Autobiography

12. “I bless You. O Father, for You have hidden these things from the learned and revealed them to the humble.”

You, Father, might be tempted to believe that the heart of this spiritual daughter of yours had found its way forever in the love of God, in a form of love that was all generosity, it’s true, but also entirely—what shall I say? It is not “tranquillity” which should be used or the “certainty” either that I would always be a pure lover for whom the tentacles of certain monsters would ever remain unknown.... That is not the case.

Until November 1912 I firmly belived as well that I would always love God with the same innocent trust as that of my Saint-Friend, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus. Convinced that the heroic time of the catacombs had been over for centuries and quite far from thinking that after two thousand years of Christianity this Europe of ours would again see the great persecutions we are in fact seeing (Russia, Spain, and so on), I recalled with holy envy the sweet martyrs of the first centuries, but told myself that, as far as I was concerned, I would be able to love God only through the doctrine of the sweet French Carmelite. Confidence, self-abandonment, and generosity in the little things of each hour interwoven with angelic innocence: that’s what I believed had to be my life in Christ.

But, as every year at the beginning of November, the days of the Holy Exercises came.

Here as well reactions among us boarders were quite different. In some they prompted only great boredom and nervousness. You understand: having to keep silent for five days, and pray, and listen to four sermons a day.... The most absent-minded and mischievous regarded them with loathing, if not outright terror.

Others, sentimental to the utmost, went into this retreat with—the same dispositions as those of a fakir or fanatic. They went into a “trance”—pardon the comparison—and got worked up in a mysticism which spurred them on to penances and fervors worthy of the ancient anchorites or the first to be buried alive...! Penances and fervors which, when the Exercises were over, went flat like a punctured balloon, and the real nature of the pseudo-fervent came out—i.e., a nature indifferent to God and very attached to the world.

Others, still, entered into them with simplicity, without—advance ecstasies and nauseas. They entered out of duty and entrusted themselves to God so that He would help them to understand Him.... In these simple, balanced souls God worked in full freedom, and the grace of the Lord took lasting root in the heart stretching out to receive it.

Others, souls chosen through a gratuitous gift of God, true flowers in a mystical flowerbed, at the first announcement of the approaching Exercises, became enlightened with real spiritual joy, and their souls opened completely, like snow-white lilies, to welcome the word of God into themselves and be made fruitful by it. These creatures of grace were distinguished by their bright countenances, rendered beautiful by an inner light, even if their profiles were not such as to be taken as a model by an artist; they were distinguished by an utterly special gentleness in their looks, words, and acts, by a constant peace and obedience. They were, of course, the exceptions.

I was certainly not one of these. As I told you, in five years I was never punished, for I always did my duty. But I did it for an end of human goodness: out of love for my Sisters, to make Father happy and avoid Mother’s rebukes. These exceptional creatures, on the other hand, did it only to please Jesus.

I loved Jesus very much and longed to love Him more and more. But I was still very far from acting only for a supernatural end. I loved Jesus because I felt that He loved me. I loved Him, then, in a still human way. I had not yet made my own the saying of my Seraphic Father, St. Francis of Assisi: “Truly blessed is he who loves and does not desire to be loved in return.”

When one comes to love for the sake of loving, without any calculation whatsoever, without seeking sensible joy in return, when, indeed, one loves all the more the more one is apparently neglected, forgotten, and mistreated by the beloved, then the summit of love is touched, and when it is touched, blessedness is attained. I still had a great way to walk to reach this summit...!

I belonged to the next-to-last category. I was perhaps on the border between the last and the next-to-last, for I already experienced joy at the thought of spending five days concerned exclusively with my soul. But to be concerned with one’s soul and this alone is not yet perfect love. It is egoism, holy if you will, but still egoism.

Our divine Master with his word confirmed the Law and corroborated the concept and commandment which for centuries had already been supreme among the commandments of God: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” It is thus necessary to love not ourselves and our soul alone, for to love what is ours remains egoism, even if it is a good egoism. But we must love our neighbor as ourselves, that is, strive, for his sake, to help him in goodness, in the needs of his whole life—physical, moral, and spiritual; love him in sacrifice and in prayer, so that his soul will grow in God or find Him again if it has lost Him, and so that God will mercifully bend towards our sisters and brothers who have need of so many things and perhaps do not know how to pray to the Father in such a way as to make Him unable to refuse a gift to his children asking for it.

