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GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY
Catechesis on St. Veronica Giuliani
Pope on finding love
and saving souls
15 DEC 2010 (RV) - Plummeting temperatures forced the Wednesday audience indoors this week but failed to dampen the Advent spirit as thousands of pilgrims filled the Paul VI audience hall, gazing curiously at the Mexican nativity scene that has been installed there, and listening to the notes of the famous Italian ‘zampognari’, or Alpine pipers, who descend into the cities to announce the coming of Christmas.
Arriving to cheers and applause, Pope Benedict greeted the faithful and then spoke to them about nurturing true love in our lives, to become true images of the crucified Christ. His thoughts were inspired by a female saint - a 17th-century Italian religious and mystic, St. Veronica Giuliani.
Here is how he summarized the catechesis in English:
Our catechesis today deals with Saint Veronica Giuliani, a Capuchin Poor Clare and mystic who was born three hundred and fifty years ago this month.
Saint Veronica, true to the name she took in religion, became a "true image" of Christ crucified; her configuration to the Lord was accompanied by profound mystical experiences such as her crowning with thorns and the stigmata.
Veronica’s spirituality, as revealed above all in her Diary, is Christ-centred and spousal: she saw all things in the light of Christ’s love, manifested in his Passion, and she united herself to his self-oblation to the Father for the salvation of souls.
Her love of the Scriptures was deeply linked to her love of the Church and her strong sense of the communion of the saints. Veronica’s passionate mystical experience can be summed up in the words she spoke on her deathbed: "I have found Love".
May the life and teaching of Saint Veronica Giuliani inspire us to grow in union with the Lord and his Church, and to share in Christ’s loving concern for the salvation of sinners.
St. Veronica Giuliani is among the saints whose bodies have remained incourrpt.
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today, I wish to present a mystic who is not from the Middle Ages - St. Veronica Giuliani, a Capuchin Poor Clare nun. This is because December 27 will mark the 350th anniversary of her birth. Citta di Castello, where she lived longest and died, as well as Mercatello, her hometown, and the diocese of Urbino are observing this anniversary with joy.
Veronica was born in Mercatello, in the Metauro valley, in 1660, to Francesco Giuliani and Benedetta Mancini. Baptized Orsola, she was the youngest of seven sisters, of whom another three embraced monastic life. At age 7, she lost her mother, and her father transferred to Piacenza as customs superintendent of the Duchy of Parma. In this city, Orsola felt a growing desire to dedicate her life to Christ.
The desire became increasingly urgent, and at age 17, she entered the strictly cloistered life of the Capuchin Poor Clares in Citta di Castello, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
She took the name Veronica, which means 'true image', and in effect, she herself became a true image of the Crucified Christ. One year later, she took her final solemn vows. Thus began for her a journey of configuration to Christ through many penitences, great suffering and some mystical experiences linked to the Passion of Christ: coronation with thorns, mystical betrothal, a wound in the heart, and the stigmata.
In 1716, at age 56, she became the abbess of the monastery and was continuously confirmed in that office until she died in 1727, after a most painful agony of 33 days, which culminated in profound joy, such that her last words were, "I have found Love - Love has made itself seen! This is the cause of my suffering. Tell this to everyone!"
(Summarium Beatificationis, 115-120).
On July 9, she let her earthly dwelling to encounter God. She was 67, 50 years of which she spent in that monastery in Citta del Castello. She was proclaimed a saint in 1839 by Pope Gregory XVI.
Veronica Giuliani wrote a great deal: letters, autobiographical accounts, poetry. But the principal source for reconstructing her thought is her Diary, begun in 1693 - some 22,000 handwritten pages which cover a 34-year period of cloistered life.
Her writing flows spontaneously and continuously, without any cancellations or corrections, nor any signs of distributing the material in chapters or parts according to a pre-established plan.
Veronica was not writing a literary work. Rather, she was obliged to write down her experiences by Fr. Girolamo Bastianelli, a Philippine (Neri?) religious, with the approval of the diocesan bishop, Antonio Eustachi.
St. Veronica's spirituality was markedly Christological-spousal: It is the experience of being loved by Christ, faithful and sincere Spouse, and the desire to respond with a love that was increasingly engaged and passionate.
She interpreted everything through love, which instilled in her a profound serenity. She lived everything in union with Christ, out of love for him, and with the joy of being able to demonstrate to him all the love that a creature is capable of.
The Christ to whom Veronica was profoundly united was the suffering Jesus of the Passion, Death and Resurrection - Jesus in the act of offering himself to the Father to save us.
This experience also gave rise to the saint's intense suffering for the Church, expressed in the form of prayer and offering. The saint lived in this perspective: she prayed, she suffered, she sought 'holy poverty', as someone 'expropriated', that is, in the loss of herself (cfr ibid., III, 523), precisely in order to be like Christ who gave all of himself.
In every page of her writings, Veronica commends someone to the Lord, availing of her prayers of intercession to offer herself for every suffering. Her heart opened up to "all the needs of the Holy Church", and anxiously lived the desire for salvation "of all the universe' (ibid., III-IV, passim).
Veronica cries out: "Oh sinners, come all of you to the heart of Jesus; come to be washed in his most precious Blood... He awaits you with open arms to embrace you" (ibid., II, 16-17).
Animated by ardent charity, she gave her sisters in the convent her attention, understanding and forgiveness. She offered her prayers and sacrifices for the Pope, his bishops and priests, and all needy persons, including the souls in Purgatory.
Her own words summarized her contemplative mission as follows: "We cannot go out preaching in the world to convert souls, but we are obliged to pray continually for all the souls who have offended God... especially with our sufferings, with the principle of crucified life" (ibid., IV, 877).
