CHAPTER XXI

Gemma’s Gift of Supernatural Prayer

BY MEANS of prayer the soul is enabled to lift itself near to God, and thus live a spiritual life—that of Christian perfection. This spiritual life has various degrees; and the soul that is enabled to pass through all of them will assuredly come to a full union with God. The first degrees are those of ordinary prayer and meditation by which we consider the eternal truths and apply them to ourselves so as to excite corresponding heartfelt sentiments. Many souls stop at these first degrees which are those of the so-called ascetic life. Others pass from meditation to contemplation, which belongs to the mystic life.

Contemplation is an elevation of the soul to God and heavenly things, by means of a simple intellectual, loving gaze that brings an absorbing peace and light into the mind and heart of the contemplative. In meditation the soul must often labor much in the exertion of its powers—memory, understanding and will. In contemplation she has only to gaze and admire, the beauty of the object that God shows her. She does not then exercise herself in reflections, applications, reasonings, etc., but remains as it were in mental suspense before the great things that draw her out of herself in admiring wonder. We may say that the contemplative does here on earth in a limited degree what the blessed do in heaven. Having made the foregoing remarks on prayer in general in order to be better understood in a matter concerning which many have not clear ideas, we come now directly to Gemma. Firstly, we shall consider her spirit of prayer in general; then the lofty flights of her soul by the ways of contemplation.

From her earliest years Gemma attended with great diligence to the exercise of prayer, thus meriting a constant increase of grace. We have noticed her earnest entreaties to her saintly mother and to her mistresses in order to be taught how to pray, and how, when she came to know something about it, avoiding the company of others she used to pass long hours of the day working and praying alone.

To this source we must trace her great dread of all that outside God could occupy her mind or heart, or distract her thoughts. Hence that absolute detachment from all created things; that rigid watchfulness over her senses; that extreme delicacy of conscience; that continual mortification of her will and inclinations, and all those rare virtues that she practiced without ceasing. Thus she prepared herself to enter into converse with her Lord.

Such efforts could not rest without reward from God’s own Heart, and soon she came to fix her gaze on Him as the eagle gazes at the sun and is not dazzled. Now if the object of prayer is to stand before God and treat with Him alone by faith, we must needs conclude that this chosen soul attained all the ends of prayer in a most exalted degree.

Generally speaking, in order to commune with God she had no need to use effort, to concentrate her thoughts such as others must resort to. Our Lord was always present to her; and nothing could turn her attention from Him, while at the same time she was most exact and attentive to every duty. Once only, and for a moment, can I remember her to have been distracted from her actual attention to God. This is how it was:

“Signor Lorenzo,” she said, “gave me some accounts to make up for him, and as they were rather difficult, I applied such attention to them that I lost sight of God. Father, you see here how imperfect I am. Because of a few figures and a material interest I left Our Lord. This thought disturbed me greatly for a short time. I asked God to pardon me and He did so at once.”

It was enough to see this girl, even at a distance, in order to be convinced that she was absorbed in God. Her dignity of countenance, gravity of bearing and moderation of words; her angelic modesty beautified by a spontaneous smile that always played around her lips; all went to show the beholder that Gemma was only in body a dweller in this world. This uninterrupted attention to heavenly things had become so natural to her, that she would have had to do herself violence to think of anything else.

Finding myself one day at table with the family, who are benefactors to our Institute, on seeing Gemma, who was sitting opposite me, all absorbed in God, I used my authority as her spiritual father and told her to distract herself, that not being the time or place for prayer. At my words I saw that she turned pale and seemed to tremble all over. She continued to eat as if her manifest mental suffering was nothing. After table calling her aside I saw that she was perspiring profusely. “Now what is this?” I said to her, wondering. “You know it, father,” she answered with her usual candor. “Oh did you not take Jesus from me at table? And can I live without thinking of Him?”

I turned the subject, and with an air of reproof sent her to change her things. In about an hour I renewed the precept and the strange phenomenon repeated itself. Once again I renewed the same precept with the same result. After this I left her free, as it pained me greatly to see how much suffering my prohibitions caused her.

Gemma’s constant attention to God did not consist merely in a recollection that any souls may have who feel themselves in the Divine presence; it was an exercise of exalted supernatural prayer, spontaneous and full of sweetness. She saw her God, spoke and listened to Him, found her whole delight in Him, and, passing with marvelous ease from the most abstract contemplation to the most obvious and commonplace ideas, she laid her doubts before Him, asked graces for this or that soul, and thanked Him for those already received. Thus we learn the nature of this holy child’s recollection and of her spirit of prayer. Thus she occupied twenty-four hours of her day. I say twenty-four hours, because taking as she did very little sleep and at short intervals, her prayer was scarcely interrupted.

