At six o’clock that summer evening, the sun was still high. When she entered the small church of Tonadico, owing to the contrast with the outside, it seemed that there was little light inside. Chiara sat in a pew to the right, in front of the altar of Our Lady. Slowly, the dim light dissipated and the statue of the Virgin, shrouded in a blue mantle, with her hands joined in prayer, appeared in all its beauty.

Before heading toward the church, she had joked with her young companions: “Let’s try to guess what the Bridegroom will make us understand this evening during our honeymoon in Paradise.” Nevertheless, they knew for sure that God’s imagination would be much more audacious than theirs and were happy to be proven wrong. Only two days had passed since heaven had been opened to show them first the Father, and then the Word (Jesus). And so, they said: “Now it’s the Holy Spirit’s turn.”

Her companions were seated next to her in the pew. Chiara had made them quite a unique proposal: to think about nothing, annihilate all their thoughts, so that it would be the Lord himself to illuminate them. Without knowing it, in a simple and intuitive manner, Chiara was putting into practice a very ancient “technique” found in Eastern Christian spirituality, which entailed silencing the senses to gain access to the light.

Once again, in the silent church, a light came from heaven. Chiara narrated what happened in a letter she sent to Igino Giordani on July 19, 1949: “And then I looked above me, where there was a beautiful statue of our Mother, and I understood that she is all and only Word of God. I saw her beautiful beyond all telling: all clothed in the Word of God (Jesus), who is the Beauty of the Father, and hidden guardian of the Spirit within her. And, as soon as I loved her, she loved me and with the clarity of heaven showed me all of her beauty – she is the Mother of God!”

Mary has always been hailed as the “all beautiful.” If the Word is the Father’s splendor, Mary, being completely clothed with the Word of God, reflects the same beauty, the same splendor of the Word. The image of Mary being completely Word is not totally new. For example, Andrew of Crete (ca. 740) described her as “a living book in which the spiritual word was silently written by the living pen of the Spirit.”

A medieval theologian, Rupert of Deutz, affirmed that the Word of God is contained in Mary, “in whose womb God conveyed the totality of the Scriptures, each and every one of its words.” Seeing her as the essence of the Word, reflecting the beauty of the Son, the Father falls in love with her and sends down upon her his eternal Word. Mary thus becomes the Mother of the Word made flesh, and her beauty attains the highest splendor.

Later, on July 9, 1950, Chiara wrote: “He [God] could not come down into sin and so he invents Mary, who, summing up in herself all the beauty in creation, ‘tricks’ God and draws him to earth.” Chiara no longer looked at Mary as the young woman from Nazareth, the most beautiful creature on earth, but as the Mother of God, made by God great as God, so much so that she was able to contain him; she is contained in the Trinity and the Trinity is contained in her.

Thus, once again, the prediction they had made before entering the church was proven wrong. Following human logic, they were sure that after the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit would be next to manifest himself. Instead, the Holy Spirit made way for Mary, his spouse, and, as Chiara so audaciously wrote, “with his manifestation, enclosed her as ‘fourth’ in the Trinity.”

St. Maximilian Kolbe, with similar audacity, affirmed that, since Mary “was integrated into the love of the Most Holy Trinity, she became, from her first moment of existence and forever, for all eternity, the ‘complement’ of the Most Holy Trinity.” Chiara made it clear that Mary is fourth in the Trinity, not fourth of the Trinity. There is no “fourness” in the Most Holy Trinity. Nevertheless, from the moment that Jesus, in all his humanity, ascended into heaven, something new happened within the Trinity.

His flesh, which is Mary’s flesh, was integrated into the mystery of the Trinity. He was followed by Mary, who was assumed body and soul into heaven. From the early Marian basilicas, the iconography has always shown Mary seated next to her Son, surrounded by the two other divine Persons and all three Persons crown her as queen. This is indeed the ultimate vocation for every Christian, of which Mary is sign and anticipation, as the letter to the Ephesians reminds us: “God (…) seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6).

When they left the church, the blue of the sky was extraordinary. Chiara narrated: “And so I understood: the sky contains the sun! Mary contains God! God loved her so much as to make her his Mother. His Love made him become tiny in front of her!”

Fr. Fabio Ciardi, OMI

A TASTE OF PARADISE ‘49

“In her the Word always lived. So it should be in our soul: always living with the Word – totally and only concentrated on the Word.” Mary’s greatness lies in her being the Mother of the Word, who is the Word of God. She welcomed and lived out the Word. This is the path along which those who want to be another little Mary have to journey. They have to live the Word of God, to be solely Word of God. Only in this way will we be invited into heaven and be embraced by the Trinity.