Saint Gemma Galgani is blessed with the gifts of supernatural knowledge, ecstasy, vision, prophecy, stigmata and levitation.
Often in ecstasy, she was seen in the dining room, with her arms around the crucifix while she was kissing the wound on the side of the crucified Christ and her feet raised from the floor, narrated Joan Caroll Cruz in Mysteries, Marvels, Miracles in the Lives of Saints.
Stigmatization
In February 1899, she joined a novena to Saint Margaret Mary. Saint Gabriel appeared to Galgani and promised to join the novena and pray with her.
On the first Friday of March, she was completely healed of spinal meningitis. With a remarkable openness to God, her angel instructed her on the practice of virtues.
On June 8, 1899, after Holy Communion, she was enlightened that she will be receiving a gift from God. In the evening, the Blessed Mother, with her guardian angel, appeared and told her that she will receive a grace from Jesus.
The Blessed Mother covered her with her mantle and Jesus appeared with His open wounds. Instead of blood, it was fire that were on the wounds and the flames touched her hands, feet and heart.
Galgani felt she was dying due to intense pain. Blood flowed on her painful body parts. Her guardian angel helped cover her wounds. She went to sleep in perfect peace.
She put on gloves to hide the wounds when she received Holy Communion the next day. She was in great pain until 3 p.m. of Friday, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart.
A victim soul
On June 8, 1899, a victim soul was born, as she began to display the signs of stigmata.
Suffering is anathema in a world of joy and pleasure. To suffer is to carry a cross in life. A genuine disciple of God accepts the crosses of life.
Jesus Himself died on the cross he carried to Calvary to save men from sinfulness—the sins of humanity. Christ Himself said: “No one who does not carry his cross and come after me can be a disciple” (Luke 14:27).
Someone who takes upon the punishment due the sins of others is a victim of love. So victimhood is “sharing the infinite merits of Jesus’ passion and death to share the redemption of sinful man.”
Jesus shares the cross to all. But to those who dispose themselves to His wisdom, generosity and humility, He pours His grace of victimhood.
In her diary, Galgani expressed how she felt the first time Jesus appeared to her: “Two sentiments were born in my heart the very first time I felt and saw Jesus dripping in blood. The first, to love Him, and to love Him to the point of sacrifice…. The other thing was a great desire to suffer for Him, seeing how much He had suffered for me.”
Saint Gemma Galgani offered her sufferings for the “conversion of sinners, and the suffering souls in purgatory, and for God’s love and mercy upon humanity.”
In 1903, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. On the Holy Saturday of the following year, she died with a smile on her lips.
On her tombstone were the inscription: “Gemma Galgani of Lucca, a most innocent virgin, while in her 25 year, consumed rather by the fire of Divine Love than by the violence of disease, flew into the arms of Her Heavenly Spouse on Holy Saturday, the 11th of April 1903. Peace be to thee, O sweet soul, in company with the angels.”
Her relics are on the Passionist Monastery in Lucca, Italy, and her heart is in the Sanctuary of Saint Gemma Galgani in Madrid, Spain.
Her feast day is on April 11.
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.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons