"I never wanted to obey when they wished a doctor to visit me (for I never wanted anyone to touch me or see me.) One evening a doctor came unannounced, examined me by force and found an abscess on my body which he feared was very serious because he thought it had affected my spine.For a long time I had felt pain in that part of my body but I did not want to touch or look at it because when I was a little girl I had heard a priest say: "Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." Those words had struck me and led me to guard my body as closely as possible. After he had visited me the doctor called a consultant. What affliction it caused me, dear Father, to have to uncover myself. Every time the doctor touched me I cried. After the consultation I grew steadily worse and I was forced to go to bed and was not able to move. Every remedy was used on me but instead of helping me they made me worse. While I was in bed I was ill at ease and a source of annoyance to all.The second day I was in bed I was not at peace and I wrote to Monsignor telling him that I wanted to see him. He came at once and I made a general confession, not indeed because I was so bad off but to regain peace of conscience which I had lost. After confession my peace with Jesus returned and as a sign of this, on that same evening I experienced a very deep sorrow for my sins.Then, dear Father, the pain became worse and worse and the doctors decided to operate on me (in that part of which I have spoken). Three doctors came (and what I suffered from the pain was as nothing). I felt pain and suffering only when I found myself in their presence almost entirely unclothed. Dear Father, how much better it would have been for me to die! Finally the doctors saw that all remedies were useless and they gave me up entirely. After that they came to see me only now and then through courtesy, so to speak."
Later, when Gemma was given the extraordinary grace of the Stigmata along with frequent ecstasies, her Confessor Monsignor Volpi requested that Doctors examine Gemma while in ecstasy, and also the stigmata, in hopes to document and authenticate their veracity. Concerning this, Gemma writes in her autobiography-
"Meanwhile the Friday occurrences continued and Monsignor thought it well to have a doctor visit me during one of them without my knowing it. But Jesus warned me saying: "Tell your confessor that in the presence of the doctor I will do none of the things that he desires." Following the advice of Jesus I told my confessor about this but he did as he had planned, and events turned out as Jesus had said, as you already know."
St. Paul of the Cross:
There is no doubt of St. Paul's being always spotless in purity. His maxims on the point of treating with the opposite sex deserves attention. "As long as our bones are covered with skin, there is reason to be afraid." He states that many persons, advanced in years, even though meritorious in most walks of life, have fallen into sins for want of caution. Beautiful and practical were the rules laid down for the custody of this virtue. His advise to priests and religious was: Let your conversation with ladies be brief and stiff. One fruit seen everywhere the saint had been was that his penitents could be distinguished from their companions by their modesty in dress and deportment. He performed miracles more than once to save female modesty from the surgeon's knife and many were deprived of his friendship because they would not come up to his standards of decorum.
St. Vincent de Paul:
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