On awaking she immediately took it up where she had left off; she rose from bed without weariness or heaviness of brain; and whoever might be present as she got up would have seen her sign herself devoutly with the Crucifix, that she always kept in her hand while sleeping, kiss it and then smile with heavenly grace. Making allusion to her nocturnal interviews with her Lord, she was once, when in ecstasy, heard to exclaim: “See, O Jesus, even at night, those hours, those hours! I sleep, but O Jesus, my heart does not sleep; it watches with Thee at all hours.”

The reader will observe that formal vocal prayers were little used by this angelic soul. The Rosary was said in the family; sometimes she recited that of the Seven Dolours and of the Passion as an introduction to meditation on the Sorrowful Mysteries, and nothing more. Being helped much better by the light she received from above she formed her own prayers according to her wants. “It does not help me,” she said to me, “to read prayers from books, nor to repeat Our Fathers and Hail Marys; they don’t satisfy me and I get tired; so I do for myself as best I can.”

It will, I am sure, gratify my readers if I give them here some more examples of Gemma’s improvised prayers such as were gathered faithfully from her lips when taken unawares as she prayed aloud. Possibly they will not be found inferior to the soliloquies of St Augustine.

“Praise to the unbounded love of Jesus, Who moved to pity by my misery, offers me every means of coming to His Love! You Jesus art a treasure not known to me before. But now Jesus I have known Thee. You art all mine, specially Thy Heart. Yes Thy Heart is mine, because You hast so often given It to me. But Thy Heart, Jesus, is full of light, and mine is full of darkness When, oh, when, shall I pass from this darkness to that clear light of my Jesus?” “But how shall I be able, my God, to praise Thee? When You did create me, You made me without me; so likewise even without me You have the praise You deserve. Then, let all Thy Works, done from the sublimity of Thy majesty, praise Thee. My mind has beginning and end; but the praise that God possesses shall never have an end; and when we praise Thee, O Lord, it is not we, it is You Who praise Thyself in Thyself.”

And praying for herself: “Jesus I come to Thy feet, to ask of Thee a grace. If You wert not omnipotent I would not ask this favor. Oh how is it that You do not cure my soul so insatiable in its desires? Wouldst You despise the desires that You Thyself hast put into my heart? This grace I will have, and You wilt grant it me; is it not so ? O Jesus, have mercy on me, whose prayers You hast so often heard for others; have mercy on a sinful creature that has cost Thee Thy life. Pardon me, my God; I am an orphan; without father, without mother; have pity on poor orphans; they are the fruit of Thy Passion.”

Of tender colloquies like these I have enough by me to fill a volume. Sometimes Gemma gave vent to her love in short heartfelt aspirations, and these likewise were all aglow with love: “O Jesus! O God of my heart! O Father! Alone with Thee alone! When, oh when, shall I see Thee face to face? O earth how vile you art to me? O Cross of my Jesus, how dear You art to me!”

These and such ardent expressions coming from her intellect to her heart, passed from her heart to her lips when she believed herself alone and unheard. Sometimes they were verses from the psalms, the best adapted to her sentiments; and she used these more particularly during great spiritual desolation, when the Hood of mental agony rendered her mind and heart emotionless. During times of ordinary dryness of soul the action of her mind and heart remained perfectly free; perhaps more so than during periods of consolation, with this difference, that then her prayer was sorrowful and pitiable to such a degree as to be heart-rending to those who heard it.

Among her writings I found a little book into which she had copied some of the above-mentioned aspirations taken from the psalms, entitled: “Prayers, Aspirations, Ejaculations, a short collection from the Psalms, to be repeated during the day, particularly at those times when Jesus hides Himself.”

Thus we have already heard her call that state of spiritual martyrdom: “When Jesus hides Himself.” Treating of Contemplation, mystic doctors divide it into infused and acquired. The first is purely the gift of God, independent of any human industry; the second, less elevated, less luminous and sweet, can be acquired by our own efforts aided by divine grace, and by the exercise of more or less assiduous meditation.

By this exercise the soul grows more and more accustomed to think of heavenly things; the mind and heart become, so to say, more subtle and spiritualized until there is no longer any need of the discourse and reflections of the intellect as a means of being united to God.

