Chiara Luce, you felt pain when they told you you would die. It wasn’t what you wanted. (At first.) I have felt pain too, Chiara, my heart a chalice full, and I have asked, “Will there be a remedy?” You had remedy. Your remedy was death, and you gave assent. But I want to know, will I see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living?
If I told you my pain, your heart would go out to me, just as mine does to you. I don’t know what it is like to have a fatal disease, and I don’t think you know what it is like to be thrust through the heart with the lance I have.
I have tried to heal myself. I have tried to be done with the pain. I have blamed myself and my attachments. But in the end I have no choice but to give myself to the process of whatever I am going through. Even if the only thing that needs to happen is for me to be stripped of my attachments, I can’t make it happen myself. I have a sense there will be remedy, but that it will be very slow in coming, in very tiny steps, and that I must rest and be grateful for each one.
I am resting here on the back stair now, watching the trees dressing themselves in green for spring, and I do feel gratitude, because I sense something you must have sensed too, Chiara, as you lay dying, and I pray I give myself to it as you did, with docility, no matter how hard-won: He’s dressing me too, but in white, and for himself.
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