You will see some of
these true Gifts in the pictures beneath. Crucifixion is Agony.
To 'invent' Messages from Heaven and to pretend
that you are bearing the Holy Gifts of The Cross and the
Wounds of Christ is Blasphemous. Whatever their reason
for so doing, they will answer to Our Good God very
soon.
To clarify my own position, while I bear the pain
of The Cross and of The Holy Wounds of Our Lord, I bear
them invisibly, and when I see them, on my hands for
example, I see them as in a vision. There is no bleeding
nor opening on the flesh.
Several people have been especially chosen to be
Victim Souls. The Holy Apostles bore the Wounds of
Christ but in later times others have been so blessed. I will list
a few here.
The Victim Souls
Saint Francis of Assisi
1182 - 1226
Two years before his death Saint Francis
received the Stigmata as he prayed on the Monte della
Verna. He received a vision and was blessed with the
Wounds of Christ, which he bore for the rest of his
life. Saint Francis died on October 3, 1226. Two years
later he was canonized by his patron and friend Pope Gregory
IX. His feast day is October 4.
Saint Gemma Galgani 1878-1903
Born at Camigliano in Tuscany, Saint Gemma suffered
from tuberculosis of the spine, and, though she was
cured by a vision of the young Saint Gabriel Possenti,
she could not obtain a certificate of health enabling
her to enter a convent. From June 1899 onwards, Saint
Gemma was greatly blessed to be chosen by Our Lord as
His Victim Soul. The Stigmata in her hands and feet,
would become visible at about 8 p.m. on a Thursday and
remain until 3 p.m. on the Friday. She bore the Marks of
Scourging on her back, which appeared as deep
lacerations. In 1903 Saint Gemma delivered a Divine
Message to the Vatican that this was to be the Final
Century, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
Saint Gemma Galgani was beatified in 1933, and
canonized in 1940.
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
Francesco Forgione was born in Pietrelcina in
Southern Italy, on May 25 1887.His parents, Grazio and
Giuseppina Forgione, were farmers and as a child he
helped his parents with their work in the fields. He was
Blessed by Our Lord with visions from a very early age.
At the age of fifteen he entered the novitiate of the
Capuchin Friars in Morcone, and though suffering from
ill health which meant his studies were often
interrupted, he took Holy Orders on August 19th 1910 in
the Cathedral of Benevento. He was medically discharged
from the Army in 1915 and returned to Pietrelcina.
On September 20, 1918 while in prayer, he saw a
vision of Our Lord Suffering and received the Five Wounds. For 50
years these Wounds remained and he suffered great pain,
particularly during the ecstasies with which he was
blessed during every Mass.
Padre Pio's hand
His many Gifts included bilocation - he was seen
walking through the Vatican while not having left the
Friary - and an extraordinary ability to know the sins
of others who confessed to him. He was subjected to
fierce and often very noisy demonic attacks.
Padre Pio died peacefully on 23rd September 1968, at
2 a.m., holding the Holy rosary in his hands and
uttering the words: "Jesus!…Mary!". He was
81 years old.
Sister Josefa Menéndez
Sister Josefa died a holy death at the Convent of Les
Feuillants, Poitiers on 29th December 1923,at the age of
thirty-three. She lived as a sister in the Society of
the Sacred Heart for four years and was chosen by Our
Lord to be His Victim Soul. Subjected to severe and
continuous demonic attacks, she was, like Saint Faustina,
in Conversation with Our Lord and recorded many Divine
Messages.
Our Lord's Words to Sister Josefa are published in a
book called The Way of Divine Love.
"If I could have found a more wretched creature,
I should have chosen her for My special love, and
through her revealed the longings of My Heart. But I
have not found one, and so I have chosen you" (7th
June 1923).
"I have selected you as one utterly useless and
destitute, that none may attribute to any but Myself,
what I say, ask and do" (12th June 1923).
Saint Faustina
MARY FAUSTINA KOWALSKA
1905-1938
Sister Mary Faustina, an apostle of the Divine Mercy,
belongs today to the group of the most popular and
well-known saints of the Church. Through her the Lord
Jesus communicates to the world the great message of
God's mercy and reveals the pattern of Christian
perfection based on trust in God and on the attitude of
mercy toward one's neighbors.
