Saint Catherine of Ricci, a stigmatic, unfolds the Passion of Christ in 17 scenes that lasts 28 hours, “conversed aloud as if enacting a drama.”
After her ecstatic experience of the passion, her body is covered with wounds. This was described in her bull of canonization.
Stigma is derived from a Greek word, meaning tattoo or mark. In Christian mysticism it refers to bodily wounds, scars or pains like the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ. The marks are visible on the head, chest and especially on the hands and feet.
Stigmatization can occur anytime, appear or disappear intermittently. The wounds can also be invisible but the recipient knows they are there because of the pain.
Mystical phenomenon
In Saints Catholic Blogosphere, it is said that the blood flow could not be induced psychosomatically. Neither can it be stopped by medical care. Fresh blood flows freely against the laws of gravity. Since the blood seeping from stigmatics is the blood of Christ, there can be two types of blood in a wound. The blood oozes in different quantities and length of time.
Most stigmatics are mystics with a poignant faith to share in God’s suffering.
In his book, Hospitality and Pain, theologian Ivan Illick describes the experience as “Compassion with Christ…faith so strong, so deeply incarnate that it leads to individual embodiment of contemplated pain.”
Saint Francis of Assisi is acknowledged by the Catholic Church as the first stigmatist. He received it on September 14, 1224, while on a 40-day fast in Mount La Verna.
A crucified angel approached him while he was praying. While he was pondering on the meaning of the vision, he saw marks of heads of nails appearing on his wrists and upper sides of his feet. He felt his right side pierced by a spear.
There are 330 stigmatized persons listed by Encyclopedia Britannica (IX, 570), 60 of them were declared saints or blessed.
According to Catholic Doctrine, there is “no intrinsic connection between sanctity and stigmatization. God can grant charisms, such as stigmata to any person, even one in a state of mortal sin or outside the Church.”
However “there is not a single experimental proof that imagination could produce them especially in violent forms” (Mystical Stigmata, Kevin Knight, 2017).
The most painful of the wounds inflicted during the passion are Christ’s wounds on His right shoulder, He revealed this to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.
Available Christian literature on stigmatics revealed that only Father Pio of Pietrelcina had shoulder wounds.
It was only Pope John Paul II who knew about it, as revealed by Stefano Campanella in Pope and the Friar.
Brother Modesto, who was in charge of Father Pio’s vestments, said Pio was in great pain every time he changed his undershirt. The brother, immediately after Pio’s death, saw traces of a “circular hematoma” on his right shoulder.
Pain at its best
Stigmatization is one of the most documented phenomena in the history of the Church. It is painful, so when someone asked Father Pio if it is painful, he answered: “Do you think the Lord gave them to me as decoration?”
Stigmatics describe the pain as physically and morally painful but they can bear with it “due to the intervention of an intelligent and free cause acting on the stigmatics.”
Although stigmatics realize that suffering is at its best others, comment negatively on the experience.
Saint Gemma Galgani “actually passed out due to overwhelming pain of the wounds.”
“I felt as if I was about to die,” she muttered.
The stigmata can occur and disappear anytime. However, most stigmatics suffer the pain of stigmatization on Thursday at 3 p.m. until Friday at 4 p.m.
In a letter to his spiritual director, Father Pio wrote: “The wound is so painful that it is enough to cause 1,001 deaths. Oh my God, why don’t I die? Please forgive me, Father, I am beside myself and I don’t know what I am saying. So much pain causes me to be frantic much against my will.”
An invisible stigmata is more painful, according to doctors. When the wound bleeds, in a visible stigmata, pain is lessened, so too when it is bandaged.
Saint Catherine of Sienna, Saint Clare of Montefalco and Saint Catherine de Ricci, a Florentine Dominican, requested God in humility to hide the wounds without taking away the pains.
God responded to their requests. However, at death, Saint Catherine de Sienna’s wounds appeared. So too, the stigmata of Saint Clare de Montefalco.
Father Pio also begged Jesus to take away the physical signs. In Padre Pio: Man of Hope, Renzo Allegri noted how Pio begged for it.
“Let me suffer and let me die from suffering. But take away these signs that cause me so much embarrassment.” Jesus answered: “You will bear them for 50 years, and then you will see me.”
Flash views
The search for proofs that stigmata can be caused by sickness and induced by imagination and auto suggestion continues. Even if stigmata means a “divine malady that ends only in death,” according to Dr. Imbert, stigmatas continue to fascinate believers and unbelievers alike, including the Vatican.
L’Osservatore Romano, on July 5, 1923, published that “Father Pio’s stigmata were unrelated to the wounds of Christ.”
The decree did not only give “credence about Father Pio as a poor, sick man or a hoax.” Too, the “whole congregation became the butt of jokes.”
Vatican was proven wrong. The humble and obedient Capuchin Franciscan was canonized on June 16, 2002.
Considered as one of the most notable stigmatic of the 20th century, Saint Fr. Pio of Pietrelcina, OFM Cap., is also incorruptible.
Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.