Then a single thought, an image, represented to the mind. detaches and holds her in suspense in the simple, tranquil, attentive gaze of contemplation. Gemma knew both these kinds of prayer, and it is manifest from what has been stated, that in the ways of the spirit she was not merely passive but labored strenuously to become holy and thus rendered herself worthy of the most exalted gifts of divine grace.

She began to practice ordinary meditation while quite a child and applied herself to it with her whole being in the morning when in church, and in the evening before going to rest. Besides these special hours, she devoted every other spare interval of free time to this holy occupation.

In her eagerness to know how to meditate she aimed at following the rules commonly laid down by masters in spiritual matters.

Such rules are: Remote preparation by recollection and choice of subject; proximate preparation consisting of the acts of faith, sorrow for sin, etc., that precede the devout exercise; then other more detailed and technical rules are added by some, such as preludes, composition of place, representation by the memory and imagination, consideration by means of the intellect, application of the subject of meditation to oneself, exciting the affections through the will, etc. All these Rules are useful to many, and may be necessary to some; but not to all. Gemma can scarcely ever have gone into them; having been lifted far above them from the beginning. Her ordinary subjects of meditation were the attributes of God and the Passion of our Savior; and even when others offered themselves she always ended with these two: God and Calvary.

She entered so eagerly into them that she would have been able to occupy herself in them for many hours at a time without feeling tired, and even without suffering the least distraction. Indeed, she never had distractions while meditating, no matter how long the time of prayer might last. As she began to pray the world vanished entirely from her thoughts, and she remained free to retreat with God, as if this earth no longer existed. We know of only a few Saints who enjoyed this privilege.

Now anyone can see how easy it must have been for Gemma to pass from such attentive meditation to the form of contemplation that we have called acquired. And in fact she passed to it very quickly. I will here repeat the very words in which, at my request, she gave me a written account of her prayer:

“When I place myself to meditate, I use no effort. My soul immediately feels itself absorbed, in the immense greatness of God, now lost at one point now at another. But first I begin by making my soul reflect, that being made to the image and likeness of God, He alone has to be her end. Then in a moment, it seems that my soul flies away to God, loses the weight of the body, and finding myself in the presence of Jesus, I lose myself totally in Him. I feel that I love the heavenly Lover of His creatures; the more I think of Him the more I come to know how sweet and lovable He is.

“Sometimes I think I see in Jesus a divine light and a sun of eternal brightness, a God so great that there is nothing on earth or in heaven that is not subject to Him, a God in Whose Will is all power. I recognize God among all kinds of goodness as the supreme Infinite Goodness—that which exists of itself; and Jesus being Infinite Perfection I find everything in Him. I lose myself also in His Goodness and here almost always my mind flies to paradise. Jesus is infinitely good, and in Him I hope to enjoy all good. And I end by begging of Jesus to increase His love in me, so that I may be perfected in heaven.”

And in another account she writes: “In prayer I feel as it were out of myself. I do not distinguish where I am—if I am out of my senses, or . . . in a peace and tranquility that cannot be explained. I feel myself drawn by a force; but it is not a force used with effort, it is a sweet power. And when I find myself in the fullness of the delicious happiness that I experience in possessing Jesus, I forget entirely if I am in the world; I feel that my mind is full and has nothing to desire because it possesses an immense goodness, the Infinite Good, to which no other can be compared; a goodness without measure, without defect. Not even after prayer does it happen to me to willfully seek or desire anything, because of the exquisite contentment that Jesus in His Infinite Goodness and Charity gives me. It is not always however a love of contentment; sometimes during prayer such great sorrow for my sins takes possession of me that it seems to me I must die.”

In answer to a doubt that I designedly proposed to her, she thus replied: “On entering into prayer I behold Jesus not with the eyes of my body but I recognize Him distinctly; because He makes me lapse into a blissful abandonment and in this total surrender I know Him. His voice is heard by me with such force that, as I have often said, it cuts more than a double-edged sword, so deeply does it enter into my soul. His words are words of eternal life. When I thus see Jesus and hear Him I don’t seem to perceive beauty of body, nor figure, nor sweet sound, nor charming song; but when I see and hear Him, I see an infinite Light, an immense Good. His voice is not an articulate voice, but it is stronger, and makes itself more felt in my soul than if I heard pronounced words.”

From prayer so exalted there is but a step to that which we have called infused contemplation. But we must not imagine that this infused contemplation is merely a more perfect degree of prayer which the soul may reach by its own efforts. It is something quite separate. Still when such splendid dispositions exist in the soul, as we have seen in Gemma, it may well be supposed that God will not allow her to slacken in her progress, but will call her to more lofty elevations and to more sublime communications.

