Gemma Galgani: healed to atone for sinners' faults

On 11 April 1903, Gemma Galgani, a young Italian woman of 23, entered heaven. At eighteen, Gemma was the prettiest girl in Lucca, if not Tuscany. Her beauty distressed her, and even more so the young men who wished to marry her, followed her in the street, and gathered under her window, trying to attract her attention. But long before that, listening only to her heart, Gemma had chosen Christ as her only husband. Through her guardian angel, Jesus asked her to marry him one day as she gazed at herself in a mirror, adorned with her jewels. He told her reproachfully: "The only jewels that adorn the bride of the crucified King are the thorns and the cross". Helped by the angelic world, but fiercely fought by the demons, she henceforth took care to have no other adornment.

Les raisons d'y croire :

• A few hours before the death of her mother, 8-year-old Gemma was praying in church when she heard a voice, which would become familiar to her and which she discovered to be that of Christ, ask her: "Will you give me your mum?" Despite her distress and tears, she had the courage to say yes. It is hard to imagine that a child of that age could have invented a reply to express her worst fear, the death of her mother, or that she could have accepted, without spiritual help, something that for her represented the ultimate tragedy.

• Immediately after her mother's death, as if Heaven were compensating for the sacrifice she had accepted, Gemma had her first mystical experiences and progressed so quickly in the spiritual life that her parish priest, surprised, allowed her to make her First Holy Communion at the age of nine, whereas the custom - which continued until the beginning of the twentieth century and the reform of Saint Pius X - was to wait until the age of eleven or twelve, or even older. Little Gemma must have been exceptionally mature in matters of faith for this priest, at that time, to make an exception for her.

• At first, Gemma did not object to her father's plan to find her a rich husband, and even enjoyed the pretty dresses and jewels offered to show her off. But when her guardian angel appeared and reproached her for being coquettish and failing to live up to Christ's love for her, Gemma gave up her finery, dressed in shabby black robes, made herself look ugly and shunned all male attention. This change of attitude, when she knew that her marriage was the solution to her family's financial difficulties, cannot be explained without this vision.

• After the death of her father, under pressure from her family, Gemma, who no longer wanted to marry, begged heaven to rid her of her beauty. Before long, her health declined and she was diagnosed with Pott's disease. Her condition was desperate. Within a month, affected by bone tumours caused by this extreme form of tuberculosis, she became unrecognisable and suffered atrociously.

• All treatment was in vain, including a curettage of her bone tumours, which she underwent without anaesthetic because she wanted to suffer for sinners. She developed mastoiditis and then the beginnings of meningitis. The doctor announced that she would not make it through the night. As she lay dying, in the middle of the night, a young religious passionist appeared to her and said: "Gemma, dear little sister, I'm Gabriel from the Addolorata and I have to ask you something on behalf of God: do you want me to take you to Heaven straight away, or do you want to stay here and suffer for sinners?" Gemma accepted to live and atone for the sins of sinners.

• The next morning, the doctor who had come to certify her death found her on her feet, ready to go to church to hear Mass. He noted the miraculous nature of this impossible and improbable cure. The certificate was sent to the convent of Gran Sasso, where Gabriel was buried, and the miracle was added to the file for his beatification. There is no explanation for this instantaneous healing. Gemma had no relapses and suffered no after-effects until her death.

• Gemma spent the rest of her days cloistered at home, going out only to church. It was there that she developed a spirituality of love and self-offering that could only be dictated from above, as these passages attest: "Do you really want to love me? First learn to suffer. Suffering teaches you to love. Thecross is the throne of true lovers".

• Since her recovery, Gemma's spiritual father was an enthusiastic priest, Padre Germano, who became her first biographer and who, confronted with the strange mystical phenomena surrounding her, exercised extreme caution to ensure that there was no trickery involved. So when the stigmatised Gemma relived the Passion every week, he carried out clinical examinations of the wounds, making sure that it could not be self-mutilation or autosuggestion.

• Confronted with the appearance in Gemma's room, out of season, of bouquets of flowers, baskets of splendid fruit and letters that she had not been able to post or have posted, he had the young girl locked up and watched over, and found that this did not prevent these objects from appearing.

• Gemma died in 1903 and was canonised in 1940, even though under the pontificate of Pius XI - influenced by his scientific advisor, Archbishop Gemelli, a former unbelieving doctor who had converted and become a priest - expert assessments of mystical phenomena were extremely strict, as Padre Pio's setbacks proved. So the Holy See must have found nothing wrong with the strange episodes in the saint's life.