In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Blessed Edvige Carboni has been an extraordinary mystic.
In her life the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine mixed together in a normal way.
Her relationship with the beyond was something that happened every day in her, almost daily, we could say.
Jesus, Mary or the saints appeared to her almost constantly, in ecstasy or not.
The same happened with other supernatural experiences.
Blessed Edvige Carboni had the wounds of Christ and many charisms such as prophecy, ecstasy,
levitation, bilocation, supernatural knowledge, discernment of spirits and frequent contacts
with people from purgatory, from heaven and, even sometimes, with condemned from hell.
She was not locked up in a convent.
She lived in her house with her family, and the last few years with her sister.
She lived in the world, exercising charity with the poor and needy, visiting the sick,
praying and suffering for the conversion of sinners and the salvation of souls.
She sanctified herself day by day from her earliest childhood, when she made a vow of
virginity at the age of five.
For her, the Mass, the daily Communion and the visit to the Blessed Sacrament were for
many years her indispensable spiritual food.
But also the faithful fulfillment of her domestic chores, taking care of her mother, her grandmother,
and all her relatives from a young age.
She was a good homemaker.
She was never idle and while she worked, she was in prayer.
Sometimes her guardian angel did the housework for her, and sometimes Jesus Himself.
Her devotion to the Virgin Mary came from a very young age, when she prayed before her image
and our mother the Virgin Mary used to give her the baby Jesus to be taken in her arms.
Blessed Edvige Carboni was born between Sunday and Monday, May 2nd, 1880 at 11:10 p.m.
The same day something extraordinary happened.
She says herself:
When I was born, oh Jesus, you made my mother see a luminous host placed
in a beautiful monstrance.
She was telling me this.
Remember that, if I die, you must take Communion every day and you must be good, because a
few minutes after you were born, Jesus showed me a host as I describe to you.
You must not say this to any other girl.
It is understood?
And I remember very well what my mother told me.
Another significant event that took place when she was born is that a cross was imprinted on her chest,
made of the same flesh,
as if Jesus had already wanted to predestine her
to be His crucified wife.
Blessed Edvige says:
My poor mother always told me: “My daughter, you were born on
May 3rd, the holy day of the holy cross of Jesus.
Jesus wanted to print a small cross on your chest, a sign that you will have to suffer
a lot in the world.
Therefore, prepare to suffer with love and resignation, offering everything to the good Jesus."
She was baptized on May 4th in the parish church.
At age four, she made confirmation on June 11, 1884.
Jesus chose her from all eternity to be His victim of love.
And Blessed Edvige Carboni generously offered herself to Him for the salvation of others, especially sinners.
Jesus insistently asked for prayers and sacrifices, because many souls were in danger of eternal damnation.
Blessed Edvige says on May 25th, 1941: While praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I was
in ecstasy and saw Jesus on the cross bleeding from each of the wounds.
Blood fell to the ground.
I saw angels with golden cups that brought them closer to the wounds.
At one point, the golden cups were full but some of the blood was falling to the ground.
Jesus wept.
I said, "Why are you crying?"
He replied:
Daughter, I cry because so much blood that I shed in the Passion is wasted
without bearing any fruit."
After Communion, I have seen three crosses.
In the middle was Jesus, the other two were empty.
Then, Don Bosco approached me and said: “Daughter, Jesus has commissioned me to search for victim
souls to repair so many offenses that He continually receives, especially for immodest fashions
and so that peace may be achieved among nations.
Daughter, after so much searching, I found you and Grace.
These two empty crosses will do, one for you and one for Grace”.
Grace was one of the great friends of Blessed Edvige, a little older than her, with a pure
and beautiful soul,
who at 33 years old, totally consecrated herself to Jesus,
offering herself
as a victim to achieve peace in the Second World War.
She went blind.
Blessed Edvige always remembered her and sent her food packages
knowing how much she needed her.
Grace died on November 17th, 1951 in the Hospice of the Cottolengo Sisters of Pozzomaggiore.
Three months later Blessed Edvige Carboni died in Rome.
Jesus loved Blessed Edvige so much that in order for her to resemble Him, Jesus would
give her stigmata or His sores on her feet, hands and side.
She would also suffer the crown of thorns.
Blessed Edvige says: One night, while I was praying, an angel with a crown in his hand
appeared to me.
He put it on my head and I felt a strong pain, because he stuck my whole head in so that
for many days I couldn't open one eye, because it was red and inside it looked like there
was a thorn.
Another day, an angel pierced her heart like other great saints, a phenomenon that some
call transverberation.
