Observations placeholder
Venerable Gertrude Salandri - A particle escaped from the ciborium, passed through the Communion window and flew straight to Sister Gertrude
Identifier
024226
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Friar Herbert Thurston was a Catholic priest, a member of the Jesuit order and an historian. He wrote extensively on Catholic mysticism and psychic phenomena and was a member of the Society for Psychical Research. He was also widely read on this subject. He is described as ‘an honest skeptic’., and once said ‘the role of Devil’s advocate is a thankless one and does not make for popularity’.
A description of the experience
Friar Herbert Thurston - The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism
Her anonymous but most capable biographer writes as follows:
Being forbidden to communicate [take communion] on a certain day, she was gazing from afar at the Eucharistic table and deploring her misfortune. As she was unable to partake in act she sought comfort in the banquet of desire, when suddenly a particle escaped from the ciborium, passed of Itself through the Communion window and flew straight to Sister Gertrude to gratify her longing.
What her consolation was I have no words to describe. I only know that the nun who was privileged to be the witness of this extraordinary prodigy remained so overwhelmed with astonishment and so carried away by a flood of devotion that she ran at once to give an account of it to their Confessor and afterwards bore testimony to the fact upon oath in the process of beatification.
Neither was this nun full of fancies nor one of commonplace virtue, but she was the great Servant of God, Sister Angela Maria di Gesu, called in the world Anna Maria Sarnini, of whose solid and eminent virtue we have spoken elsewhere more at large.