This is the second step on the stairway leading to God. But the third is to love the Lord with our whole self. To love Him unselfishly to give Him praise and joy, since his joy is to be loved by his sons and dauthters.

I think that to the little souls, great only in generosity and love (but love is, indeed, always generous), who love their neighbor perfectly, that is, as—rather, even more than—they love themselves, and love God with a perfect love, insofar as what is still human can be perfect, with a love which is thus free from all calculation, all looking back, all fear (in the sense of fear of the punishment which would come if one did not love), with a love that accepts all and gives all without reserve, which remains love, even when from the heights of heaven the most varied pains seem to rain down, like one thunderbolt after another, and, indeed, grows stronger, blossoms, and blazes under the hail of crosses—I think that God grants the plenary indulgence of love, the greatest of all, to these little souls, that which is the fourth baptism, the last baptism, after those of water, blood, and desire, perpetual in its effects, for it renders our stole immaculate again after having been steeped in the highest doctrine of the Master and purified by the flames of charity.

My theory may not be very orthodox, but that’s the way I conceive it, and as far as I am concerned—since I believe I have no other source of purification, having sinned much after baptism and lacking other means to erase the consequences of past sin after erasing the guilt through confession—I plunge entirely into love. For me it must take the place of the Purgatory I have deserved a thousand times over. And you may certainly believe that, if it is infinite sweetness, love is also a martyrdom....

The Blood of Christ and Charity: these are the two founts in which, respectively, I wash and restore whiteness to my poor soul. Love must be my reason for existing, the motive for my every action, my justification before the Father, my glory for eternity.

But where have I ended up? Quite far away.... It is due to the fact that, under the crush of many withes tightening painfully all around me, I am joyful. I feel the divine Friend embracing and sustaining me, and my poor person rests upon Him, who encourages it to suffer a bit more to enjoy afterwards in eternity, on its approaching day of liberation.... And this embrace is so intoxicating that it spurs me to give the freedom of song to my soul, which love swells with itself....

Let us go back, though, to the exercises of 1912.

I was, then, on the border between the category of the simple souls and that of the chosen ones, and greatly liked those days of spiritual exercises, when I felt God, my Master, to be closer.

Every year real masters of devotion had come to offer them to us, one of whom was a priest, Fr. Corradi, who later died in the odor of sanctity. Twice they were offered by Monsignor Cazzani, then Bishop of Cesena and now Bishop of Cremona. A Pastor of deep religiosity and at the same time simple, with a truly evangelical simplicity, he knew how to speak to our souls with words which remained engraved on our hearts as well long after being heard. That year, 1912, the Exercises were offered by this holy Bishop. I knew they would be the last Exercises, for Mother was unrelenting about my leaving school in February.

Father had unexpectedly asked to be retired because he understood he could no longer withstand mental work after that tremendous illness. At first he had hoped against hope—poor Father—to go back to being the former Valtorta, but when the long leave for convalescence of nearly a year had ended, he had realized that he was “finished.” He had held out for a few months and then retired in September. It was thus necessary in March to go to Florence, where Mother, with the doctors’ consent, had decided to settle. I would remain at school until the end of February 1913 and then return to the family.

To tell the truth, the Sisters, since they knew that in June my parents would have to go back to Voghera for the final winding-up of Father’s affairs, had asked that I remain until June.... They saw me so sad at the idea of leaving school—and I was sad. I felt I was going towards struggle and pain and—I would never have wished to leave that nest of peace; my poor heart, with a premonition of the very tormenting future which awaited it, trembled with fear and sorrow.... But Mother had decided, and when she has decided, there’s no changing the decision, even if the world falls in ruins.

I knew, then, that they were my last spiritual exercises. I entered upon them with even greater zeal, wishing to draw lasting fruit therefrom and a program for my whole approaching life in the world. A program to which I swore to be faithful. I was always an exponent of the word of honor...! I entered upon them fervently, asking the good Lord to engrave upon me forever those days of union with Him. And He, my dear Jesus, did so.

