BIOGRAPHY of ST GEMMA GALGANI - Get a Free Blog

all being rapt in Jesus, that is, in the loss of mind and heart in the immense sea of the Divinity.
MYSTICAL ARDOURS
We shall proceed with our account of the other marvels which God wrought in this angelic virgin of Lucca.
The reader already knows that Gemma's heart, wounded by the Stigmata, often poured forth blood
copiously. But there are other extraordinary things concerning her heart which call for admiration.
Gemma lived on her love for God. Every increase in this love, far from satisfying her ardent desires, did but
inflame them the more. But she realized her own powerlessness. Thus she confessed : ' There are days
when Jesus is very close to me, and makes Himself felt in my heart; then my poor little heart becomes
excited and makes me suffer incredibly and then my thoughts flyaway to Heaven. . . . If I had a heart large
enough, where Jesus could remain at His ease, I should never feel this pain.' She would have liked to love
Jesus more than did the very Seraphim, and in one of her ecstasies she was heard to say : ' Angels of
Paradise, you are not the only ones whom Jesus has told to love Him; He has also told me to love Him; you
are not the only ones He loves; He has also told me that He loves me. . . . 0 my heart, make more room,
expand wide.'
Gemma's love was so vehement that it manifested itself externally. Her heart was like a furnace, so that one
could not put a hand near it without feeling the unaccustomed heat. Even the flesh over her heart looked as if
it had been scorched by a fire. This phenomenon, by no means unique in the history of Christian
hagiography, has been attested to in the Processes.
There are other marvels mentioned by witnesses in the Processes. The love that burned within her made her
heart throb so violently that the benches on which she sat or the bed on which she lay trembled, and even
the bedclothes immediately over her heart. were affected by the vehement movement underneath. 'It seems
to me that my heart will jump out of my breast,' she said; 'how I should like to have a hand there sometimes
to hold it back!' However, Gemma did not appear to know that the hand that tried to press back her heart
would feel itself repulsed. Aunt Cecilia often placed her hand over Gemma's heart, sometimes when trying to
prevent a spitting of blood that occurred on these occasions. 'It seems to me,' she said, 'that there was a
bellows under her ribs.' Gemma's heart was indeed small, as she had complained, and by its dilation,
produced a curvature of three ribs, a prodigy the truth of which could be established by more than one-
person.
All these marvels. wrought in the heart of Gemma made her, as it had made St. Paul of the Cross who also
experienced them, burn with an unquenchable desire for God. Here are some of the outpourings of her heart
to her director :
‘0 Father, my heart is so small that it wants to enlarge itself, but cannot find room….it would like . . . but I am
little, Jesus is infinite. . . . Listen: do you think that I suffered more when, as it seemed to me, I was suffering
in my head, my hands, my feet and my whole body, or now when I am not suffering, yet suffering because I
cannot suffer? Let me know. This morning at about ten o'clock, my heart was full of longing I felt that I was
going out of myself. To the suffering of my heart there succeeded great pain in all my limbs; but worse than
all is the sorrow I feel for my sins. Oh how great that sorrow is! If it was greater I could not survive, nor could
I survive, it seems to me, the violent throbbing I experienced. My little heart cannot contain itself and has
begun to cast up blood in great quantities.'
She wrote on another occasion:
‘If Jesus continues to act as He does, I do not know what will happen. He is absenting Himself ever more
and more, and I am looking for Him ever more and more, and He is leaving me always more alone and
unable to do anything good. Then I exert myself, my desires grow warmer, and then that affair of the ribs
happens, and I begin to spit blood. You will see what will happen. If Jesus continues to act in this way, and
keeps going further away from me, I shall not be able to bear it and I shall die.'
In another letter she confided:
‘For the past ten days or so, I have felt a mysterious fire in the region of my heart, and I do not understand
what it means. At first I did not heed it because it was of little or no inconvenience to me. But to-day is the
third day when it is so great that I cannot bear it.
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