Paradise ’49 is Chiara Lubich’s most precious collection of writings, and it will surely be read by future generations. However, during the summer of 1949, it was not a book, but rather an experience that was being lived and shared with those who were with her.

Some of her earliest companions, Lia Brunet, Bruna Tomasi, Ginetta Calliari, and Marilen Holzhauser, stayed at Tonadico the whole time. Others such as Vittoria Salizzoni (Aletta) and Natalia Dallapiccola remained in Trent where they worked. On weekends, or even just for a day, they would travel up to where Chiara and the others were staying. Marco Tecilla, Aldo Stedile, and other young men did the same.

“I can still vividly remember that period,” Marco recalled. “One Sunday, together with the focolarinas, we went on a hike to a place called ‘Our Lady of Light.’ There was a very profound spiritual atmosphere among us all: God had fused our souls together…

“Each time we returned to Trent from up there (Tonadico), we had the impression of coming down from a very high mountain, of being enveloped in light. Indeed, we found it hard to re-enter into our normal daily life after having lived in continuous contemplation.”

Sometimes Chiara would go down to Trent to share what she was living with the others, those closest to her, so as to “include them on the same journey.”

Italian parliamentarian Igino Giordani continued to be involved in that heavenly adventure. Whenever he found time, he would go up to Tonadico to spend time with Chiara and the others. When he had to leave, Chiara would keep him up to date through letters. Giordani took care to preserve her writings because, as he said, “They were so striking and, out of fear that they be lost or fall into the wrong hands, I used to transcribe them all while I was in Switzerland, giving them the nondescript title, Visions of Blessed Julian of Norwich.1

“Along the mountain trails, in the shade of the pine trees or under some overhanging rocks, or if possible near an icon or a shrine, Chiara kept speaking to us about God, the Virgin Mary, and the supernatural life. Her ‘nature’ was ‘super-natural.’

“Therefore, those forests were transformed into cathedrals; those summits seemed to be peaks of holy cities; the flowers and the grass were colored by the presence of angels and saints. Everything came alive in God. The barriers imposed by the flesh disappeared. Paradise was opened up for us.”

The small group stayed in a rustic mountain cabin that Lia Brunet had inherited, and since then, it has been called the “Paradise Cabin.” The upper part of the hayloft was transformed into a big bedroom that could be reached by ladder from the ground floor, which consisted of one room and a small kitchen. In the bedroom, they arranged some folding cots and made use of a wardrobe that they had to hoist up with a pulley.

The spiritual concentration of those days was in harmony with their simple daily life. “In the meantime, we didn’t stop living,” Chiara writes. “While doing our chores around the house, we continued to live with intensity the underlying reality, that is, the Word of Life.”2

Every morning, they went to Mass and then at 6 p.m., they were in church again, for meditation in front of the altar dedicated to Our Lady.

During the rest of the day, putting on their aprons, they would do the laundry at the public fountain in the village square, complete the household chores, and then head off into the woods and along the meadows to take long walks in the mountains.

“We went all together and, as we walked along, we shared with each other,” Aletta recalls. “When we stopped for a picnic, either under the shade of a tree or in a meadow, Chiara would start speaking to us as we sat around her. We were enjoying a restful time, but also building unity among us; that is, we loved one another in a supernatural way.

“We were continually ‘in God,’ very simply. We started from what was natural because, after all, we were here on earth. But the supernatural didn’t exist on its own; rather, everything was natural while, at the same time, supernatural. For us, what was natural and supernatural were the same thing.”

Being young, they liked games. They used to write on small pieces of paper the titles given to Our Lady in a litany and then each one would draw out a name as if it were an indication of what that person ought to become. Or sometimes they would use the names of flowers.

One day, there were 12 of them, and each one received the name of one of the Apostles. “I got Judas Thaddeus, and I didn’t like it because of that name, Judas,” Luigina Nicolodi recalls. “Well, Chiara helped me to love that name because she explained to me that Judas Thaddeus was the cousin of Jesus!
“So Paradise was not something ‘up there.’ It was here on earth and it was real, just like Jesus, who came to dwell among us, thus bringing heaven down on earth! We talked about ‘eternal realities’ or ‘paradise,’ but we never considered them as things belonging to another world, but rather things to be lived here on earth.”

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

1 St. Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342-1416) was an English mystic who wrote about her visions of the Passion of Christ in “Revelations of Divine Love.”

2 The Word of Life refers to biblical passages which Chiara and members of the Movement reflected on and applied in their daily life.

A TASTE OF PARADISE ’49

“We need to be without concerns because we are children of God. Children of God do not have concerns (…) with no will, so as to have the capacity to accept God’s will, and without memory so as to remember only the present moment and live ‘ecstatically’ (outside of ourselves).”

Even when we are facing difficulties, trials and doubts, which at times render our daily life burdensome, we can still abandon ourselves trustingly into the hands of God, certain of his love. He will give us new eyes with which to discern reality and the creativity to live it, leaving in our hearts the sense of being “carefree,” like children often are.