Post #6100

When her mother received her Viaticum, she stood next to her exclaiming: «Oh, what a beautiful thing you have had, mother! Oh, what a smell of Jesus!». Before her pious parent died, in entrusting each of her five daughters with a wound of the Crucifix as a refuge and particular object of devotion, she assigned to her little Ursula that of the Sacred Heart. Reading the lives of the Martyrs strengthened in the girl the love for Jesus and the neighbour and the spirit of prayer and mortification. At the age of seventeen, when her father thought of placing her in marriage, she, despite all her opposition, wanted to join the Capuchin Monastery of Città di Castello. She entered on July 17, 1677, she took the habit on October 28, 1677 and received the name of Veronica. Here, united to Jesus Christ in mystical marriage, she was made the object of copious divine favours which she herself, by order of the ecclesiastical authority, put into writing. Indeed, we would know nothing of Veronica's experiences if her spiritual director had not ordered her to write them down. He did it for 30 years and the result is the "Hidden Treasure", published in 10 volumes from 1825 to 1928. Admirable was the loving devotion to the Passion of Our Lord Jesus which by divine grace he bore on her own body: in 1694 he received the the imposition of the crown of thorns; on Good Friday 1697 her stigmata appeared to her and the instruments of the Passion were imprinted in her heart. She was therefore rightly called the "Bride of the Crucifix". After receiving the wounds of Christ's Passion, in fact she - she reveals in her spiritual diary - "I cried a lot and with all my heart I prayed to the Lord to hide them from everyone's eyes". The phenomena were carefully examined both by the Ordinary Bishop and by the Holy Office of the Inquisition: both ascertained the truthfulness of the facts and the patience, humility and obedience of the pious nun. After having been a cook and a nurse, she was appointed mistress of novices in 1694 and then Abbess of the Monastery in 1716. Full of divine charity, she poured out her love on sinners, on the holy souls in Purgatory and on all the Holy Church, especially on priests . After 50 years of a life of immolation, she died in the kiss of the Divine Spouse on Friday of the 9th of July 1727, the day on which she had previously received so many graces, after thirty-three days of illness and after her confessor ordered her to make the spirit. At her autopsy, her virginal heart, pierced from side to side, was found carved with the emblems of the passion as she had described and even drawn them by order of the confessor. After the writings and miracles were examined and canonically approved, Pius VII beatified her on the 18th of June 1804 and Gregory XVI included her in the catalog of holy virgins on the 26th of May 1839. Even today her body is venerated under the high altar of the Capuchin church in Città di Castello.