Ordinary, extraordinary life

One day, when she was a child, her mother asked her to clear the table. Chiara Luce’s immediate response was: “I don’t want to,” folding her arms across her chest and walking out of the room. Within a few steps, however, she turned back saying: “How does that story from the Gospel go about the father who asks his son to go to the vineyard… Mummy, help me put my apron on,” and proceeded to clear the table.

Chiara Luce Badano had a generous and lively personality. She was born in 1971 in Sassello, Italy, an only child conceived after 11 years of marriage.

At age 9 she heard about the Focolare’s ideal of unity from some of her friends and discovered a new way of living and thinking which satisfied her thirst for God. After a Focolare youth gathering she wrote: “I have rediscovered the Gospel in a new light. I realized that I wasn’t a true Christian because I wasn’t living it fully. Now I want to make this magnificent book the only aim in my life.” Her parents embraced the spirituality of unity as well, and they lived it together.

She began an intense correspondence with Focolare founder Chiara Lubich until the very end. In November 1983, Chiara Luce wrote to her, “I discovered that Jesus Forsaken [when on the cross he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”] is the key to unity and I want to choose him as my spouse and be ready for when he comes. I realized that I can find him in those who are far from him, in all atheists, and that I must love them in a very special way.”

She never questioned this choice.

She loved music (she had a beautiful voice), swimming, tennis and hiking. She had a lot of friends with whom she shared her life-choice. She was also active in her parish and diocese. She didn’t talk much about God, commenting: “I should not speak about God, but give him with my behaviour.” Her friends didn’t miss a chance to strengthen their unity by sharing experiences of living out the Gospel—on the phone, with little notes, at parties, trips and days spent together. They put their goods in common—Chiara Luce always kept in her room a list of the things she owned, in order to make them available to those who needed them.

At 17, a searing pain in her shoulder revealed that she had bone cancer. “The illness arrived just at the right moment because I was going in the wrong direction,” she wrote. “Our ideal of unity was becoming secondary, but today you cannot imagine what my relationship with God is like.”

On February 1989, the treatment that followed her first surgery was very painful. Her friends took turns at the hospital.

Each time there was a new, hurting “surprise,” Chiara Luce offered it up without
hesitation, “It’s for you, Jesus; if you want it, I want it too.” Jesus Forsaken, who on the cross did not feel the comforting presence of the Father, supported her in her toughest moments.

Her doctor, an atheist critical of the Church, said, “Since I met Chiara something has changed inside me. Here I find consistency and everything about Christianity makes sense to me.”

In spite of the fact that she became paralyzed, Chiara Luce, incredibly cheerful during her 3-year-long illness, followed by phone a youth group in a nearby city and participated at meetings and other activities with messages and postcards.

On July 19, 1990, she wrote to Chiara Lubich: “Medicine has laid down its arms. Since we stopped the treatment, the pain in my back has increased. But it’s my Spouse who’s coming to see me. I repeat with you, ‘If you want it, I want it too.’” The immediate reply was, “Don’t be afraid, Chiara Luce, to tell Him your ‘yes’ moment by moment. God loves you immensely and wants to penetrate the most intimate parts of your soul and allow you to experience drops of heaven.”

When her mother told her that she didn’t know what she would do without her, Chiara Luce said, “Trust in God, and you’ll have done all you need to do!” Her last words to her parents were: “Be happy, because I am.”

Chiara Luce passed away on October 7, 1990. Hundreds of young people attended her funeral, celebrated by her bishop who, in 1999 initiated the process for her beatification. “Her life was meaningful, especially for young people. We need holiness today, too,” he said to Michele Zanzucchi, who wrote her biography (A Life Lived to the Full, New City Press).

“She has left us a trail of light which still today helps me tremendously,” one of her friends said.

Last year a young boy in Italy was dying from meningitis. His organs were shutting down. His parents learned of Chiara Luce’s story and sought her intercession. He was fully healed. A panel of doctors has ruled out any medical explanation for this turn of events.

After Pope Benedict XVI recognized this event as a miraculous healing last December, the Church will soon proclaim Chiara Luce Badano as “blessed,” a model for holiness for people of all ages.

www.chiaraluce.org