I will call this infused contemplation a supernatural drawing of grace, that wills to introduce We faithful soul into the secrets of celestial things; it is a purely divine light that comes suddenly when least expected and takes possession of the mind and heart. For which reason this form of prayer can easily be distinguished from all others; being vastly more sublime, more penetrating, more rapturous than the others, it is so precisely because it is purely divine.

This infused contemplation is based on a fullness of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, more particularly of the gifts of Understanding and Wisdom. To the first in fact belongs the enabling the soul to penetrate the hidden things of faith through sublime ideas, and to the second, the appreciating their value whence such joy, sweetness, and contentment inundate the soul in contemplation.

It is evident from all Gemma wrote in her letters, and in her manifestations of conscience to her spiritual director, from what she said particularly while in ecstasy, and from what she did, that she had those gifts of the Holy Ghost in a more than ordinary degree. Everything goes to show that the mind of this girl, more angelic than human, was endowed with a power of refined and penetrating vision that enabled her to plunge without effort into the abyss of Infinite Goodness and draw sublime conceptions therefrom.

She was also endowed with a clear discernment and rare prudence that made her prefer the things of heaven to anything created, seeking them with avidity and loving them with unspeakable love. Thus raised by such exalted gifts above the infirmities of nature, and invigorated by celestial light, that at certain moments was given her by the Divine Spirit Himself, she beheld the Unity of Nature in God, the Trinity of the Divine Persons, the ineffable Union of the Word with human nature in the Incarnation, the mystery of the Divine Wisdom. Justice and Mercy in the government of creatures, and other inscrutable truths of our holy faith that God found her fit to receive.

She saw them almost without a shadow as if they were not mysteries but evidences; she beheld and was not satiated, and desired to see more clearly; she rose in daring flights and still she felt that there were greater heights to be reached and greater depths to be penetrated. The end at which she aimed was to see God face to face. Hence on one of many occasions she was heard to exclaim: “Oh I who will give me the wings of the dove that I may fly to Thee, my God? Give them to me You, the wings of contemplation. How am I to fly to Thee? Break, break these chains that hinder me from flying to Thee. There are other things, O Jesus, in contemplating which my soul seems to be nourished, but in none of them can it rest. In Thee alone can my soul find rest.”

She used to say that if human speech could possibly give expression to what God made her understand in these contemplations, she would be able to write volumes on every one of the mysteries of our holy faith. And in her desire to be understood by her spiritual father from whom she did not wish anything concerning her soul to be hidden, she used, as we have already seen, to attempt an explanation by means of material figures and similitudes.

“Imagine,” these are her words, “that you see a light of immense splendor, that penetrates everything, surrounds everything, enlightens everything, and at the same time gives life and animation to all, so that whatever exists has its being from this light and in it lives. Thus I see my God and creatures in Him. Imagine a fiery furnace, great as the universe, nay, infinitely greater, that burns everything without consuming anything, and burning illumines and strengthens, and those who are most penetrated by its flames are happiest, and desire more ardently to be consumed. Thus I see our souls in God.” And on the subject of the Blessed Trinity: “I seem to behold three Persons within a boundless light, all three united in one essence; trinity in unity and unity in trinity, and as the essence of the Trinity is but one, so one only is its goodness, one only its beatitude.” The ordinary confessor once asked her in confession to explain to him in detail what she understood of the august mystery of the Trinity. Gemma tried to comply, and, as God enlightened her mind, she went so deeply into those divine truths in what she said that, as she told me afterwards: “When we had well entered into it we both remained unable to go any further.”

It is difficult to give any idea of the greatness of Gemma’s veneration for these adorable truths, and of the torrent of spiritual delights that, while she contemplated them, inundated her soul. It is enough to know, that very often she was unable to resist this flood of consolation, and either swooned away or remained rapt in ecstasy. “How could I explain to you,” she said to me, “what I feel in those moments?”

It is all heaven that pours itself into my poor soul. First one wonders, then is overwhelmed, the mind becomes confused, and remains as it were stupefied; the heart beats strongly; oh, so strongly! and one knows not what to do; one enjoys and suffers at the same time, and would not like to turn back. And when the prayer is over, if you were to know how one remains! I don’t know if you have ever experienced it. My God how good You art to me!”

