Studying the mystical experiences of the saints and the spiritual doctrine of the Church made Chiara Lubich even more aware of the originality of her “stroll in Paradise.” She realized that God was opening up a new spiritual pathway. The very expression, “strolling Paradise,” which is so unique, allows us to understand that it was an authentic experience. 

The root of the word, “experience,” is “ex” (out of) “peritus” (to try, to risk), and therefore, it implies going out to discover something, “journeying” in the sense of immersing oneself in something, penetrating it. More than strolling “in” Paradise, it was a matter of strolling “the” Paradise, that is, living each one of the realities present there in such a way as to be transformed by them.

Reading the texts of Paradise ’49, we encounter the language of the “spiritual senses,” which is found in the Scriptures and Christian tradition. In all simplicity, Chiara affirms: “I distinctly heard a voice, in the way that the soul hears”; “his delicate voice told me…”; “I distinctly heard the voice of the Spirit speaking to the Soul”; “I feel this delight that invades my whole being”; “I saw and felt him [the Father] as never before”; “I felt myself truly Him [Jesus in the Eucharist]”; “you can feel (almost as if the soul had senses).” Hers was an authentic mystical experience, understood as an “adaptation” to the great Mystery of God, as a “transformation” in him.

When one speaks about mysticism, one also speaks about gratuitous blessings. Many times, during her meetings with the Abba School (from the early 1990s until shortly before her death in 2008), while reading her texts, Chiara expressed her surprise in finding so much beauty, boldness, accuracy, and prophecy. She asked herself: “How was I able to write those things?” Her answer – It was the Holy Spirit who made her understand and write them down: “It was all a grace.”

The charism Chiara received led her to share her experience, instead of keeping it only to herself. Thus, from day one, she communicated to Igino Giordani all she was experiencing. She did the same with her companions. More than telling them about her experience, she wanted to introduce them to it, to involve them, to make them participate in it. Years later, she wrote: “These mysteries took place in me, Chiara, but no sooner were they communicated to the rest of the Soul than we perceived them as shared by all.” Therefore, the experience became a proposal to journey together; it was a new spirituality.

Once back in Rome, with a certain detachment, Chiara started to look at what she had lived and was still experiencing. She became aware that hers was a “new way… and yet age-old.” She started referring to it as “a new mysticism.”

“Ours is the mysticism of Jesus and of Mary, the mysticism of the New Testament, the new commandment, the mysticism of the Church, through which the Church is truly Church, because it is Unity, Mystical Body, Love, because the Holy Spirit circulates within it and makes her the Bride of Christ. It is the mysticism of Jesus, of the whole Jesus. (…) And Jesus is ‘where two or more.’ Hence, it is the mysticism of those who love one another as he loved us. It is a unity of souls that mirrors, while on earth, the Trinity in heaven. 

While on earth, because here on earth, we have to bear witness to the God-Man, and here on earth is the Church. Hence, our mysticism presupposes at least two persons ‘made God,’ among whom the Holy Spirit circulates as the third, a divine Person who is God, who consumes them in one, in one God. ‘As you and I,’ Jesus tells the Father. Then and only then are the two persons ‘Jesus.’ This is our mysticism.”

It has been firmly established in the Christian tradition that the mystical life is life in Christ (“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” Gal 2:20). The novelty of Chiara’s experience lies in having understood that we are “truly” Jesus, the “whole Jesus,” as she said, when we are his Body, the Church, when we are in unity with one another. Jesus is found in the “two or more,” Jesus among us. 

This is an experience that does not concern only the individual, but also the community. Through the experience of living the spirituality of unity, the individual becomes “Church” (the “Soul”), as in the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Did we (plural) not feel our hearts burning when he [Jesus in the midst] spoke to us and explained the Scriptures?” Even Pentecost was an experience of the Spirit lived all together.

On November 8, 1950, Chiara spoke about this new spirituality in terms of an “exterior castle in which God is in our midst.” A “castle” reminds us of the temple of the Spirit mentioned in the First Letter of Peter (cf. 1 Pt 2:5), in which each person is a living stone. This image must have come to her mind after reading about the interior castle proposed by Saint Teresa of Avila. When, on December 2, 2002, Chiara visited the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila, she wrote the following in the visitors’ book: “Thank you, Saint Teresa, for all you did for us throughout our history. Thank you! Continue to watch over us, over our exterior castle which the Bridegroom has established on earth to complete your interior castle, to make the Church beautiful, as you wanted it to be.” Chiara’s spirituality reflects both continuity and originality in the life of the Church.

Fr. Fabio Ciardi, OMI
(Living City, USA)

A Taste of Paradise ’49

“God who is in me, who has shaped my soul, who rests here as Trinity (with the saints and the angels), is also in the heart of my brothers and sisters. It is not logical that I should love him in myself alone. (…) Therefore, my cell (…), my Heaven, is in me and, just as it is in me, it is in the soul of my brothers and sisters. And just as I love him in me, immersing myself in this heaven, when I am alone, I also love him in my brothers and sisters when I am with them.”

This is what it means to love the other, because the same God who lives in me lives in the other. This is the way to “dilate” our interior life and build the exterior castle, in order to promote universal brotherhood and achieve unity.