The silence, peace, and enchantment of the Dolomites were but a distant memory. For some months, Chiara had been in Rome, a city full of noise, building sites for postwar reconstruction, and hundreds of immigrants. However, revelation, contemplation, the continuously new experience of heaven, are not bound to places and situations. They are a gift from God, a gift that is present everywhere. His light kept on illuminating Chiara’s mind and life even in Rome.

In her notes from mid-December 1949, we find the names of masters of mystical theology, such as Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657) and Adolphe Tanquerey (1854–1932), whose works she was reading. Up until then, it seemed that her only teacher was Jesus, her Spouse, and his Holy Spirit. Why, then, do we find now the names of these theologians?

Perhaps it was because, in that period, she had come to know some contemporary professors and scholars of spirituality, such as Gabriel Roschini (1900–1977), Giovanni Battista Tomasi (1866–1954), and Leone Veuthey (1896–1974). Perhaps they were the ones who gave her these books on mystical theology. It seemed that Chiara felt the need to compare the experience she was living with the tradition of the Church, so as to discern its continuity with the past, as well as its originality. She wanted to initiate for herself a reflection upon the light that she had been receiving for months, well aware of its doctrinal importance and ecclesial dimension. She understood that what she was experiencing was meant for the entire Church.

However, she felt that those scholarly texts were inadequate instruments to evaluate such a profound and new experience, and therefore, she sought elsewhere. Since she was limited by her lack of access to sources and critical studies, she sought instead a direct relationship with the great mystics.

She started a spiritual “dialogue” with Saints Angela of Foligno, Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. She was already familiar with Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi, and Saint Catherine of Siena, but now, she rediscovered them from a completely new perspective.The following year, 1950, she wrote a magnificent page that was the fruit of her research and profound relationship with the saints in the preceding months.

The text carried a very significant title, “The Church.” It is a hymn to the Church in its charismatic dimension, which the study of ecclesiology of that time had disregarded, considering only the hierarchy and the sacraments when defining the Church. Instead, Chiara saw the Church as a succession of charisms, as if Christ were revealed down through the centuries, as a living Gospel, and incarnated, above all, in the blossoming of the religious orders. “Each order or religious family is the incarnation of an ‘expression’ of Jesus, for example, one of his Words, or an attitude, or an event in his life, or one of his painful moments, some part of his life.”

Therefore, she goes over the various sentences of the Gospel that were lived out in a charismatic way by Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Margaret Mary Alacoque, and Thérèse of the Child Jesus. She contemplated the Church as a “magnificent garden in which all the Words of God blossom.” In a poetic vein, something common to mystics, she utilized a metaphor:

“Just as water is crystallized into tiny stars of many shapes when it falls on the earth as snow, so Love in the Church took on various forms which are the orders and the religious families.” In every order, she saw “a ray of the order that is God, a light of the Light that is Jesus.” Thanks to this evangelical, charismatic, and holy dimension, she understood the Church in its most profound and permanent reality, that of being the incarnated Word, the Gospel lived-out, or as “another Christ, or a continuation of Christ, the Spouse of Christ. It is the New Jerusalem, bedecked with every virtue.”

The centrality of the Word in her understanding of the Church also includes the hierarchical and sacramental dimensions, because they too are an expression of the Gospel. When Chiara commented on this text, she noted: “The charismatic Church described in these pages is not a part of the Church alongside the hierarchy, but rather the whole Church, in the sense that it expresses the Church in its entirety. In fact, the institutional Church was also born from the Gospel, from a word of Jesus: ‘…you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.’ (Mt 16:18–19). Therefore, the hierarchy, too, is the depository of a charism.”

At that time, this vision of a completely charismatic Church was totally new. It was only some years later that we saw the innovative works by Henri de Lubac (The Splendor of the Church) and Karl Rahner (The Dynamic Element in the Church). Rereading her own experience of Paradise ’49, Chiara discovered that she was part of the charismatic current that made the Church “beautiful,” and she also understood what her mission was: “The only thing we have to do is to make Love circulate among the different [religious] orders.” It is a continuation of the role of Mary who, in the Upper Room, became the Mother of the Church, in all its aspects.

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

A TASTE OF PARADISE ’49

“Just as one sacred Host, from among the millions of hosts on the earth, is enough to nourish us with God, so one brother or sister, the one whom God’s will puts next to us, is enough to give us communion with humanity, which is the mystical Jesus.”
The Church comes about and grows as a result of concrete love toward every person, “the one whom God’s will puts next to us.” This is how living cells of fraternity are generated.