Stigmata, Stigmatized

See also: Co-redeemer, Victim Soul, Reparative Soul, Host, Victimal Gift.

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Saint Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata - Ambrogio Borgognone

The stigmata find their origin in the Passion of the Christ who transfers symbolic marks as a sign of union: marks of nails in the hands and feet, crown of thorns, pierced Heart, to which are sometimes added tears of blood    

The word stigma comes from Saint Paul:

I bear on my body the stigmata (stigmata) of the sufferings of Jesus.

This word stigma had a broader meaning already in Saint Paul: the signs and extension of the Passion of Christ in the lives of Christians.          

The first known person to bear the visible stigmata of the Passion was Saint Francis of Assisi in the 13th century.          

In 1224, two years before his death, he was praying during the feast of the Glorious Cross on September 14. He wished, before he died, to experience in his Soul and body

the sufferings that You, he said to Christ, had to endure in Your cruel Passion, and to feel that boundless love that led You, Son of God, to suffer so many pains for us, miserable sinners!

He then received, from a vision, five rays of light striking his side, both hands and both feet, while experiencing a joy mingled with pain. These stigmata remained until his death.          

Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), a Franciscan, fixed the feast of the stigmata of Saint Francis on September 17, and Pope Paul V (1605-1621) extended this feast to the universal Church.        

The Church also celebrates on August 21 the transverberation of Teresa of Ávila who received these wounds of Love from the hand of an angel. This famous episode is recounted by herself in chapter 29 of her "Book of Life" (a book that was also condemned in its time).

The stigmata are not only the visible marks of the Passion of Christ on the hands, feet, and side: they can take the form of internal physical and moral sufferings borne by the stigmatized.

The stigmatized

Following Saint Paul, who probably bore invisible stigmata, then Saint Francis of Assisi who publicly manifested them, an uninterrupted flow of stigmatized persons is known.  

At the beginning of the 20th century, 321 stigmatized persons were officially recorded, 85% of whom were women, mainly religious men and women, but not exclusively. Only one third of them have been canonized.    

Seven times more women stigmatized than men.    

Several explanations can be offered for this observation, but one certainly concerns the particular relationship of women to the gift of love and specifically compassionate love. Indeed, the gift of the victimal gift, sometimes manifesting as stigmata, is partly understood by the notion of compassion where one does not suffer from one's own pains but from those caused to the person loved, shared pains that lighten the burden of the tested person.      

This compassionate love is already manifested by the women mostly present at the foot of the Cross with only one apostle: John, the one whom Jesus loved. It is they who are seen active during the turmoil of the Passion when other Disciples flee and then lock themselves away.    

According to the Gospel, Jesus first appears in his Glory to a woman, and not just any one: Mary of Magdala (Magdalene), the former sinner who was freed from seven demons. She was much forgiven because she had loved much.    

Among the stigmatized in history, following Saint Paul and Francis of Assisi, are known Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582), Mme Acarie (1566-1618), Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727), Anne-Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), Mariam Baouardy (1845-1878), and many others.      

Our era is no exception: Berthe Petit (1870-1943), Gemma Galgani (1878-1903), Padre Pio (1887-1968), Teresa Neumann (1898-1962), Yvonne-Aimée de Malestroit (1901-1951), Marthe Robin (1902-1981), Alexandrina de Balazar (1904-1955), Maria Teresa Carloni (1919-1983), Natuzza Evolo (1924-2009), …

Some are still alive, such as Myrna of Souhanieh in Syria.

The Invisible Stigmata of Maria Valtorta

Others had invisible stigmata, but very real, like Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), Sister Josefa Menendez (1890-1923), Sister Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), and Maria Valtorta.

She recounts this event in her Autobiography, but returns to it several times later. Likewise, the dictations of Jesus often comment on Maria Valtorta’s participation in the Passion.        

She obtained it through a wound of love, a transverberation as Teresa of Ávila, Teresa of the Child Jesus, and Padre Pio experienced.

Those of Teresa of Lisieux and Padre Pio are described by themselves in similar terms. It is interesting to know them to better understand the mystical experience that Maria Valtorta lived on Good Friday 1934. Two days after this transverberation, on Easter, she no longer left her bed until her death.        

Here is the narration of Saint Teresa of Lisieux reported in Story of a Soul:

A few days after my Offering to Merciful Love, I began the exercise of the Way of the Cross (Via Crucis) in the choir, when at one point I felt as if wounded by a dart of Fire so ardent that I thought I would die. There is no possible comparison to adequately understand the intensity of this flame. It seemed that an invisible force immersed me entirely in the Fire… And what a Fire it was! What gentleness!…

Here, in parallel, is that of Padre Pio reported in a letter:

Dear Father, (…) listen to what happened to me last Friday. I was in the Church making my thanksgiving after Mass when suddenly I felt my Heart pierced by a javelin of Fire so vivid and ardent that I thought I would die.        

Words fail me to make you understand the intensity of this flame: it is really impossible for me to describe it. Do you believe me? The victim Soul of these Consolations becomes mute. I had the impression that an invisible force plunged me entirely into the Fire… My God, what Fire! What gentleness!

I have lived many of these passionate outbursts of love, and I remained for some time as out of this world. Other times, the Fire was less intense, but this time, an instant, one more second, and my Soul would have separated from my body… it would have left with Jesus.