He descended into me with the Father and the Spirit, and each of Them brought his gifts to little Maria, who would now be coming up against increasingly weighty trials and sorrows. The Father entered, giving the youthful soul the vision of his Majesty, his Power; the Son brought with Him all the treasures of his

Mercy and Wisdom; the Holy Spirit, his lights and his flames of Charity.

And this was not because I deserved it. Oh, don’t worry at all! I do not grow proud, deeming myself worthy of so much. I know quite well what I am worth, and I know that it is only the immense goodness of God that can produce certain fusions of my soul with the Divinity, certain stays of the Divinity in me and of me in It. If God measured what I am worth, He would not work such prodigies. But haven’t I already told you that I am convinced God is not a mathematician, a calculator, but an idealist and a poet? Woe to us if He kept accounting books.... Who knows where we would all end up! I do not get proud. I celebrate only the Lord’s goodness in me, for this seems to me a proper homage of thankfulness.

I had asked God to act upon me indelibly during those days so they would serve as a rail for my whole life, a safe rail so as not to leave the track or go off on paths branching off from the royal road to lose themselves on very dangerous lanes, ending up in a tangle of lianas which would impede my progress or, worse, in a marsh where I would drown. And the Lord, as St. Catherine of Siena says, since He is the one who places holy desires in the heart, never stops seconding them immediately. He thus seconded at once the desire He Himself had placed in me.

I truly lived in the light in those days. A light illuminating everything for me: past, present, future; a light which explained all to me; a light inflaming me entirely; a light that made me understand, in the deepest sense of the word, what my life in God, in relation to God, willed by God ought to be so that I would conquer the Kingdom of God.

The Belgian mystic I love so, because I understand him so well, says, “Our Father who is in heaven is the Father of lights; it is He who wants us to see.” In order to see, “a disciplined soul is needed, prepared for the practical exercise of truth and justice, and this practice must help the soul and not weigh upon it. Whoever is not a slave to anything, even his virtues, is fit for this. One must, moreover, adhere to God with the activity of love; burning passion opens the spirit. One must, finally, lose oneself in the sacred darkness where Joy frees man from himself and no longer understand in the manner of men. In the abyss of Darkness, where love produces mortal fire, I see eternal life spring up and the manifestation of God. There a certain incomprehensible light arises and shines, illuminating eternal life, and we begin to understand some.”

By God’s free gift—may He be given all the praise—I possessed a disciplined soul, prepared for the exercise of truth and justice. Yes, I must acknowledge that I have always sought to live in truth and justice, to know the real essence of truth and justice more and more, and to conform my life to this knowledge.

The Master, my only Master, instructed me in this, for, I repeat, all that has flowered in me has always been sown by Him alone, and the words of the men of God remained extinguished in me, like a lamp without oil, until my divine Doctor introduced Himself, the oil of sublime nourishment, to fuel my lamp. Only then did I see the true meaning of the words heard and not understood. He, then, had already instructed me on the need to live much in the “mental cell,” as the Sienese saint says, to know and love “the richness of the light” and “dispel the poverty of the darkness.” By living in this way, in attentive recollection, we manage “to work with the truth we have within ourselves.”

This knowledge of truth and justice, which kept growing in me, was not a weight upon my soul, but a wing so as to feel the heaviness of the flesh less. Flesh whose stimulus I felt very little at that time. Exclusively out of love for Christ, I succeeded in forgetting myself, freeing myself from myself, from everything, even from my own virtues—which I understood were not mine, but God’s—getting free even of “that fondness of ourselves which,” also according to Catherine, “is nothing but sensitive love...obstructing the Truth and keeping it from filling our hearts, bringing in place of Truth disorderly love, which is nothing but self-esteem.”

I was thus not a slave even of my virtues. Much later, still following the Dominican mystic’s counsel, I “was able to fortify myself with my sensuality” to turn it into an instrument of victory, “since he who has no battle has no victory, and it is in the time of battle that man has a way of rising up from inertia and also knowing the weakness and fragility of his sensitive passion.” This is useful knowledge to remain humble....

