Today is the feast of St. Veronica Giuliani (1660 - 1727). St. Veronica Giuliani reminds me (in a happier way) of the main character in Ron Hansen's "Mariette in Ecstasy". She too was a stigmatic and much maligned and misunderstood by her fellow nuns. I think they resented what they incorrectly saw as her "holier than thou" attitude which really was just a fiery zeal that put them all to shame. Besides, though in her youth she was showing signs of an air of superiority, a vision of Our Lord promptly stopped it! She was not on any self-aggrandizement or even self-fulfillment program; she was simply in love with Our Lord and had a fiery passion for the Passion, as it were. She had a long, hard novitiate and then in 1694 had the crown-of-thorns wounds periodically appear and in 1697, all five of the stigmata wounds. The bishop heard of it, got curious and investigated. It seemed legit, so he decided to test it. He sealed her wounded hands in gloves, removed her from the company of the other nuns, put a lay sister in custody of her at all times and denied her Holy Communion. She bore this horrible scrutiny with patience and silence. Finally the bishop was convinced and let her rejoin the community in every way (including taking Communion again).
She became novice-mistress and then abbess (she was a Capuchin sister), during which time she installed running water. Hallelujah. She left a charming and detailed diary that is still used for devotion. Her remarkable physical manifestations included the wounds' sudden appearance and disappearance, bleeding on command, levitations, mysterious perfumes, and perhaps most unusual of all, little bony objects in her heart that resembled the instruments of the passion and were discovered and removed after her death.
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