Saint Gemma Galgani is a saint known for her childlike simplicity and fervent faith. This seraphic saint was blessed by God with the ability to see and communicate with her guardian angel all throughout her short earthly life.
An Angel to Guard Each Soul
ONE of the most consoling dogmas of Holy Faith is that of the assistance of the Angels.
After the fall, man had need in his misery and weakness of being especially helped and protected, in order to attain the end for which he was created. And God in His love, wishing to give accordingly assigned one of these holy spirits, rightly called “our good Angels,” to each one of us. They take us by the hand on our first entrance into life and never leave us while life lasts. “Behold,” says the Lord, “I will send My Angel, who will go before thee, and guard thee in thy way, and introduce thee into the land that I have prepared for thee.”
The Guardian Angel of Saint Gemma Galgani
But while God loves all men, He takes special care of some and ordains degrees of preference according to their merit. Hence it happens that in each one the kindly mission of the Angels may differ greatly. Thus Gemma having been destined by God to an exalted place among the elect, it followed that the Angel assigned her by Heaven should take special care of her. Divine grace willed to manifest itself toward Gemma in extraordinary ways, and if we had not in the Sacred Scriptures the touching story of Tobias, and in Christian hagiology instances of angelic communication with many canonized Saints, one would be tempted to doubt much of what I have to say in this connection about this favored Servant of God.
She was well prepared to treat with Angels by her many striking virtues: They were innocence, purity, candor, child-like simplicity and, at the same time, a most lively faith that enabled her to see, as it were without veil, the sublimest heavenly truths. Her holy Guardian must have found in his consoling charge something partaking of the angelic nature, which enabled him to carry on a familiar relationship with her.
“My Guardian Angel Stays with Me Always”
What assuredly will be thought most singular in this angelic communication is what I may call the sensitive as well as the constant presence of the Angel. Gemma saw him with her eyes, touched him with her hand as if he were a being of this world, remained talking with him as one friend would with another. “Jesus,” she said, “has not left me alone; He makes my Guardian Angel stay with me always.” She thanked God most earnestly for this benefit and also declared her deep gratitude to the Angel. “If I am sometimes culpable, dear An gel,” she said to him, “don’t be angry with me, I wish to be grateful to thee.” And the Angel to her: “Yes, I shall be thy guide and inseparable com pan ion. Dost thou not know who it is that gave me charge of thee? It is the merciful Jesus.” At this the angelic girl, unable to re-strain her emotion, stood rapt in ecstasy with her Angel. What happened then is told by Gemma herself in the following simple words: “We both remained with Jesus. Oh, Father, if you also had been there!” And for her to remain with Jesus meant being engulfed mind and heart in the immense abyss of God’s Divinity, there to behold and hear and learn secret things.
Interactions Between Saint Gemma and Her Guardian Angel
As a rule during those intimate meetings, a considerable time was spent in praying together and offering praise to the Most High. The Angels, according to a holy Doctor, delight in assisting the Saints while they pray; and the Archangel Raphael assured the elder Tobias that, while he prayed, he himself was offering those prayers to the Lord. Now as Gemma all day and during a great part of the night was intent on prayer, and that with great ardor of faith and extraordinary de vo tion, must not the Angel of the Lord have greatly rejoiced there at? He let her see him sometimes raised in the air with outspread wings, and his hands extended over her or else joined in attitude of prayer. At other times he knelt beside her. If they were reciting vocal prayers or Psalms, they did so alternately; if aspirations or ejaculatory prayers, “they rivalled one another [these are Gemma’s words] as to which would say them more emphatically—‘Viva Gesù!’ and ‘Blessed be Jesus!’ or suchlike beautiful words. And Jesus showed His pleasure at it.” When it was the time of meditation, the Angel inspired her with sublimest ideas and moved her affections so that the result of the holy exercise might be perfect. And as the subject of these meditations was, for the most part, the Passion of Our Lord, the Angel, like a good master, laid open its profound mysteries to her soul. “Look,” he would exclaim, “at what Jesus has suffered for men. Consider one by one these Wounds. It is Love that has opened them all. See how execrable sin is, since to expiate it, so much pain and so much love have been necessary.” These and other such exquisite reflections, like rays of light and fire, went straight to the heart of the fervent child.
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This article is taken from a chapter in The Life of Saint Gemma Galgani by Venerable Fr. Germanus, CP which is available from TAN Books.