I clung to God with the activity of love—oh, this was indeed true! He was my love—rather, my Love—as nothing was more complete than this feeling for Him in the form I could give it then, young as I was. My spirit could thus open itself to understand Truth and Justice more and more. And, as far as I could then with my capacity as a young person, I already knew how to lose myself in this love, abandon myself entirely to it, nullify myself to cause Him alone to live, feeling bewildered, a stranger in the world which does not love and live on Him—a contradiction from a human standpoint, as all those who make God the only aim of their existence are contradictions.

Consequently, God, on this eve of my entry into the world which frightened me so, foreseeing as I did how much suffering I would find therein, clearly manifested Himself, sending forth his Light, and I began to understand some. That which sufficed for the time being to give me the first note of the song I would have to sing on my cross, the first word of my act of offering, the first touch of the thumb on the soft clay of my soul to shape it according to the form God had chosen for me: the form of a crucifix, quite high between heaven and earth, and well nailed up!

To tell you now, after over thirty years, all that God told me would be impossible. A precious ampulla which has conserved within itself the finest essences of a thousand flowers, once it remains empty of these can no longer say to man’s sense of smell, “Here was a molecule of rose oil, and there, one of carnation oil; here were condensed the sweet-smelling tears of a thousand violets, and further down was the snow-white soul of a hundred lilies of the valley.” No, the different aromas can no longer be divided. But our sense of smell perceives a single, persistent, very mild fragrance in which the spiritual parts of all the flowers in earthly gardens pulsate.

So I, in bending over my soul, a little mystical vase into which rains of heavenly flowers poured in those days, can no longer distinguish the individual scents, now strong and heroic, now meek and penitent, now exhilarating like a wine, now soothing like a balm. No, I smell only one persistent fragrance, which no human wind, no matter how violent, ever managed to disperse and which is the fragrance of God, of our God, of our Lord Jesus.

One word has, however, remained distinctly in me. A word—or, rather, a sentence—which I immediately understood would be the one I had asked for with humility and trust. The sentence-program, sentence-guide, and sentence-warning for my whole future life.

“Soul who love me,” Jesus said, “put aside the desire to love me like Agnes and Cecilia, Agatha and Lucy. You shall not be innocent love. You shall be penitent love. The uncontaminated virgins passing through the world almost without using their feet, but carried in flight by the angels so that the mud of life would not even brush against their stoles will not be your guides, but the creatures who knew the sting of evil, who bit the dust in an hour of moral collapse, who yearned for the creature, losing sight of the Creator, and then managed to rise again and be reborn with a new soul formed of repentance and love, raising themselves so high in the life of the spirit that they regained a radiance not inferior to that of the pure through the grace of God and certainly more meritorious, for it was painful and laborious beyond every other mode of conquest.”

Yes, if the palm of the martyrs who succeeded in confessing Christ before Christ’s enemies is beautiful, no less beautiful is the leafy branch which adorns the arms of those who confessed Christ not only before enemies—and in just a moment of martyrdom, amidst the contingencies aiding this heroic profession of faith, not unlike those which, amidst cannon blasts, the blare of trumpets, and cries of victory spur the combatant to carry his flag further ahead so as to confess his love for his country—but before them, their passional, bestial self, always springing up again at every hour, watching for the moments of distraction, weariness, and weakness to overpower the creature who has managed to place it beneath his feet.

What a secret, obscure struggle, not comforted by any factor, is that of creatures who, having known human sense, must repudiate it, want to repudiate it, because they are now absorbed with their better part—that of the spirit—in an ideal of redemption and love! Only the angels of God see it. Only they gaze with compassion and admiration at the creature who sweats blood in his rough battle against himself. Only they enumerate the creature’s laments, tears, and sobs; only they see the superhuman effort stretching the nerves to the marrow until breaking them, crushing the fibers, breaking the heart like a press or a grindstone. Only they see the incineration—or, rather, the dissolution—of a whole personality which under the fire of repentance and love melts away and boils like metal in a blast furnace, being purified of all dross and coming back into the light as an uncorruptible block which no inferior vein contaminates and no rust can corrode any longer.

Only the angels see this.... No, God sees it as well. He sees it, indeed, with a perfection that angelic sight cannot have.

