CHAPTER XVIII

Heroic Patience amidst Great Trials

EVERY FOLLOWER of Christ has, so to say, to impose on himself, during the whole of his life, the cross of mortification and self-restraint. God also assigns another Cross to His elect; it is that of direct suffering. It is of this Our Divine Master more particularly spoke when He said: “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross.”

The saints by voluntary suffering, self-denial and penance do their part in the work of their sanctification. God through the suffering which His grace enables them cheerfully to accept accomplishes this work. And the more perfect He wills the work to be, the more abundantly does He supply opportunities of suffering.

This is the philosophy of the Gospel: Whoever wishes to see the Kingdom of God established in his soul must be prepared to pass through many tribulations; for there cannot be true sanctity without this test.

Nay, every new degree of sanctity must have its corresponding trial, called by mystic doctors the “Passive Purification” until at length the great work is finished, and the soul, arrived at the last degree, that of union with Jesus Christ, is able to say: “With Christ I am nailed to the Cross, and I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” Hence as Gemma had been destined by God to great sanctity, and to pass through all the degrees indicated in mystic theology, it was to be expected that the bitters of the Cross would be given her not in draughts, but in torrents.

From what has been written so far, it is easy to understand why Gemma was tried by the fiercest and most I exceptional pains, from her very infancy. I do not intend to return to what has already been said, but only to describe accurately the martyrdom of the latter part of her life, when her virtue had reached the climax of perfection. Those first sufferings were but trials in which grace advanced step by step preparing her for the grand immolation that was to be accomplished on the Calvary of Jesus—her deathbed.

Since the immolation could not be meritorious, nor in conformity with the scope of Divine Providence unless it were voluntary, Our Lord began kindling in Gemma’s heart an ardent desire of suffering. For this purpose He used many persuasions each one more tender and efficacious than the others. Once He appeared to her with the Cross on His shoulders and said: “Gemma, wilt you have it, My Cross? See, this is the present I have prepared for thee.” And she: “My Jesus, yes, give it me, but give me also strength, because my shoulders are weak; at least that I may not fall under it.”

And Jesus again: “Would it sadden thee were I to give thee to drink of My chalice even to the last drop?” And Gemma: “Jesus, may Thy most Holy Will be done.”

At another time He appeared to her nailed to the Cross all covered with wounds and bleeding. “At that sight,” she said to me, “I felt such great grief, that thinking of the infinite love of Jesus for us, and of the sufferings He had endured for our salvation, I fainted and fell. After the lapse of an hour or so I came to myself; and then it here arose in my heart an immense desire to suffer something for Him Who had suffered so much for me.”

As time advanced this desire increased, till it became a real passion, and, unable to contain it within her heart, she used to exclaim: “I wish to suffer with Jesus; don’t let me hear of anything else, I want to be like Him, suffering always as long as I live, and living in order to suffer always.” When in ecstasy these ardent expressions came repeatedly to her lips. I could quote innumerable instances. Hers were the feelings of all the saints when contemplating the Divine Man of Sorrows. “No,” they cried out with St Bernard, “it is not just that under a Head crowned with thorns, His members should give themselves up to delicate living. If He suffers, let them also suffer; it must not be otherwise; it must be so; aught else would be a monstrous ingratitude.”

On one occasion, in order to set ablaze the fire that always kept alight in this holy virgin’s heart, her angel guardian appeared to her with two crowns in his hands—one of thorns, the other of purest lilies, and told her to choose which of the two she pleased.

“I will have that of Jesus,” she said immediately. “Give me that of Jesus, the only one I care for.”

The Angel handed her the crown of thorns and kept the other. She then seizing it with ardent desire covered it with kisses, and clasping it lovingly to her heart, exclaimed: “Thanks be to Thee O God for ever! Thanks be to Jesus for His gifts, for His Cross!” Such was the fruit gathered from the Divine teaching by this child.

