunity is offered me, I will add that this prodigious phenomenon occurred also very often in her meditation on the Passion of our Lord and His agony in the garden. It happened sometimes when she was not in ecstasy, but never occurred during the periodical ecstasies of the Thursdays and Fridays. On these occasions the blood, pressed from the heart by the vehemence of compassionate grief, oozed through the pores of her body, and specially from the left side over the region of the heart, so that she was bathed in blood.

The angels no doubt will have received that blood with love, presenting it to God to appease His wrath, through the merits of the victim who with so much generosity shed it as our Divine Redeemer did His own.