Invisible Stigmata

Stigmata of St Francis of Assisi by Giotto, details.

The stigmata find their origin in the Passion of Christ, which transfers symbolic marks as a sign of union: marks of the nails in the hands and feet, crown of thorns, pierced Heart, to which sometimes tears of blood are added. These are therefore the signs and continuation of Christ's Passion in the lives of Christians. The word stigmata means "marks." According to Saint Paul’s phrase:

"I bear on my body the stigmata (stigmata) of the sufferings of Jesus (Galatians 6:17).

The Gift of the Stigmata

It is therefore assumed that St Paul received these stigmata, probably invisible since there are no visual testimonies outside of his Confession. The first person known by Tradition to have borne 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 on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14. Before he died, he wished to experience in his Soul and in his body "the sufferings that You, he said to Christ, had to endure in your cruel Passion, and to feel that overwhelming love that led You, the Son of God, to suffer so many pains for us, miserable sinners!" He links Good love and suffering, the two facets of the word "Passion."

He then received, in a vision, five rays of light that struck his side, his two hands, and his two feet, at the same time as he felt a joy mixed with pain. These stigmata remained. 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. In her vision of September 16, 1944, Maria Valtorta witnessed this moment in detail, in the place she describes perfectly without ever having been there. It is now the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna.

Following Saint Francis of Assisi, there has been an uninterrupted flow of stigmatized persons. At the beginning of the 20th century, 321 stigmatized persons were officially recorded, including seven times more women than men, mainly religious brothers or sisters, but not exclusively. Among the most famous: Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Mme Acarie (1566-1618), Veronica Giuliani (1660-1727), Anne-Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), Mariam Baouardy (1845-1878) and in our era: Berthe Petit (1870-1943), Gemma Galgani (1878-1903), Padre Pio (1887-1968), Therese 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), Myrna de Souhanieh in Syria.

The Transverberation

Maria Valtorta, in her vision of St Francis of Assisi, describes the seraph, a six-winged angel, who gradually reveals the Christ on the Cross from whom come rays of light that, like arrows, pierce the limbs of the Poverello.

This "transverberation" is described by St Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, in chapter 29 of her Book of Life (a book that was also condemned in its time). She received her "wounds of Love" from the hand of an angel. The Church celebrates this transverberation on August 21. Others also reached the borders of life by reaching this paroxysm of love. The testimonies of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Padre Pio are to be compared with what Maria Valtorta sees and what she will experience when she herself receives divine Fire.

A few days after my Offering to Merciful Love, wrote Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, I was beginning the exercise of the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) in the choir, when I suddenly felt as if wounded by a dart of such ardent Fire that I thought I would die. There is no possible comparison to adequately convey the intensity of this flame. It seemed that an invisible force immersed me entirely in the Fire… And what Fire it was! What sweetness!…

She told the Prioress: "One moment, one more second, and my Soul would have separated from my body…" Padre Pio describes this moment of fusion almost with the same words:

I was in the Church giving thanks after Mass, when suddenly I felt my Heart pierced by a javelin of Fire so vivid and ardent that I thought I would die.

I lack words 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 felt as if an invisible force plunged me completely into the Fire… My God, what Fire! What sweetness!

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

The stigmata are not only the visible marks of the Passion of Christ on the hands, feet, and side: they may take the form of physical and moral inner sufferings borne by the stigmatized person. These Invisible Stigmata were the lot of Sister Josefa Menéndez, Sister Faustina, Luisa Piccarreta, and Maria Valtorta.

The Invisible Stigmata of Maria Valtorta

The year 1934, when she was 37 years old, marks a turning point in her offering. From the beginning of the year, she felt overwhelmed by a rising wave of love:

"I lived an intense period of transport of love that it seemed I lived outside myself, from my poor little deficient being. A seraph had taken possession of me and made me burn with the flames of his love. I felt suffocated, so much did my Heart expand in this incandescence. I sang, with words I had invented to rhythms that spontaneously came to my mind, to relieve the torment that seized me. I had also set to music the Canticle of Brother Sun and many poems of little Saint Therese. I repeated sacred chants. For I needed to pour out so as not to explode…"

This transport of love reached its peak on Good Friday 1934. She was pierced by Love and received "this internal wound that cannot be seen but is painful like a hooked, incandescent lance that tears and burns living flesh." Three days later, on Easter Sunday, she was nailed permanently to the bed where she would remain for 27 years.

"Love grew in me by contemplating my dying God... It grew so much that it gave me a physical torment which reached its paroxysm on Good Friday. Ah! I really thought I was going to die from a tearing of the chest so intense was the love in me! I felt that something was tearing inside me, as if a lance pierced my chest. But there really is something torn, because even the wise healers (doctors) conjectured about a lesion suspected in the mediastinum, or somewhere between the mediastinum and the Heart, and which they could not explain the Presence of.