Our saint conceived this mission as "being midway" between men and God, between sinners and the Crucified Christ. She profoundly lived in participation with the suffering love of Jesus, certain that 'suffering with joy' is the 'key to love' (cfr ibid., I, 299.417; III, 330.303.871; IV, 192).
She believed that Jesus suffers for the sins of men, but also for the sufferings that his faithful servants had to bear through the centuries, in the Church, because of their solid and consistent faith.
She wrote: "His eternal Father makes him see and feel all the sufferings that had to be undergone by his chosen ones, the souls dearest to him, those who availed of His Blood and all his sufferings" (ibid., II, 170).
As the Apostle Paul said of himself: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church" (Col 1,24).
Veronica arrived at asking Jesus to be crucified with him: "In one moment, I saw emerging from your most holy wounds these resplendent rays, and all struck my face. And I saw these rays become like little flames. In four of them were nails, and in one was the lance, like gold, all aflame: and it went through my heart, from one side to the other... and the nails went through my hands and feet. I felt great pain, but in that very pain, i saw and felt myself totally transformed in God" (Diario, I, 897).
The saint was convinced that she already took part in the Kingdom of God, but at the same time, she invoked all the saints of thecelestial homeland to come to her help in her earthly journey in expectation of eternal beatitude - this was the constant aspiration of her life (cfr ibid., II, 909; V, 246).
With respect to the preaching in her time, which was not uncommonly focused on 'saving the soul' in individual terms, Veronica showed a strong sense of brotherhood, of communion with all her brothers and sisters journeying towards heaven. And she lived, prayed and suffered for all.
But she considered the penultimate earthly things, though appreciated in the Franciscan sense as gifts of the Creator, as relative, and completely subordinate to God's 'taste' under the sign of radical poverty.
In the communio sanctorum [the communion of saints], she clarified their donation to the Church, as well as the relationship between the pilgrim Church and the heavenly Church.
"All the saints," she wrote, "are with us through the merits and the passion of Jesus; but in everything that Our Lord has done, they cooperated, such that their life was all ordered and ruled by his own works" (ibid., III, 203).
In Veronica's writings, we find many Biblical citations, sometimes indirect references but always to the point: she reveals a familiarity with the sacred texts, which nourished her spiritual experience.
It must also be pointed out that the high points of Veronica's mystical experience were never separate from the salvific events celebrated in the liturgy, in which there is a special place for proclaiming and listening to the Word of God. Thus Sacred Scripture illumines, purifies and confirms the experience of Veronica, making it ecclesial.
On the other hand, her personal experience, anchored to Sacred Scripture with uncommon intensity, led to a more profound and 'spiritual' reading of the same Scripture, by entering into the hidden depths of the Text. She does not only express herself with the words of Sacred Scripture, she truly lived the words, which became alive in her.
For example, our saint often cites an expression by St. Paul: "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (Rm 8,31; cfr Diario, I, 714; II, 116.1021; III, 48).
In her, assimilation of this Pauline text, of his great trust and profound joy, became a fact that was fulfilled in her own person: "My soul has been linked to the divine will, and I am truly established and will forever be in God's will, and I say to myself: 'Nothing can separate me from the will of God, not anguish, nor pain, nor travails, nor contempt, nor temptations, nor creatures, nor demons, nor darkness, and not even death itself, because in life and in death, I want everything to be the will of God" (Diario, IV, 272).
And thus we can be certain that death is not the last word - we are fixed to God's will and therefore, we are truly alive for always.
Veronica reveals herself to be a particularly courageous witness of the beauty and power of God's love, which drew her in, pervaded her and set her on fire. It was Love crucified that was imprinted on her flesh, as in St. Francis of Assisi, with the stigmata of Christ.
"'My spouse', the crucified Christ murmurs to me, 'the penitences you make for those who are in disgrace with me are dear to me'; then taking off one arm from the Cross, he signals me to approach his side... And I find myself in the arms of the Crucified One. I cannot describe what I feel at that point: I would have wanted to stay forever by his most blessed side" (ibid., I, 37).
That is also an image of her spiritual journey, of her interior life: to be in the embrace of the Crucified Lord, and thus to be in Christ's love for the sake of others.
But even with the Virgin Mary, Veronica had a relationship of profound intimacy, which she attests to by the words she heard Our Lady say one day, as she reports in her Diary: "I will make you rest on my breast, you will be in union with my soul, and it will be as if you were transported in flight before God" (IV, 901).
St. Veronica Giuliani invites us to grow, in our Christian life, in union with the Lord by being for others, abandoning ourselves to his will with total and complete trust, and in union with the Church, bride of Christ.
She invites us to participate in the suffering love of the Crucified Jesus for the salvation of all sinners. She invites us to keep our gaze intent on Paradise, the goal of our earthly journey, where we shall live with so many brothers and sisters the joy of full communion with God. She invites us to nourish ourselves daily with the Word of God in order to warm our hearts and orient our lives.
The last words of the saint may be considered the synthesis of her passionate mystical experience: "I have found Love - Love has allowed himself to be seen!"
Thank you.
In Spanish, the Holy Father had a special greeting for
...the members of the Mexican Catholic community in Rome and the artisans who came from Guanajato, accompanied by the governor of their state and the Archbishop of Leon, whom I thank for their gift of this artistic Nativity scene.
And in Italian:
...to the faithful of the diocese of Citta del Castello, accompanied by the bishop, Mons. Domenico Cancian, who are preparing to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the birth of their townmate, Saint Veronica Giuliani.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/12/2010 22:00] |