St. Veronica Giullani. The Holocaust of the Will

        "I have found Love; Love has let himself be seen! This is the cause of my suffering. Tell everyone about it, tell everyone!" These were the last words of the Capuchin Poor Clare Nun, St. Veronica Giullani. Her life was that of a total dedication to God, especially to the passion of Christ. We have a grasp of her spirituality from her 22,000 pages’ diary. The diary does not contain a well ordered and articulated writing for publication. She only wrote freely about her experience in religious life and her encounters with her divine spouse according to the advice of the Bishop.

Her life, simply put, was a life offered to God as a holocaust. It was spent in love of God, in dedication to the passion of her divine spouse, in love for the blessed Virgin, in love and obedience to the Church despite the seemingly harsh treatment and in an outburst of love for her neighbour.

Her love for her neighbour is visible in the many ways she acted with immense charity towards those around her. One day, Christ appeared to her with a pair of Golden shoes, to thank her for the gifts of shoes she gave to a beggar. But her love was more visible in how much she prayed for the conversion of sinners. In an outburst of her love for sinners and desire to see them saved, she cries out "O sinners... all men and all women, come to Jesus' heart; come to be cleansed by his most precious blood.... He awaits you with open arms to embrace you".  She spent a great part of her life praying for sinners; she would say "We cannot go about the world preaching to convert souls but are bound to pray ceaselessly for all those souls who are offending God... particularly with our sufferings, that is, with a principle of crucified life"

Our Lord said to her, “I have chosen you for great things, but you will have to suffer much for love of Me.” This she accepted and submitted her will entire to God. We can understand the level of her submission to the will of God in these her words, "My soul was bound to the divine will and I was truly established and fixed for ever in the will of God. It seemed to me that I should never again have to be separated from this will of God and I came to myself with these precise words: nothing will be able to separate me from the will of God, neither anxieties, nor sorrows nor toil nor contempt nor temptation nor creatures nor demons nor darkness, not even death itself, because, in life and in death, I want all, and in all things, the will of God"

        Because of her immense love of God and submission to his will, she merited to receive the tokens of the holy stigmata and the crown of thorns. In an account of her experience of stigmata she wrote "In an instant, I saw five radiant rays issue from his most holy wounds; and they all shone on my face. And I saw these rays become, as it were, little tongues of fire. In four of them were the nails; and in one was the spear, as of gold, red hot and white hot: and it went straight through my heart, from one side to the other ... and the nails pierced my hands and feet. I felt great pain but in this same pain I saw myself, I felt myself totally transformed into God" (Diary, I, 897). And in her account of the crowning with thorns she wrote that while she was praying on the night of April 3, 1694, Christ appeared to her wearing a crown of thorns on His Head. The sight overwhelmed her and filled her with immense sorrow. According to her Diary, “I understood His infinite love and felt my own ingratitude. ‘My Lord,’ I said, ‘grant me this crown so that the punctures of its thorns may become voices enabling me to tell You how much I want to love you.’” Immediately, Christ took off His Crown and placed it on her head.

She suffered greatly from this mystical experiences and perhaps, even more from the Church authorities and her sisters, who in obedience to the scriptures, had to test all spirits. She embraced all these suffering with a spirit of joy and submission to the will of God. She wrote “If the Cross is the key to love, I want more and more of it. Suffering is my refuge, my relief, my help, my delight, my relief during the pains of love and I live dying so as not to die of love.”

After her death, an autopsy was conducted on her and during the autopsy, a Cross and letters representing her personal consecration to God were found engraved in her ventricles. When she was alive, she told a confidant that the vows she made to God were etched in her heart. The letters found in her heart were “C” for charity, “O” for obedience, “F” for faithfulness to God and Mary, “P” for patience and “U” for humility.

She would always say, "If God is for us, who is against us?" Let us bear in mind that in the midst of all the crosses we encounter daily; Christ is with us.

St. Veronica Giullani.             pray for us.

For a Short Biography of St. Veronica Giullani visit my other post

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