Stigmata

The hands and feet of St. Francis were pierced through the middle by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing in the inner side of the hands and the upper sides of the feet and their pointed ends on the opposite sides... Furthermore, his right side was as though it had been pierced by a lance and had a wound in it that frequently bled so that his tunic and trousers were very often covered with his sacred blood.

Saint Francis of Assisi

Celano, First Life

Chapter III

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The Stigmata of St. Francis

"I was praying on that spot where the Chapel of Count Simon of Battifolle is now, and I was asking my Lord Jesus Christ for two graces. The first was that I should feel in my soul and in my body, as far as possible, all that pain which He had felt within Himself during His most hly Passion. The second grace I asked was that I should likewise feel in my heart that most intense love which He enkindled within Himself so as to endure such suffering for us sinners. And then God put it into my heart that He would let me feel both the one and then the other, as much as possible for a mere creature. And that was fully accomplished in me during the imprinting of the Stigmata."

Saint Francis of Assisi

The Little Flowers of St. Francis 

Part II

The Considerations of the Holy Stigmata

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Stigmata: God Affixed His Seal On The Franciscan Rule

The Lord was pleased to endorse and to confirm the teaching and Rule of St. Francis, not only by miraculous signs, but also by the marks of his own stigmata, so that no true believer could possibly question them on external or internal evidence. And in his goodness God was pleased to affix his own seal to the Rule and teaching of St. Francis, who would never have presumed to teach or write anything other than what he received from the Lord. As he himself testifies, it was God who revealed to him the entire Rule.

St. Bonaventure
Sermon of October 4th, 1255

Saint Francis Receives The Stigmata

"Two years before his death, from the feast of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary until the September feast of St. Michael, Brother Francis kept a Lent in the locale of La Verna in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and of St. Michael. After the vision and words of a seraph and the imprinting of the stigmata of Christ in his body, he made the praises written on the other side of this sheet (written in his own hand) giving thanks for the grace bestowed on him."

Brother Leo
Monograph of St. Francis