And then God descends to this creature of his whom love has reshaped and repentance has spurred to sublime heights of immolation. He takes up his residence, or, rather, makes Himself the residence of the repentant, loving soul, gathers together all her tears, placing them in the chalice of his very own Heart, writes down all her holocausts in the great Book of Life, and constantly infuses vitality to perpetuate that existence, which immolation would destroy in a brief hour, and when He falls so deeply in love with her, for her painful humility and atoning generosity charm Him, to the point of seeing her as his dearest pearl, He then raises her up on his own Cross, on that throne dripping with his Blood, and makes her a coredeemer with Himself of mankind sunk in sense and sin.

Among all the sermons heard in those days and understood, by the grace of God, as I had never before understood until them, there was one which, as with Saul on the way to Damascus, was a bolt of lightning for my soul. It was the one on Mary Magdalene.

You will say, “But what an idea that bishop had! To speak to young girls about that creature!” The Spirit of the Lord blows where and as He wills.

The Sisters, my companions, and I myself, were all left a bit astonished when His Excellency, from the little pulpit raised alongside the altar, asked the Sisters to have all the boarders leave except for the older ones, for he wanted to speak to them alone. And we were even more astonished when we heard that he wanted to speak to us about Mary Magdalene. We were not then familiar with the full extent of this woman’s life before her conversion. But the little we knew was more than enough to make us open our eyes wide and prick up our ears in amazement and to hear better....

I do not know what effect that sublime sermon had on the others, for Monsignor Cazzani, who was and is a great preacher, reached the heights of eloquence that day. Personally, I think God wanted me to hear those words and had them uttered so that I would hear them.

Father Didon, in speaking of Mary Magdalene, states, “Nothing is more powerful in a soul crushed by the weight of her faults than gentleness which takes pity and the voice which forgives.... What happened in the Magdalene’s heart? We do not know. One day her eyes opened and she recognized in Jesus the Savior who forgives. That day she did not hesitate. Such natures never stop halfway; their grandeur is to go to their limit at all times, in good or in evil. He who loves does not reason—he obeys the sentiment subjugating him as a slave would....To forgive sins is proper only to God. Only faith in God saves lost souls, and it is not in man’s power to grant forgiveness and peace. Jesus says these things and fulfills them. Those who, like the Magdalene, have felt and experienced them in the depth of their conscience understand them.... From now on the sinner can have trust; his wretchedness is no longer hopeless. Evil has found a master; to overcome it it suffices for man to believe and repent, weep and love. No matter how low he has fallen, faith and tears still remain for him. Let him imitate the sinful woman and come to weep at Christ’s feet. Legions of souls have raised themselves up from ignominy by following the sinner from Magdala. She opens the way and leads the procession of those converted and rehabilitated; she personifies the humanity lost in vice which at Christ’s feet has found the God it must love and whose love transfigures it by granting mercy and peace.”

I have not lowered myself to the point the Magdalene did, by the grace of God. But I went astray following so many human illusions. I shall show you. Christ, to whom I had sworn love, had been neglected by me, and if I had not gone so far as to deny Him as Peter did in an hour of fear, I had certainly acted like those invited to the wedding feast, who did not go, distracted as they were by their affairs....

I have sinned; yes, my God, I have sinned. If not materially, by desire, and greatly, and You, my Master, told me, “Not to do evil is not enough. You must not wish to do it.” I have desired to do evil and have thus driven other thorns into your head and wrung other tears from your eyes....

Later I met You again, and You looked at me—and You did not condemn me. You did not have a single word of reproach for my faults.... You just looked at me, and more than any word your gaze was for me a saving call.

Then I came to You forever, following in the wake of the repentant souls that in penance and love have recovered their wedding garments, purified in your Blood and in our weeping, which rained upon your holy feet for the first time from the eyes of the Magdalene, she who is our teacher in the way of redemption, in the school of love and repentance, she who is a source of hope for us, because she, who loved much, was forgiven all her sins, and if we love much, we shall be forgiven our sins.

