After mailing to Igino Giordani the letter she wrote the day before, Chiara and her friends walked up a hill toward the small church of St. Victor, which for more than six centuries has stood overlooking the Primiero valley. The day was Wednesday, July 20, 1949. Arcangela, the custodian of the cemetery next to the church, was coming down the hill, all dressed in black as usual and, with a nod, greeted the young women whose smiles made summer even more beautiful. They sat in a circle on the lawn in front of the church and admired the scenery: the mountains, the villages down below, the wonderful nature.

At Chiara’s feet, there appeared, among the flowers and the grass, a small worm, a lowly creature in that ocean of light and beauty. Perhaps it had come from one of the nearby tombs that surrounded the church. For someone with a pure heart, all things have meaning, even a worm, and Chiara was reminded of her Bridegroom.

She confided her thoughts to her companions seated around her: “Jesus Forsaken is the worm of the earth. That’s what he became so that, when our soul is in heaven and our flesh has been reduced to a worm, it will sing to Love Forsaken who is so similar to it, its Spouse. Thus all creation, even the most despicable beings, sings to Love.”

For her, Jesus was Jesus Forsaken, and she saw him everywhere and in everything. God is Love, and so is the Son made man. On the cross, in the painful cry by which he assumed all the sufferings of humanity and creation, the greatest love was manifested. Jesus, love, is Jesus Forsaken, the greatest love, which made him give up his life and his unity with his Father for us.

In March the following year, Chiara was still thinking of that little worm which reminded her of Isaiah’s prophecy when he spoke about the Servant of the Lord who “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him” (Isaiah 53:2), and even more of Psalm 22:6, “I am a worm and not a man.” Thinking of all this, she wrote: “Around us, everything is Jesus Forsaken.

Therefore, everything is loveable because beneath everything and everyone we see the Spouse of our soul. (…) He, who is the worm of the earth, who is ugliness, who is a mixture of blood and tears and pain, is God. He divinized everything, he gave being to everything.”

Let’s go back to the summer of 1949. For two days, July 21–22, Chiara wrote nothing because she was overwhelmed by the light that was penetrating her. Finally, on July 23, it was as if a dam had burst, and she wrote down with passion the experiences she had accumulated, filling many pages and producing the longest text written in those years.

She wanted to communicate to Igino Giordani what she had understood about the dynamics, the interplay and the relationships that make up Paradise: everything is love, everything is unity and harmony.

Divergent rays seemed to come out of the Father, reaching out to all creation and giving it unity, so that the presence of God could be discerned under every single thing. The idea of all created things is in the Son, and the Father projects this outside of himself, giving order to all, which is life, love, and truth.

Everything was conceived in the Word and everything was created in him. In the Word made man, in Jesus, the Father reaches every creature. In their origin, all things are united. At the end of time, Jesus will bring everything back within himself, in the Word, and therefore, in the heart of the Father, from where everything started. “From being divergent, the rays will become convergent and their meeting will form Paradise, all made from the substance of love (…), appearing abloom and full of stars and many-hued, with seas, mountains, lakes, stars, the sun, the moon, with broad avenues.”

From being divergent, the ideas and the rays will become convergent, and everything will be made divine. This is the ultimate destination of unity.

Is it possible for hell to exist in such great harmony and unity? In Chiara’s vision, hell is outside Paradise, and she saw it in all its harshness. It consists in formless matter that desperately seeks its form, which is love but is unable to possess it.

“The damned will take down there their immortal souls and, with full awareness, they will realize that there was only one thing they should have done, which was to love, and yet they will no longer be able to love.” There will be no unity between cold and fire, between motion and stillness, between unity and multiplicity, because “in hell, no two things can love each other.”

Everything will be without life, order, and love. So, in the afterlife, will there be a duality between paradise and hell? No. We go back to the image of that little worm, of Jesus who became sin, hell, to make everything divine. It is he, and he alone, Jesus Forsaken, who fills everything with his love and leads everything towards unity. Therefore, hell exists, but only for those in it. Those looking from Paradise, on the other hand, will see only and everywhere Jesus Forsaken and will rejoice in his infinite love.

Fr. Fabio Ciardi, OMI

A TASTE OF PARADISE ’49

“Truly Jesus Forsaken made himself ugly to make all things beautiful, made himself sin to take away sin from the earth and make all things God, made himself pain to take evil from the world and turn pain into love.”

The international music group, Gen Rosso, in one of their well-known songs, paraphrased Chiara’s words as a comment on this text: “So that we may have light, you made yourself darkness. So that we may have life, you experienced death. Lord, for us it is enough to be similar to you and offer up our sufferings with yours. You are God, you are my God, our God of infinite love.”