St Gemma Galgani (1878-1903) stigmatist and mystic
Early life
Gemma was born at Borgo Nuovo di Camigliano near Lucca in Tuscany, the fourth of eight children and the eldest daughter.
Her father Enrico was a pharmacist; her mother Aurelia a devout Catholic from whom she picked up her desire for holiness.
A month after her birth the family moved into the city of Lucca.
But when Gemma was two-and-a-half her mother contracted TB; so Gemma was put into a private nursery school where she showed herself an intelligent child.
Her mother's death
Gemma's mother died when she
was eight and it was around this event that she first began to have
mystical experiences.
She had just received her confirmation and at the
Mass she heard a voice saying to her: "Will you give me your Mama?"
"Yes," Gemma replied, "if you will take me as well." "No," the voice
said, "Give me your Mamma without reserve. I will take you to heaven
later."
She could only answer yes and ran home as soon as Mass was over.
It was she who consoled her brothers and sisters after her mother's
death.
"Why should we cry?" she said. "Mama is gone to heaven.”
At the school of the Sisters of St Zita
Gemma
went to the School of the Sisters of St Zita in Lucca and was a good
student, especially in Religious Knowledge. She developed a strong
devotion to Our Lady and the Rosary.
"If God has taken away my mother,"
she said, "he has left me his own."
She longed to receive Holy
Communion, even though at that time Communion was only given around
thirteen or fourteen.
Gemma and Jesus can do everything
"Give me
Jesus," she would say to the Sisters at school, "and you will see how
good I will be: I will not sin again."
At first the parish priest said
she was too young.
But by special permission she received Communion on
the Feast of the Sacred Heart, 17th June 1887, just before she was ten.
She said she felt a fire burning within her breast, but did not think
that was unusual.
"Gemma is good for nothing," she would say, "but Gemma
and Jesus can do everything."
Foot injury and operation
Gemma continued at the
school run by the Zitine Sisters until she was about sixteen.
At this
time a foot injury she took no notice of became painfully infected and
she had to stay in bed for some months.
In the end she had to have an
operation for which she declined an anaesthetic, just fixing her eyes on
the crucifix and enduring the pain.
The doctors were amazed at her
courage.
Spinal meningitis
When Gemma
recovered, she stayed at home looking after the household, making altar
linen for the church and clothes for the poor.
She would also give
religious instruction to children and visit the sick in hospital. Her
brother Gino who was a seminarian died when she was sixteen and her
father died when she was eighteen, leaving the family destitute.
But she
also developed a devotion to the passion of Jesus and often expressed
the desire to share in his suffering.
She did not have long to wait for
soon she was diagnosed with spinal meningitis.
This illness lasted for
almost a year.
A friend brought her a pamphlet on the life of the
Italian Passionist Saint Gabriel Possenti.
She called his name in a
difficult time and he appeared to console her.
Miraculous cure
By February 1899 the doctors had
given up all hope of recovery and Gemma received the Last Sacraments.
Her confessor from childhood, Monsignor Giovanni Volpi, auxiliary Bishop
of Lucca and afterwards Bishop of Arezzo, visited her.
He suggested she
make a novena to St Margaret Mary Alacoque.
Twice she began the novena,
but forgot it. A third time she was ending the novena on the first
Friday of March.
When she received Holy Communion early that morning,
Jesus asked her, "Do you wish to be cured?" "Whatever You will, O
Jesus!"
She was delighted not just that she was cured, but that Jesus
had chosen her as his child.
Wanting to enter a convent
Her first thought
after her recovery was that she would enter a convent.
Whether it was
that the diocesan authorities were slow to believe in the permanence of
sudden cure or that they were wary of her mystical experiences, no
convent would accept her.
She began to do a Holy Hour every Thursday.
Gemma receives the Stigmata
On Thursday, June
8th, the eve of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, when she went to make the
Holy Hour, Gemma received the stigmata and this happened every Thursday
continuing until 3pm on Friday.
During those hours she would engage in
loving conversations with Jesus in a low voice, often tenderly pleading
for mercy for sinners.
A Passionist priest Fr Germano was appointed her
spiritual director.
He made a thorough investigation and
and subsequently wrote her biography.
Gemma moves into the Giannini home
In her aunt’s
house it was difficult for Gemma where young people were both curious
and teasing.
Through the influence of the Passionist Fathers, she moved
into the home of the Giannini family in Lucca, first as an occasional
guest, then finally as an adopted daughter.
The household consisted of
the father and mother with eleven children, and an aunt named Cecilia,
who already knew and admired Gemma and became a adopted "mother" to her.
Here she worked, crocheting, knitting and mending socks.
She also liked
to care for anyone that was sick.
Still wanting to be a nun
Gemma began, as far as
she could, to lead the life of a Passionist nun outside the cloister.
She had already made a vow of chastity during her serious illness, and
to this she now added with her Confessor’s approval the vows of poverty
and obedience.
She wore the Sign of the Passion on her heart underneath
her clothing, and recited the Divine Office daily like the Passionist
nuns in choir.
And she never lost the hope till near the end of her life
of joining them.
She even predicted the setting up of a convent of
Passionist nuns at Lucca, something which happened after her death and
continues to flourish.
Final illness
At Pentecost, 1902, Gemma was
suddenly stricken with another strange illness that continued, with one
short interval, for the remaining nine months of her life.
She could not
taste any food, her body was in pain, and she became very thin.
Helped
by her adoptive mother and friend she went each day to church for Mass
and Holy Communion.
She thought she was possessed.
She seemed to herself
to be full of hypocrisy and deceit.
However, she continued to pray
remaining calm and willing to suffer for Jesus.
Isolated
Some of the doctors, thinking that her
disease was tuberculosis, decided to remove Gemma, much to the
disappointment of the Giannini family, to a rented room across the
street.
From here she could communicate with the Giannini home by a bell
fixed to a cord stretched across an intervening courtyard.
Here Gemma
was removed on February 24th, 1903.
But just two months later on Good
Friday, she went into a prolonged ecstasy, nailed, as she said, with
Jesus to the Cross.
On Holy Saturday a priest was called and she was
anointed and died that afternoon.
She looked so peaceful that those
present found it hard to believe she was actually dead.
Canonisation
Gemma Galgani was beatified by Pope
Pius XI on May 14th, 1933, and canonised by Pope Pius XII on Ascension
Thursday, May 2nd, 1940.
Thirteen hundred of the citizens of Lucca
headed by their archbishop attended, including the Giannini family who
had so befriended her.
Also her youngest sister Angelina sitting with
the nun of St. Zita who had taught her as a child and guided her first
steps in the path of heroic sanctity.