Greater depths had yet to be sounded. The Divine Spouse had yet to give the last masterly touch to bring His work to perfection. This He did by revealing to His servant the true secret of the mystery of suffering. And this secret is—that the mission of our Savior in this world, having been a mission of expiation—whoever is with Him must by expiation continue and, as it were, complete it, according to the words of St Paul (Col. I:24). The majority of mankind instead of appeasing the anger of God by works of penance, provoke it still more by fresh sins; thus rendering His Redemption useless to themselves. It therefore falls to the lot of the just to offer satisfaction for those poor sinners, and thus console the Heart of God according to what is written: “In His servants the Lord will be consoled.”

Now as He willed to instill this great truth into Gemma’s heart, He thus one day spoke to her in intimate locution: “My child, I have need of victims, and strong victims. In order to appease the just wrath of My Divine Father, I need souls who, by their sufferings, tribulations and difficulties, make amends for sinners and for their ingratitude. Oh! that I could make all understand how incensed My Heavenly Father is by the impious world! There is nothing to stay His Hand, and He is now preparing a great chastisement for all the world.”

Aided by the Divine light that accompanied these words, God’s holy servant understood their full meaning; nor was there need of more to set a furnace of zealous love ablaze in her soul.

Beside herself with joy she went about exclaiming and repeating: “I am the victim, and Jesus the sacrificing Priest. Act quickly O Jesus! All that Jesus wills, I desire; everything that Jesus sends me is a gift.” Then prostrate on her face she made the following prayer, and afterwards put it in writing for my approval:

“Behold me at Thy most Sacred Feet, dear Jesus, to pour forth my acknowledgment and gratitude for the repeated favors You hast granted me. I thank Thee; but I want yet another grace, O my God, if pleasing to Thee; wait, Jesus wait; I am Thy victim, but wait. My life is in Thy hands, but wait; You can use me as You wilt, but wait if it please Thee. May Thy Holy Will be done in all things!”

What did she mean here by the delay she asked of Our Lord with such earnestness? I have alluded to it already when speaking of the fear this humble maiden had for everything extraordinary being noticed in her by others. Now the words that Our Lord spoke to her seemed to specially include the external sufferings that could not be concealed.

Therefore it was that trembling she besought Him to defer to another time when it might please Him to enclose her in a convent, all that concerned the exterior aspect of the expiation announced to her. From that day forward Gemma did not seem herself. The thought of the mission entrusted to her by God had as it were transformed her into another creature. The thirst to suffer torments of every kind seemed to consume and rend her whole being. To satisfy her, torrents of fire would be needed. Listen to her exclamation: “To, suffer, but without any consolation, without any comfort; to suffer, for love alone.”

And in truth for her to love and to suffer was one and the same thing, as it was one and the same thing to be loved and to be pained; hence she added: “I am quite happy; Jesus does not cease to love me; I mean that He does not cease to afflict me more than usual.” It was indeed Our Lord Himself Who had taught her this sublime doctrine; for when she asked Him for the grace to love Him more ardently, His answer was:

“If truly you do wish to love Me, behold here is My Chalice. Canst you drain to the last drop this Cup to which I have already put My lips?”

And Gemma: “Dear Lord, my lips are ready as my heart is ready; satiate me with Thy Chalice, and inebriate me with Thy bitter draught.”

What more? Even the ineffable consolations with which she often found herself favored in prayer had become in a certain sense distasteful as compared with the longed-for bitternesses and Chalice of Jesus. Hence she was able to say to me:

“Believe me, Father, I willingly renounce all the consolations of Jesus, I don’t want them. Jesus is the Man of Sorrows, and I wish to be the Child of Dolours.”

Let not the reader imagine that these and like expressions were the effect of momentary passing fervor, such as may happen to any devout soul in the glow of meditation, which soon growing cold, finds what at first seemed easy and desirable to have become on experience hard and insupportable. This is but a proof that to man created by God in happiness, pain is not natural. The more Gemma’s trials and pains were multiplied the more she longed for their increase.