Blessed Edvige Carboni says:
I was praying to the good Jesus and suddenly, an angel appeared
to me and wounded my heart.
I feel that wound until now.
It is a wound that makes me burn with love for Jesus.
But Jesus asked her to offer herself as a victim in a special way for the communists.
She says:
I dreamed that the Blessed Virgin Mary told me: "My daughter, promise me to
suffer all your tribulations, scorn, abandonment and suffering for the conversion of the communists."
I told her: Immaculate, I and my sister will console you and do penance to console your
maternal heart and we will not stop praying until all communists have converted to your
Immaculate Heart and the divine Heart of Jesus.
One day Blessed Maria Gabriella Sagheddu appeared to Blessed Edvige Carboni, a Trappist, a victim
offered for the Anglican Church to join the Catholic Church, and she said to Blessed Edvige:
Offer both of you as victims so that the communists can unite again with the Holy Mother Church.
In a letter to Father Parmeggiani, Blessed Edvige said: Father, Jesus told me yesterday afternoon:
“My daughter, pray for the salvation of so many Chinese communists.
They are bad and cruel.
So far they have arrested ten bishops."
In June 1941 Blessed Edvige said: While I was praying, I was in ecstasy and Saint John
Bosco appeared to me and told me:
“Little daughter, remember that you have offered yourself
as a victim for the liberation of the poor Russians from Bolshevism, a bitter enemy of God.
Pray that soon the Crucified enter Russia."
Blessed Edvige Carboni says: One day, while I was praying, I was in ecstasy.
Jesus came to me and said: "My daughter, do you want to suffer?"
I replied: "Yes, Lord, for Your love I want to suffer."
Then Jesus appeared to me in the form of a crucifix.
Rays of light came from His wounds and those rays reached me, wounding my hands, feet,
head and side.
I felt pain in all the injured parts and I fell for several hours on the ground.
I woke up to see blood gushing from the wounds and I was in immense pain.
From that day on, I became fond of meditating morning and evening on the Passion of Jesus.
Her last spiritual director says that Blessed Edvige had the stigmata around 33 years of age,
receiving them from the crucified Jesus.
This crucified Jesus one day took the nail out of His right hand and hugged Blessed Edvige, saying:
"Edvige, I love you very much, because I know that you love Me very much too."
In fact she was so scorched with love for Jesus that her heart was aflame with divine ardor
and the part of her heart was all burned up.
I, this witness could see and touch the sore and I saw a burn with a blister and I felt
an irresistible heat.
The crucified Jesus frequently put the crown of thorns on her and blood would come out,
because the thorns would dig into her temples and forehead like Jesus.
Another witness Mr. Fadda affirms that, as a young man, one day the servant of God helped
him to carry a heavy vase on his back to take to church, and then:
I saw very clearly on
both hands the famous sores that I still remember perfectly today.
They were long on the back of the hand, about an inch.
Inside the palm they seemed a little shorter, but bleeding, surrounded by a bluish halo.
About the cross that she had from birth on her chest, her sister says: The color was
dark and it was less than two inches or five centimeters long by four wide.
On Fridays and during the time of the Passion, it was dyed red.
Another witness Mrs. Caterina states:
One afternoon I found her alone and it seemed
to me that she was suffering.
I asked her what was wrong with her and she asked me to look at her back to see what she had.
I saw that her back was totally sore.
I brought my hand to her side and I felt the sore on her side.
I also saw her knees.
Blessed Edvige told me that her head hurt a lot and made me touch her with my hands.
It had raised things like thick thorns.
Her friend Antonica remembers
I saw her hand and her feet with the stigmata
and then the side and the head.
I touched her head and there were small wounds around which blood came out, sometimes reaching
up to the forehead.
A witness declares
Blessed Edvige Carboni, because of her great humility, fearing that
the people would realize her stigmata on her hands, asked our Lord Jesus Christ to remove
them and He listened to her.
On the back of her hands there were two scars, about less than an inch or 2 cm long, but
she had the stigmata on her feet and the wound on her side until death.
On Fridays in Lent, the wound in her side was bleeding in such a quantity that it seemed
she was going to bleed out.
The parish priest, wanting the fact to remain on record,
ordered her by obedience to have
a photograph taken of her stigmata
with some other relatives such as her father, her sister,
Grace and another relative.
After the death of the parish priest, Blessed Edvige Carboni asked for the photograph and she tore it up,
but the photographer had the negative
and that is how it has come to us.
After the death of Blessed Edvige Carboni, her last spiritual director made pictures
using the negative
to keep the record of the stigmata that were still visible, including the cross on her chest.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.