BIOGRAPHY of ST GEMMA GALGANI - Get a Free Blog

arrive when I could say: "Jesus lives in me." Consumed with desire I passed entire nights in meditating upon
these words.'
To crown her days of preparation Gemma decided to make a general confession. She was only a child of
nine years of age, most innocent, almost angelic, and yet she tells us that with the help of the Sisters she
prepared herself for a general confession and completed it at a third visit to her confessor, Mgr. Volpi. One
wonders what such an angel had to confess?
RECEIVED HER FIRST HOLY COMMUNION
A truly happy day for Gemma was June 17, 1887, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.
She had jotted down on the previous evening, the resolutions she had made during the retreat: (1)' I will go
to confession and Communion each time as if they were to be my last. (2) I will often visit Jesus in the
Blessed Sacrament, especially when I am in trouble. (3) I will prepare for every Feast of the Blessed Virgin
by some mortification, and every evening I will ask the blessing of my heavenly Mother. (4) I desire to remain
always in the presence of God. (5) Every time the clock strikes I will repeat three times, " My Jesus Mercy."
She would have added more had she not been observed by a wise and prudent teacher who told her to be
content with what she had already written.
She then wrote to her father :
‘DEAR PAPA,
The vigil of my first Holy Communion day has come, a day of unbounded happiness for me. I am writing to
assure you of my affection, and to ask you to pray to Jesus for me that when He comes to me for the first
time, He may find me well disposed to receive all the graces He has prepared for me. I ask your pardon for
having been disobedient to you, and for all the trouble I have caused you, and I beg of you this evening to
forget the past and to give me your blessing.
‘Your most affectionate daughter,
‘GEMMA.'
The long expected day at length arrived. Gemma thus wrote of it in her Autobiography:
‘Sunday morning came at last. I got up immediately and hastened to ,meet Jesus for the first time. All my
longings were finally satisfied. I understood then for the first time the promise of Jesus: "He that eateth Me,
the same also shall live by Me." I cannot express in words what passed between Jesus and me in that
moment. Jesus made Himself felt, oh, so strongly, in my poor soul. I realized that the delights of. heaven are
not the same as those of earth. I desired intensely to make that union with God continuous. I felt myself more
and more detached from the earth and more and more disposed to recollection.'
It was related by one who had the happiness of making her first Holy Communion on the same day, that after
receiving the Blessed Sacrament, Gemma said, pointing to her heart: 'I feel a fire here . . . I feel myself
burning; do you feel like that?' Another witness deposes that Gemma made her first Holy Communion with
such enthusiasm and devotion that she was unable to restrain her joy.
Two days later Gemma again received Holy Communion, this time in her own parish Church of St. Frediano.
Gemma never forgot the impressions of that happy day. I t can be said in fact that henceforward she lived
only for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. For a few years she communicated once, and occasionally twice, a
week, and on the other days satisfied her longings for union with Jesus by spiritual Communions, according
to Sister Julia Sestini, always making more than the number suggested to the children.
The Feast of the Sacred Heart, which always reminded Gemma of her first meeting with Jesus, became her
special day of devotion. Every year she used to unite herself with those who were making their first
Communion, and make the spiritual exercises with them in spirit.
Fourteen years later, in 1901, when she wrote the following letter to her spiritual Director, the memory of that
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