If she prayed or meditated, if things went well with her or the reverse, she always and in everything found motives inciting her to suffer. And what she went through not being enough, she earnestly besought our Lord to redouble her pains and multiply their forms; in a word, as she put it, to satiate her. “On Saturday evening,” she writes to me, “I went to make a visit to the Most Holy Crucifix. There came upon me an ardent longing for suffering, and with all my heart I implored of Jesus to satisfy me. And, since that evening, He has granted me a teaseless pain in my head, but such a violent pain! And I am almost always crying through fear of not being able to bear it.”

You see, reader, she feels that she may not be able to hold out, and yet she does not desist, but continues to pray that her great longing to suffer more and more may be gratified; nay, she declares that in suffering she finds all her delight; “Yes,” she says, “I am happy in every way that Jesus wills, and if Jesus wants the sacrifice of my life, I give it to Him at once. If He wants anything else I am ready. One thing alone is enough for me; to be His victim, in order to atone for my own innumerable sins, and, if possible, for those of the whole world.”

It seemed to her once that she beheld Blessed Gabriel of the Dolours, who drew near to comfort her, while she was suffering excruciating pains that had lasted some time. He offered to assuage them, but she said to him:

“No, I beg of you, do not take them from me; O! leave them to me at least a little longer; for if you do not I shall have nothing to offer Jesus when evening comes.” It seemed to her a positive loss to have passed even one day without particular sufferings. “Some days have passed,” she complained to me, “and at night I had nothing to give Jesus. Oh I how it grieved me!”

From Thursday evening to that of Friday each week, as we know, this heroic child went over all Calvary in body and soul, suffering unspeakable agony in company with Jesus Crucified. Whoever could have passed but once through such torments would shudder at the thought of them. Gemma, who again and again passed over that way of sorrow and pain, longed for the day, counted the hours she had to wait until it came, and, in the words of those who were around her, “prepared to suffer as if she were preparing for a banquet.”

Our Lord took infinite delight in such great generosity and heroism, and by open proofs of tenderness, showed His complacency at having chosen a spouse so entirely according to His Heart. Thus, on one of many occasions, making His presence felt in her soul, He asked her if she had suffered much in a long trial that she was still undergoing; Gemma’s answer: “With Thee, O Jesus, one suffers so well! What is it to suffer thus for many days, if then You come quickly and consolest?” And Jesus: “Know that when you was suffering, I was always at thy side. I beheld thy distress and was gratified by it.”

Then to reward her for the courage she had displayed in the conflict, He told her she might draw nigh and kiss His Sacred Wounds. And she, with all humility: “But O Jesus, why for so little, a reward so great?”

Then emboldened by her filial confidence she approached her Savior, and kneeling, with her heart all on fire, she kissed one by one those precious Wounds. But when she came to the Wound in His Side she could hold out no longer, and fell in a swoon at the Feet of her Jesus. Beyond all doubt this victim, after such lengthened and heroic proofs, was more than fit for the sacrifice Jesus had so disposed her that she was capable of taking; into her soul an ocean of bitterness and sorrow.

Now the time had come to complete the work. Among the means leading to the consummation of this sacrifice—the martyrdom of the heart—are those of so-called aridities this trial is one of the most frequent in the ways of mystic perfection. After having for a time drawn the soul by spiritual sweetness God begins to wean and detach her by degrees, hiding His face and withdrawing all sense of His presence; He then leaves her alone abandoned as it were in an abyss of darkness and uncertainty of fears and heart-rendings; so that she comes to feel all but lost.

In order to understand how terrible this ordeal becomes to the saints, it would be necessary to appreciate as they did the goodness of this God Whom they seem to have lost, and to love Him as they did. But who will give us to rightly understand these two things? Who will tell us how sweet to our Gemma was that Jesus for Whom alone she lived? And how ravishing that flood of consolations that she drank in so often at His feet from her earliest years? And how dear that hope of being happy with Him for eternity?