The chaste and ardent tears of the converted sinner, her wordless acts of worship making her forget passing time and the needs of human life—and You, Master, had to intervene to defend her against the world looking at her and shaking its head in pity, because “Mary has chosen the better part, which shall never be taken from her,” just as You would defend her before the disdainful Pharisee, as You would defend her when reproached by all for having wasted ointment of pure lavander worth three hundred denarii, as You would defend her always because You understood the generosity of this ardent soul—those chaste and loving tears taught me the art of taking You, of making You my Lover, the Bridegroom, He who is the reason for life, joy, and glory; they taught me the method for erasing the evil which had debased my soul, created by You, and replace it with good, transforming in this way my poor soul—which love for the creature, disorderly love for the creature, had debased to the point of turning it into a cavern inhabited by the spirit of rebellion and sensuality—into a nuptial chamber, thoroughly lovely and pure, in which to consummate the wedding between You and me....

See how I’ve gotten off the track again.... Let’s go back to the right place.

God wanted me to hear those words to give me guidance for the future. They fell like stones into the lake of my heart and sank down. The peaceful depths of my pure youth covered them with a watery veil, and they remained there, on the bottom, without leaving any further trace.

But when the storm of life stirred, nipped, and rushed over the lake of my heart, unsettling it completely and dredging up mud and algae intertwined to cloud the waters and make it hard to move through them, those words also returned to the surface and, bathed as they were in the deep waters, sparkled in the divine sunlight and became beacons of salvation and guidance for me.

But from the day I heard them on I understood that I would rediscover them in the hour desired by God and that in the meantime I should meditate on their teaching with all my limited strength so as to be able to understand them completely later on when the hour of struggle and knowledge came.

I grasped—this was quite clear—that I was called by God to a life of pain, that weeping would be my companion and the cross, my standard, and that, renouncing my sweet dreams of martyrdom like that of the first Christians, from that moment on I should prepare myself for the obscure martyrdom of the heart—overlooked by all except God—continuous, exercised throughout life and in all the contingencies of life.

I grasped it as clearly as if the Angel of the Lord, holding the great Book of human destinies open before my eyes, had allowed me to read my future therein....

The next day the close of the Holy Exercises took place. I think that was the moment the Sisters got an insight into my secret. I was so moved—however well I managed, as usual, to master my emotions—that the dear Sisters got wind of it. The voice of God had resounded and continued to resound in me too loudly for the impressions in my heart not to appear on my face. I had clung to God too much in revelation to receive comfort and suffered excessively in tearing myself away. A not only metaphorical, but true sensation of laceration of fibers, for the pain of this laceration being produced in me, now that I necessarily had to go back to life as usual, coming out of that retreat where I had been with God, was truly tormenting. The Sisters could not fail to notice.

I felt I could not live.... I have since undergone numerous and quite painful separations and can state from experience that this was even more stinging. If human separations have caused my heart to sink to the point of making it ill, this one choked me as if every bit of air had been taken away. I was as desolate as if I had at once been deprived of freedom, light, wealth, health, friendship, and relatives.

But why explain so much that hour of my spiritual anxiety in poor human words?

When I reread the Song of Songs, I find a—greatly reduced—echo of that grief-stricken searching through valleys and over mountains for Him who is the Good of the loving creature. But the burning phrases of Solomon’s poem are still little in comparison to what I experienced. I later read the ardent pages of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Jesus and found a more perfect echo, but still less than my sentiment. I have thus understood that the human word is unable to express what is superhuman. Perhaps only a seraph could write the anguish of divine love.... But the seraphim adore and keep silent....

Very delicately, my Sisters scarcely appeared at the door of my soul, filled with a longing for heaven. They venerated the work of God therein and went no further. They respected.... The only thing to do in such cases, for any intrusion, even the purest in its mode of action, is a profanation. The soul’s contacts with God should always be respected as something sacred.

In the booklet distributed to all of us as a remembrance of the Exercises, on the page—or, rather, on the pages—devoted to our reflections and intentions, where my classmates wrote certain rambling passages filled with dovish sighs and sterile sentimentalism, I wrote a single sentence: my program for future life, my norm of conduct towards my family, myself, my neighbor, and God. A single sentence, but vast as the oceans and as deep, which can fill the longest life with itself: Sacrifice and Duty at every hour, in every contingency.

I have been faithful to this aim. And if my humanity has sometimes seemed to triumph over my spirit, I have always gone back quickly to practicing sacrifice and duty fully, however, and can state that I have never set them aside completely, even if temptations were so great and my joy in duty so negligible as to suggest abandoning that purpose and going along with the flow.