She was born on August 25, 1905 in Gogowiec in
Poland of a poor and religious family of peasants, the
third of ten children. She was baptized with the name
Helena in the parish Church of Đwinice Warckie. From a
very tender age she stood out because of her love of
prayer, work, obedience, and also her sensitivity to the
poor. At the age of nine she made her first Holy
Communion living this moment very profoundly in her
awareness of the presence of the Divine Guest within her
soul. She attended school for three years. At the age of
sixteen she left home and went to work as a housekeeper
in Aleksandrów, ódď and Ostrówek in order to find
the means of supporting herself and of helping her
parents.
At the age of seven she had already felt the first
stirrings of a religious vocation. After finishing
school, she wanted to enter the convent but her parents
would not give her permission. Called during a vision of
the Suffering Christ, on August 1, 1925 she entered the
Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy and
took the name Sister Mary Faustina. She lived in the
Congregation for thirteen years and lived in several
religious houses. She spent time at Kraków, Pock and
Vilnius, where she worked as a cook, gardener and
porter.
Externally nothing revealed her rich mystical
interior life. She zealously performed her tasks and
faithfully observed the rule of religious life. She was
recollected and at the same time very natural, serene
and full of kindness and disinterested love for her
neighbor. Although her life was apparently
insignificant, monotonous and dull, she hid within
herself an extraordinary union with God.
It is the mystery of the Mercy of God which she
contemplated in the word of God as well as in the
everyday activities of her life that forms the basis of
her spirituality. The process of contemplating and
getting to know the mystery of God's mercy helped
develop within Sr. Mary Faustina the attitude of
child-like trust in God as well as mercy toward the
neighbors. O my Jesus, each of Your saints reflects one
of Your virtues; I desire to reflect Your compassionate
heart, full of mercy; I want to glorify it. Let Your
mercy, O Jesus, be impressed upon my heart and soul like
a seal, and this will be my badge in this and the future
life (Diary 1242). Sister Faustina was a faithful
daughter of the Church which she loved like a Mother and
a Mystic Body of Jesus Christ. Conscious of her role in
the Church, she cooperated with God's mercy in the task
of saving lost souls. At the specific request of and
following the example of the Lord Jesus, she made a
sacrifice of her own life for this very goal. In her
spiritual life she also distinguished herself with a
love of the Eucharist and a deep devotion to the Mother
of Mercy.
The years she had spent at the convent were filled
with extraordinary gifts, such as: revelations, visions,
hidden stigmata, participation in the Passion of the
Lord, the gift of bilocation, the reading of human
souls, the gift of prophecy, or the rare gift of
mystical engagement and marriage. The living
relationship with God, the Blessed Mother, the Angels,
the Saints, the souls in Purgatory — with the entire
supernatural world — was as equally real for her as
was the world she perceived with her senses. In spite of
being so richly endowed with extraordinary graces, Sr.
Mary Faustina knew that they do not in fact constitute
sanctity. In her Diary she wrote: Neither graces, nor
revelations, nor raptures, nor gifts granted to a soul
make it perfect, but rather the intimate union of the
soul with God. These gifts are merely ornaments of the
soul, but constitute neither its essence nor its
perfection. My sanctity and perfection consist in the
close union of my will with the will of God (Diary
1107).
The Lord Jesus chose Sr. Mary Faustina as the Apostle
and "Secretary" of His Mercy, so that she
could tell the world about His great message. In the Old
Covenant — He said to her —I sent prophets wielding
thunderbolts to My people. Today I am sending you with
My mercy to the people of the whole world. I do not want
to punish aching mankind, but I desire to heal it,
pressing it to My Merciful Heart (Diary 1588).
Sister Mary Faustina, consumed by tuberculosis and by
innumerable sufferings which she accepted as a voluntary
sacrifice for sinners, died in Krakow at the age of just
thirty three on October 5, 1938 with a reputation for
spiritual maturity and a mystical union with God. The
reputation of the holiness of her life grew as did the
cult to the Divine Mercy and the graces she obtained
from God through her intercession. In the years 1965-67,
the investigative Process into her life and heroic
virtues was undertaken in Krakow and in the year 1968,
the Beatification Process was initiated in Rome. The
latter came to an end in December 1992. On April 18,
1993 our Holy Father John Paul II raised Sister Faustina
to the glory of the altars. Sr. Mary Faustina's remains
rest at the Sanctuary of the Divine Mercy in
Kraków-agiewniki.
Blessed Alessandrina
Alessandrina Maria da Costa was a Victim Soul who
lived in Balasar near Fatima. Her mother was unmarried
and at the age of fourteen Alessandrina jumped from a
first floor window to escape a young man who had broken
into the house to attack her. The poor girl seriously
damaged her spine and try though she did to continue
normally she was finally bedridden with paralysis by the
age of 21 and so remained till her death thirty years
later. She had had only one and a half years of
schooling and had worked from the age of eight.
