A MODERN MYSTIC

 

Somehow the month of August got away from me, but I thought perhaps we could study some of the Church’s newer mystics. This category of saints is probably one of the hardest to understand, as well as the most difficult for the Church to sort out due to the unusual aspect of the saint's life.

BL. EDVIGE (HEDWIG) CARBONI spent her life between her humble daily life and mystic phenomena, even receiving the stigmata which she tried to hide in every way possible. She had to deal with gossip and slander and she was even subjected to a Canonical Enquiry from which she was absolved. She was able to dedicate her life to service of the poor and sick.

Born in Pozzomaggiore, Sardinia in 1880, she was the second of six children.  Her father, Giovanni Battista Carboni, was a working man of modest means. She had to leave school in the fourth grade to care for her chronically ill mother and care for her younger siblings.

Her mother taught her embroidery as a child, and she would work with her father in the embroidery business. She also spent time in the convent of the Sisters of Saint Vincent in Alghero, where the nuns led a course in embroidery. Her desire to become a religious was thus thwarted and she would spend a sober and collected domestic life, alternating household chores with moments of prayer.

She became a professed member of the Third Order of Saint Francis in 1906 and belonged to an association known as the Friends of Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus; she began recording her thoughts in a spiritual journal. Her mother died in 1910, and her responsibilities tripled.

On July 14, 1911, the signs of the Passion of Jesus appeared on her body. Edvige experienced a number of visions from Our Lady and many saints. She began to experience bilocation in 1925, and this grew greater during World War II. These and other mystical phenomena that were attributed to her were investigated in the canonical process of 1925, to which she underwent with complete obedience. She then moved to Rome with the rest of her family, just as the Second World War was about to begin.

Edvige belonged to the parish of the Salesians "Saint Mary Help of Christians" on Via Tuscolana. There she went almost every morning for Mass and Communion, where she usually prayed in the chapel of Saint Anne. Most of the ecstasies and extraordinary events took place there. She died suddenly in 1952 of angina pectoris.

Blessed Edvige Carboni's life was characterized by an unceasing charity, especially toward the weakest, Cardinal Becciu pointed out. A friend of the poor, she had words of comfort for all.

Cardinal Becciu said in the homily of the beatification rite: “Blessed Edvige embodies the most beautiful virtues of the Sardinian woman of the time. And yet from her experience, data emerge that make her testimony more relevant than ever ... Her simple and profound spiritual experience, marked by limitless charity, boundless humility and incessant prayer, is still a current model, because it shows that even in a simple life and ordinary it is possible to experience a solid communion with God and an apostolate characterized by a passion for wounded and disadvantaged humanity.”

" The new Blessed had “a heart that was humble and full of charity because the long hours of prayer banished any trace of barrenness and spiritual idleness. Through prayer, Edvige performed acts of reparation for those who were in the shadows of sin, and implored divine mercy for those who insisted upon not allowing themselves to be reached by grace”.

 She was a Sardinian laywoman who kept house, did embroidery, taught catechism to children, visited the sick, yet carried in her body the wounds of Jesus Christ for more than four decades without seeking any attention for it. Her feast day is February 17.