Chiara’s photo is itself a profession of faith.
Adorned in a black, blue and white turtleneck, she holds a violin in one hand, her hair in a simple updo. A stick-on eyepatch covers her right eye, and her head is thrown back in utterly radiant, joyful laughter.
That photo and the others taken that day depict a woman so full of life and love. They can’t help but make the viewer respond in joy. And yet, the photos show us a young wife and new mom who has just been given a terminal diagnosis.
Married in 2008 in Assisi, Italy, Chiara and Enrico soon conceived two children, but neither survived long after birth due to terminal diagnoses. Though many expected the couple to resort to abortion, they saw each of their children as a gift to be received with love.
“In our marriage, the Lord gave us two special children…but he asked us to accompany them only until their birth,” Chiara said. “He gave us the opportunity to embrace them, have them baptized and then entrust them into the hands of the Father, all with a peace and joy that we had never experienced before.”
The Servant of God said she felt the Virgin Mary walking beside her in her own pregnancies. She who bore the most wonderful gift of God in the secret silence of her womb, she who accompanied Christ in his earthly mission, she who bore the pangs of his death also knew Chiara’s joy and pain.
When Chiara became pregnant the third time, she and Enrico received the news that their son was perfectly healthy. As with their first two pregnancies, they rejoiced and entrusted their child to the Lord again. But this third pregnancy was accompanied by a new cross: a tumor on Chiara’s tongue.
Rather than risk the well-being of her child, Chiara postponed treatment until after his birth. The radical decision was a fruit of the same deep love she had for her first two babies, the same self-forgetfulness and the same share in the Passion of Christ.
Her friend, Simone Troisi, recalled how love “completely possessed her.” She could forget herself because she was so single-minded: she loved abundantly because she was utterly lost in God’s abundant love.
A Death Bursting with Life
The famous picture of Chiara, smiling with her eyepatch, was taken ten days after she received her terminal diagnosis.
Though medically, Chiara was dying, she lived her last few months with an unmistakable Christian liveliness. Why? Because she did not await death but life. She knew she would meet Christ and her first two children with him.
Her closest friends remarked how insistent Chiara was of her own ordinary weakness. She professed that she was timid by nature and had nothing of the bold bravery for which many praised her. Rather, she attributed her joy to the love of Christ, who carried her and her burdens.
“Strength comes in making space, in trusting yourself, in truly believing that God is good and that he has only astonishing things in mind for you,” she said.
Leading up to her death, Chiara received the sacraments at home daily from the hands of the very same priest who had been a spiritual advisor to her and Enrico throughout their courtship, engagement, marriage and the deaths of their first two children. As Providence would have it, his name is Father Vito, a name that means life.
Chiara died in her wedding dress beside her husband and son.
Her funeral was filled with singing (led by Enrico); it overflowed with light and the love of Christ. In a word, it was a death bursting with life.
The Secret to Joyful Suffering
Four hours before Chiara died, her husband Enrico asked her, “But Chiara, my love, is this cross really sweet, like the Lord says?” He recalls she looked at him, smiled, and said, “Yes, Enrico, it is very sweet.”
This profound paradoxical truth is the absolute center of the Christian faith, the faith that acclaims the Crucified Christ as the Lord of Life, the Christian faith that sings out, “O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where thy victory?” (1 Cor 15:55). It wasn’t merely that Chiara did not lose faith in her suffering, but rather, because her faith was in the Crucified Lord of Life and the “perfect love [that] drives out all fear” (1 Jn 4:18), she was living, as it were, at a deeper level than the suffering.
But how is it possible for us ordinary Christians to imitate this?
The answer is disarming in its simplicity. The truth is, Chiara was an ordinary woman. But like all the extraordinary saints before her, she allowed the love of God to work in her ordinariness and transfigure her along with her suffering through God’s own love.
As Chiara once put it, “To discover that you are loved is the center of all existence. And when we are filled with this total and delirious love, little by little, we grow and love in turn. That gradualness in our journeys is a sign of the infinite tenderness of God.”
This “little by little,” or as Chiara more frequently put it, by “small possible steps,” Chiara’s suffering was transfigured into the profound, Christ-centered joy that radiates from her picture. It is the joy of the heart that has found its rest in the “infinite tenderness of God.”
So, how might we begin to imitate Chiara?
The great secret of the spiritual life, it turns out, is no secret. We grow in love by loving those God has given us in our daily lives, by answering the demand of love today, by daily prayer, frequent reception of the Sacraments, giving alms and fasting so that we might learn how suffering and joy are united by love. That is, we might imitate Chiara little by little, by small possible steps.