Our Lord spoke to her often, she bore the Stigmata
invisibly for many years and was subjected to continuous
demonic attacks all her life. She bore all this with a
smile. She was not believed by the Church authorities
for a long time, adding to her burden. For the last
thirteen and a half years she neither ate nor drank,
living entirely on the Eucharist, and was subjected to
many humiliating medical examinations as doctors could
not understand how she could live without food and
drink..
Her one concern always was to endure this suffering
for the salvation of souls. She offered herself to be
'laid across the doorway to Hell until the end of time'
to prevent any soul from being lost.
Alessandrina died in 1955 near Fatima. She was
beatified by Pope John Paul II.
Therese Neumann
Teresa Neumann was born on Good Friday,
April 8, 1898 in Konnersreuth, in northeastern Bavaria.
She died in 1962
On the First Friday of Lent, March 5,
1926, Teresa had a weak spell which confined her to bed.
She then experienced a vision of Jesus with three of His
Apostles on Mount Olivet. After the vision, she
noticed she was bleeding from her side, from a wound
just above her heart. The next Friday, March 12, Teresa
went into ecstasy again, this time one of her sisters
was present in the room when it occurred. While Teresa
was in ecstasy, the wound reopened and bled again.
During this vision, Teresa saw Jesus being scourged at
the pillar, after the command of Pontius Pilate. The
same thing repeated on the third Friday of Lent, March
19, during which vision Teresa saw the Crown of Thorns
cruelly fastened to Jesus' Head by the soldiers. On the
fourth Friday, March 26, in addition to the wound in her
side, Teresa received the first of the nail Wounds, in
her left hand. Her hand and her side bled so profusely
she and her sister could no longer keep it a secret from
their parents. During the vision on this day, Teresa saw
Our Lord's tremendous suffering in dragging His Cross on
His Shoulder to Calvary. At midnight on Holy Thursday,
1926, Teresa went into ecstasy and mystically suffered
the Passion of Jesus beginning with His Agony in the
Garden of Gethsemane until 3pm on Good Friday, when Our
Savior died on the Cross.
At the moment when Jesus sweated
blood in the Garden (St. Luke 22:43-44), blood flowed
from Teresa's head. When He was scourged at the pillar
(St. John 19:1), welts and bleeding sores appeared all
over Teresa's body. When He was nailed to the Cross,
wounds opened in her hands and feet, bleeding
profusely. From her head flowed streams of blood from
the Crown of Thorns.
From 1926 to 1962, Teresa Neumann no
longer ate or drank anything taking only the Body and
Blood of Our Lord in Holy Communion. She was under
continuous observation, whether she was awake or
sleeping, and every move she made was scrutinized to
find out if she consumed food or drink, but she did not
do so.
From the moment of Christ's Death on the
Cross, Teresa's heart and respiration completely ceased
for 45 minutes. Doctors were unable to resuscitate her.
After the 45 minutes had elapsed, Teresa would recover
completely and rise from her bed.
Among other Victim Souls in the last thousand years
Our Lord has verified the Gifts given to Saint Rita
of Cascia who bore the Crown of Thorns and Maria
Simma.
Why does Our Lord consider it necessary to give such
Gifts to His chosen souls?
We live in an age of complete disregard for His terrible Agony and His Death
on the Cross for the salvation of all souls. The great
love He bears for us is refused and He is not acknowleged by
many of His children. He is cast aside by our
modern world exactly as He was rejected, tortured and killed in
that Time.
We are reminded by these Divine Gifts of all that He
did and does endure for our sake. The Great Apostasy
which has spread across the world causes immense
suffering to Our Lord as does the complete disregard of
all holy virtues which He taught us by His own Life.
Evil has grown and violence and self-love abound. Satan
has entrapped many souls who could at any moment be
freed if only they would see the Truth and pray for
forgiveness. Love of self and lack of love for others
blinds the soul and binds it to the Evil One. In sending
His chosen people to awaken us from sleep and to alert
us to the peril in which we place ourselves, Our Lord is
freeing us from the bonds of evil and is saving many
souls from eternal damnation.
Lord Jesus Christ is LOVE. His Great Sacrifice is
LOVE. His Gifts are LOVE.
Love does not HATE, Love HEALS.
Love is not SELFISH, Love GIVES.
Love is not VIOLENT, Love is GENTLE and always
kind.
Almighty God is despised today, rejected and
refused honour and love by His children.
LOVE is CRUCIFIED ONCE AGAIN.