Such sublime light as this was very often granted her, either while she was at prayer or engaged at some work that of itself was calculated to distract her. All of a sudden her mind seemed to become dazzled by a mysterious light, everything else disappeared from around her, a profound recollection followed and Gemma was in heaven to contemplate God and His infinite beauty. She herself not knowing how to explain this superhuman phenomenon, with her usual candid simplicity put it thus:

“My senses leave me. I was in the kitchen by the fire speaking to the servant, when lo! I felt the usual thing come on me without giving me time to run away; then immediately I lost my senses and found myself with Jesus.”

Infused contemplation is of three kinds: intellectual, imaginary and mixed. The first proceeds by the way of abstract species, in other words, is purely intellectual; the second by that of sensible pre-existing images, or else is divinely impressed on the imagination; the third partakes of the first and second, either divinely so disposed, or because of the natural nexus existing in man between the intellect and the senses. When the mystery contemplated is of itself sensible, such as the Passion of Our Savior, it is clear that this imaginary contemplation is not objectively less noble than the intellectual, and is exercised equally by beginners and by the more advanced in this divine faculty.

The intellectual, strictly understood is, according to the unanimous opinion of theologians, most rare, because grace corrects and restrains nature, when it may hinder the divine action, but does not force it. Hence the more common form of contemplation is the mixed, in the second sense in which we have explained it, inasmuch as sensible images enter into the contemplation not as its precise instrument but only by a natural adaptability.

Now this was generally the form of Gemma’s contemplation, and of that we are assured, because after her prayer she remembered perfectly what she had contemplated, and she was able, though very imperfectly, by the help of sensible images to give an idea of each mystery. She would not have found this possible if in the contemplation her imagination had not taken any part. Then this faculty which in her was always so well regulated that even in her ordinary prayer it was not perceptible, could not possibly be a hindrance to her when, under the direct action of the Holy Spirit, those sublime mysteries entered into her prayer.

The formal exercise of her imagination would seem to have been only in the contemplation of mysteries that were objectively sensible, specially those of Our Lord’s Humanity; but even then, with what delicacy! Thus this faculty of imagination showed her the Divine Beauty of Jesus; it depicted the flames of love in that Heart, His deep wounds, His Body all bleeding, His Head crowned with Thorns; and then, so to say, withdrew, leaving her mind, and still more her heart, moved by increased lights and impulses to plunge deeper into the ocean of Infinite Love. So tit had to be; because in contemplation the fantasy is neither casual nor arbitrary, but regulated by God. Enough has been said so far to make it quite clear that Gemma’s contemplation was from God.

When this blessed child was a beginner in mystic ways, the Holy Spirit, adapting Himself to her youthful simplicity, led her on by means of purely sensible and imaginative contemplation, even with regard to mysteries that of themselves are intellectual. He showed her, for example, the Eternal Divine Father in the form of a venerable old man clothed with all the honor of paternity, and all the majesty of a just judge; the goodness of God like a sea without bounds, without depth; Divine Grace like a refreshing shower that filtering gently through the soil reanimates and vivifies the plants and bids them bloom and fructify.

Nay, though she made most rapid progress to the very highest contemplation, even then it sometimes happened that her sublimest abstract contemplations alternated with imaginary ones. And this likewise is conformable to the doctrine of mystic theologians, who teach that contemplation being purely a gift of divine liberality which God bestows when and where He pleases, it not infrequently happens that the most advanced souls are made to descend for a while to the lowest grades of beginners, even passing from the delights of the unitive to the labors of the purgative way.

It would seem that the rare simplicity which in Gemma instead of growing less as she advanced in years and perfection of soul, became greater, must have moved the Sacred Heart of Him Who delights to play with simple souls, to treat her as a child. And this will explain how, together with the most sublime conceptions of the Divinity that came from her pen and lips when already an adult in spiritual ways, we find her from time to time making mention of the “Holy Papa of Jesus” of the Angel “who spies after her” of the “Heavenly Mamma” who embraced and pressed her to her heart.

Let the lives of the Saints who had to pass by these ways be read, and it will be seen how conformable to theology were the contemplations of the Virgin of Lucca. All Christians are not called by God to the heights of contemplation. It is however true, that if those whom He selects for these sublime degrees of prayer are in our days so few, sound reason ends in this fact the result of there being so few who render themselves worthy of this grace.

Oh! let us learn from Gemma how we are to correspond to Divine Grace; and how we are to reach that sanctity to which all without exception are called! And the Holy Ghost will give even to us, at least as many of His Gifts as are needed to enable us to know Him and love Him.