I believe that it is only the hand that gave me this wound that healed the wound, so that it remains there without killing me. I think it happened that way because the pain I felt, greater than anything a human being can bear, I still feel it, especially in the Hours of most intense union with my Lord. I suppose it happened that way since no human remedy can calm this pain. I still suppose it because this pain always occurs when I reach such an absolute strength in prayer that I obtain some Grace from Heaven. I suppose it also because this pain suddenly disappears when the Grace has been obtained, only to come back with ever greater force, in moments of more intense love or more intense prayer… If it were human pain, it would be something that would make one mad!

A few days before experiencing this so sweet and so cruel effusion, I had composed a prayer that I repeated after that of Saint Francis [...] : "O my Father Saint Francis, because of the love by which Christ loved you and by which you loved Him, give me, I pray you, the suffering and the love that you implored on yourself. I do not ask you for the visible glory of the stigmata, of which I am not worthy, but an intimate participation in the pains and in the love of Jesus and you, so that I, like you, may die of love for God and for Souls."

The good God therefore gave me all that I had asked Him: the inner wound which was made of pain and love, a wound that would have led me to death after a tide of sufferings crossed with so much goodwill for the Lord and for Souls [...] And by giving me always "all" I asked of Him, He also granted me the internal wound that cannot be seen but is painful like a hooked, incandescent lance that tears and burns living flesh [...] If on Good Friday 1930 I had my first hour of agony with Christ, in 1934, on Good Friday, I was pierced by love while I contemplated my Jesus on the cross.

As soon as she was able to get up, she adds in her Autobiography, she composed her Hymn to love and suffering which she often repeated, especially in the most painful Hours or during Lent.

The Stigmatization of the Spirit

On May 1, 1944, Maria Valtorta's morale was very low: she had been evacuated far from Viareggio and was suffering. Worse than anything, Heaven stubbornly remained silent and this silence lasted, lasted to the point that she thought she was abandoned. She then had the vision of St Francis of Assisi, her "Seraphic Father," bearer of the painful stigmata (Maria Valtorta would have the full vision of his stigmatization a bit later, on September 16, 1944 as noted above). He comforted her by inviting her to endure the "stigmatization of the Spirit":

"My daughter, strive to find Peace and joy in it. At a moment when I suffered enormously because I was, too, 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 stigmatization of the spirit, and it hurts more than that — you see it? — which pierces my flesh. I know it. Still try. Cry and try. I, too, suffered atrociously, and for Good reasons. Like you, I experienced affection, and I was full of nostalgia. I, too, felt the prayer I had offered return to me at certain moments. I spent Hours during which I only knew how to groan. I know what your suffering is. Nevertheless, I tell you: try to find Peace and joy in all this pain. Then come joy and Peace. Be good. I will be at your side. I bless you with my blessing: "May the Lord have mercy on you, may He reveal His face to you and bring you Peace. May He give you His blessing." (Numbers 6:24-26)"

A Vocation of Exceptional Souls

In a dictation of June 14, 1943, Jesus explains that beyond "ordinary" holiness, there is a path that leads to the full knowledge of the Doctrine of Christ. This path passes through the understanding and sharing of His Passion, the summit of love and pain. This Call resonates in exceptional Souls who decide to follow Christ, to imitate Him to the Cross. They are called Victim Souls or Host. It is voluntarily and out of love that they formulate their act of victim offering, also called holocaust. This word originates from the sacrifices of Judaism in which animals were completely consumed by Fire in order to atone for the sins of an individual or the whole people. Through His Passion, Christ offered Himself as a victim for the definitive expiation of the sins of all humanity.

"As long as a Soul does not accept to be admitted into the "secret of pain" that I, Christ, have tasted to the bottom, it cannot claim to know my Doctrine fully, nor to have superior lights to the flickers that are granted to everyone. Rays of special light emanate from my thorn-crowned forehead, from my pierced hands, my wounded feet, and my torn chest. But they go to those whose spirit fixates on my wounds and pain, and who find pain and wounds more beautiful than any other created thing.

The stigmatization is not always bloody. But each Soul who loves me enough to follow me into torture and death, which is life, bears my stigmata in their Heart, in their spirit. My rays are weapons that wound and lights that illuminate. They are a Grace that enters and vivifies; they are a Grace that instructs and elevates.

By Goodwill, I give to all, but I give infinitely to those who give themselves to me totally. And you can Believe that if, in truth, the works of the just are written in the great Book that will be opened on the last day, the works of those who love me unto holocaust, the works of the voluntary victims who, in my likeness, give themselves for the redemption of their brothers and sisters, these works are written in my Heart and never, throughout the ages, will they be erased".