As a result of what had leaked out from my face, I wonder whether.... I cannot know, for there were no mirrors, and I was far too occupied with other things that morning to give a thought to observing myself in the little pocket mirror they allowed us to keep. I cannot know, then, what escaped from my face or how it appeared changed. But the fact is that as a result of what had leaked out from my face the Superior particularly asked the Sister who knew best how to speak to me to enquire as to whether I intended to become a Sister as well. I undeceived her at once.

Oh, it would have been sweet to take up that way, to place myself under the shelter of Mary forever, under her mantle, and let life glide by in that fashion...! But it was not my way or the life where God wanted me. I knew this clearly. The world was to be my arena of combat. I did not know what the combat would be, but I knew it must take place in the world and not in the cloister.

Poor Sisters, who had already made the rosiest assumptions concerning me and saw me with a bonnet on my head! God knows I would have preferred to have that vocation...! But I didn’t. I knew I was going towards pain, but had to go towards pain.

With weeping and torment I saw the time still separating me from pain grow short, but I could not prevent it. I was in the condition of a convict who sees the moment in which his sentence will be executed approaching. The more the Sisters and my classmates multiplied their acts of tenderness towards me, on the verge of leaving them—and to go so far away that I would probably never be able to see them again—the more my anxiety grew, joined to gratitude for their affection.

It might seem strange to some, but it is the truth. I suffered much more on leaving boarding school than when I entered. Perhaps it was due to the fact that in four years I had, of course, become more adult and the sensitivity which is one of my main qualities—maybe the principal one—my gift and my torment, was thus growing increasingly refined. For if it is a gift to have a kind heart, sensitive to all the smallest nuances of events, this is also a great torment, since there are very few joys in life and painful things are always numerous and ever present.

This sensitivity—which I kept as hidden as possible because I have always hated to display my feelings in the sight of all, nearly always indifferent when not outright scornful—having grown over the years along with the growth of my mind, made me increasingly fearful about the future. I kept feeling that the little bit of good I had enjoyed until then was coming to an end and, like a sensitive plant that feels the hand approaching, shuddered in all my fibers and closed in on myself.

Oh, it was quite a melancholy creature who crossed the threshold of the school to face life, with a heart torn by being pulled away from that abode, where I had known only serene hours and serene affections! It was the afternoon of February 23, 1913.

The Sisters, who had recently been boundlessly multiplying all their most affectionate attentions towards me, to make me feel how much they loved me, to overnourish me with love, thinking of the fast which was close at hand and would render my heart barren and steep me in so much burning nostalgia, with tears in their eyes had urged me to be good to my mother so as to try to make her good to me.

Oh, I was not the one who needed to be so urged! I was always at the door of her heart, an eternal beggar, asking for her offering of understanding and affection. But that door remained closed, grim, bristling with iron lances I could not even lean against....

I know they spoke to Mother as well in this regard.... But their words remained a dead letter, or rather, managed to create the opposite of what had been intended. Mother suddenly started to reproach me for having depicted her as arid and intransigent before the Sisters.

But, my God, there was no need for me to depict her that way! Everything in her showed her for what she was: more a stepmother than a mother. Her manner, her letters, her indifference to my health, her stinginess regarding my little needs as a boarding student—so many things, in short, had instructed the Sisters, and done so quite well—for they had been rendered expert by continual contacts with hundreds of mothers and fathers—concerning what my mother was towards me. There was no need for me to speak— something I never did—because one feels ashamed over certain misfortunes, like a dishonor or a shameful illness. If in later years I at any time spoke in this regard, it was always because others had already realized the truth about relations between my mother and myself and had insensitively asked questions which pained me like acid on a wound. Just think that different people have asked me if “she was really my true mother or a second mother....” This should say all, Father.

I have spoken spontaneously only with the utmost difficulty and only with people who have attracted all my confidence, which I so rarely concede, and, furthermore, these persons must be such, in their outward bearing and in being full of good sense, as to give me assurance that my painful secret is being entrusted to someone who will not make it an object of scorn and gossip.

One of the very few to whom I have spontaneously stated things as they are is you, Father, for the reasons mentioned above and because, as you must direct my soul in this extreme hour of my existence, it is right and proper that you should know the truth about things which bring such suffering and disturbance to my mind.