Oh! How good it is to become a victim of love! And how is my Soul at this moment? My dear father, now God has withdrawn His javelin of Fire, but the wound is mortal…

Do not think, however, that the “bogeyman” (Satan) leaves me in Peace; the tortures he inflicts on my body are such that I leave them to your imagination, based on the divine Consolations my Soul receives. But long live Jesus, who gives me so much strength that I can mock this “Cossack”.

Gemma Galgani also felt she was dying during her transverberation.         This union with the sufferings of Christ was desired by Maria Valtorta. She offered herself from 1931 by formulating her act of offering to Merciful Love, the same Love as Teresa of Lisieux, who died the year Maria Valtorta was born, and whom she deeply admired.

I also desire, writes Maria Valtorta, to imitate You, to be raised on the cross of suffering, on your cross of salvation which most flee with terror; crucified with You, for You, I want to atone for those who sin, obey You for those who rebel, bless You for those who curse You, love You for those who hate You, beg You for those who forget You, live, in a word, in an act of perfect love, bringing everything back to You, recognizing You in all, loving all through You and in You, finally accepting everything from You, my infinite God. O my Beloved God, by the cross I ask of You, by the life I offer You, by the love to which I aspire, make me a happy victim of Your merciful Love." (Reported in The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950, notes of February 10, 1946)

Maria Valtorta then took the name "Maria of the Cross" and the sufferings then came "like a rain," she writes.

But it was three years later, on Good Friday 1934, that her transverberation took place. Two days later, at Easter, she became permanently bedridden.

At her express request, her stigmata were invisible but nonetheless real: a wound "that is painful like a hooked, incandescent lance that tears and burns the living flesh."

This episode is recounted in her Autobiography. But the story does not end there; on the contrary, it really begins. Maria Valtorta "loved much" and because she loved totally up to offering her life, she received the gift of the work in a cause-and-effect link.      

She ends her Autobiography with this plea:

Because of my hidden sacrifice of every moment, O Father, give me crowds of Souls to offer to You. Lead them, and also me, into the light.

It was then that the dictations and visions began, which would last seven years daily.

In "The Gospel as It Was Revealed to Me"

The stigmata find their origin in the Passion of Christ, and notably in the following scenes:

• Agony in Gethsemane.         
• Scourging and crown of thorns.    
• Death on the Cross.

In other works of Maria Valtorta

The Notebooks of 1943

• Catechesis of June 14: Special rays of light emanate from my brow crowned with thorns, from my pierced hands, from my wounded feet, from my torn chest. But they go to those whose mind fixes on my wounds and on my pain, and who find pain and wounds more beautiful than any other created thing. The stigmata are not always bloody. But every Soul that loves me enough to follow me in torture and death, which is life, bears my stigmata in its Heart, in its mind. My rays are weapons that wound and lights that illuminate. They are a Grace that enters and enlivens; they are a Grace that instructs and elevates.

The Notebooks of 1944

• May 1 : I see my holy Francis of Assisi, whom I recognize immediately […] He is barefoot, bareheaded and already stigmatized. I clearly see the wounds on the palms of his gaunt hands. He holds his arms folded at the elbows level and pressed tightly Against his chest, the hands at shoulder height, like a priest saying: "The Lord be with you." Therefore, I see Well the wounds on his palms.
  […] "At a time when I (Francis of Assisi) was suffering greatly because I too was disappointed by men and, in a way, by God's approval of my work, I said: "Blessed are those who do the will of God and face every trial Thanks to Him." Try to reach this painful beatitude. It is the stigmata of the spirit, and it hurts more than the one — do you see it? — that pierces my flesh."

The Notebooks from 1945 to 1950

• December 25, 1945 : Regarding priestly assistance, it is certain that you must benefit from it. I do not give you extraordinary or sensational signs. You would then no longer be my violet. But beneath your apparent normality as a perfectly normal creature who eats, drinks, sleeps like every mortal, who has neither Ecstasy, nor inexplicable fasts, nor sweat of blood, nor stigmata nor anything else, and whose psychic balance is perfect — and also mental, to contradict those who claim otherwise —, there are extraordinary facts which are a sign of what you are and what I am in you: the All, the Origin, the Explanation, the End of your being.
• Note of February 10, 1946 : (Mystical calendar). O my holy father Francis of Assisi, by the love with which Jesus Christ loved You and with which You loved Him, obtain for me, I beg You, the suffering and love You asked for Yourself. I do not ask You for the visible glory of the stigmata, of which I am not worthy, but the intimate participation in the sufferings and love of Jesus and of Yourself, so that, in Your imitation, I may die of love for God and for Souls. March 11, 1934.

Lessons on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans

• Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, Lesson No. 18 : He said, "You cannot serve both God and Mammon." I add this: "You cannot have Life and Death at the same time." With his resurrection, Jesus proved three things:      

1. That he was God, and that is why he could resurrect himself.          
2. That he truly died crucified. For which reason he retained in his glorious Body the stigmata of the Passion. The other marks of the Passion, such as aging, dirt, and thick layers of embalming products, have entirely disappeared from his Body. To prove that on the cross a real Christ, a human Christ, was nailed, and not any image of his person, the real holes caused by the nails and the lance blow remained in his true flesh.
3. That forever he had conquered death and was risen in his Body and Soul, as God, for ever and ever.