Ordinary souls feel certain privations very little, or not at all; because distracted by many cares and not finding consolation in heavenly things, they turn to seek it in those of the earth—they try to find it in sense. But Gemma, who was dead to all created things; who wished for nothing, loved nothing, held all as nothing, except Jesus, how could she possibly live without Him? Listen to her longings:

“I seek Jesus and cannot find Him. It seems as if He is tired of me, and does not want to know anything more of me; and I, where shall I go? And what is to become of me? Poor Jesus, what have I done to Thee! But You wilt let me find Thee again, wilt You not? Be pleased, oh be pleased and come back to me, because I cannot endure it; to be away from Thee, no, no!”

During these periods of agonizing desolation her Angel Guardian often came to console her, and even her Heavenly Mother sometimes appeared to her. But Gemma seemed not to attend to them; she wanted Jesus Who was more precious—Who was her all.

Hence like Magdalene at the Sepulcher, without wishing for comfort from anyone, she asked the Angel: “Where is Jesus?” And to the Holy Mother: “Tell me, Mother, Jesus where is He gone?” And writing to her director: “Would not you at least be able to tell me what I can do to find Jesus? Tell Him that I cannot bear it longer.” Exteriorly she strove to hide her feelings so that no one might become aware of her profound martyrdom. Yet she could not prevent those most familiar with her from noticing how pale and wan she had become.

Occasionally also, coming unawares, they found her alone in her room kneeling with outstretched arms, her tearful eyes raised to Heaven, and heaving deep sighs “My God,” she would exclaim, “do You not see that thus I cannot live? Without Thee I die. Remember that I am a poor orphan; I have none but Thee, and yet, wilt You depart from me?”

If indeed this excruciating suffering had not been sometimes momentarily suspended, Gemma would have ceased to live. But the God of Compassion when her struggle was at its fiercest, hastened to her assistance; then, with words of divine efficacy, this tender-hearted Father consoled her and encouraged her to persevere in the way of the Cross. A few examples of these divine words as told me by the child herself will be acceptable to my readers. They are words of Divine Wisdom that cannot fail to be of great help to many.

“My child,” said Jesus to her, “You complain because I will to keep thee in the dark; but remember that after darkness comes light, and then you shalt have light indeed. I put thee to this test for My greater glory, to give joy to the angels, for thy greater gain, and also for example to others.

“If you do really love Me, you ought to love Me even in the midst of darkness. I delight in and play with souls. I thus play through love. Be not afflicted if I begin to abandon thee; do not think it chastisement; it is truly My own Will in order to detach thee from creatures and unite thee to Myself. Though it seem to thee that I repel thee, know that instead I draw thee more closely to Myself. When I appear to be far away then I am near at hand. Take courage, for after the battle comes peace. Fidelity and love must be thy necessary weapons. For the present therefore be patient if I leave thee alone; suffer, be resigned and be consoled.

“I am leading thee by rough and sorrowful ways; and you should consider thyself honored when I treat thee thus and when by a daily and hidden martyrdom I allow thy soul to be tried and purified. Think only for the present of how you art to practice great virtue; make haste in the ways of divine love, humble thyself, and rest assured that if I keep thee on the Cross I love thee.

“Be not like some, who being attached to consolations and spiritual satisfactions care but little for the Cross. Finding themselves in desolation of spirit, they shorten by degrees the time of prayer because they no longer find in it the consolations they had before experienced.”

It is certain that Gemma was not of this number. She had had so many and such charming lessons from her Divine Master, that far from drawing back because of those painful privations, they but gave her fresh impulse. And in proportion as she felt herself uncared for, and apparently rejected by her God, so much the more earnestly she strove to become pleasing in His sight. Gemma went with greater ardor to the Tabernacle, to the Holy Table, and to the exercise of at least vocal prayer, when she found meditation impossible.

Although in her rapid advance she saw not where she put her foot because of the intense darkness in which her soul was rapt, she nevertheless pushed forward in order, as she used to put it, “to go find Jesus in the de profundis.”

She suffered but did not complain, and with the same alacrity as when full of consolation, she applied herself to all her temporal duties. Now, let the wise ones of the world look and see if their false maxims, or any force of nature, is able to generate magnanimity such as this.