DAY 3
It was night time in February 1869. Doña Rafaela, their mother, had died. “She saw the light. The light that entered through all the windows of life ”… Years later, Raphaela would still recall the pain of that night. The death of someone so beloved breaks something open inside. It is so deep a pain that it invades absolutely everything. Only rooted in faith, hope and love can one keep moving in those moments. Hope calms us and, then, slowly, the storm subsides, the waters settle and – little by little – they return to their course. Faith sustains us and keeps us on our feet. Love calls us out of ourselves, to growth, to life. Only from there does the pain acquire all its deep meaning. Faith, hope, and love.
Rafaela, with tender care and all her love, accompanied her mother at the end, in that difficult and solitary transition that every human being must make. How much she felt in those moments, how it pierced her heart! In the silence, Raphaela held her mother’s hand through those final hours of her earthly life.
And there, cracked open by pain before her God, she glimpsed the meaning of her own life: “What was I born for? To love, to love and to love more. Love conquers all.”
Some events in my life in which I have seen clearly God’s mercy and providence patent.
The death of my mother, whose eyes I closed because I was alone with her at that hour, opened the eyes of my soul with such disillusionment that life seemed like an exile. I was sixteen years old. Holding her hand, I promised the Lord never to put my affection in any earthly creature. And our Lord, apparently, accepted my offer, because that day he kept me all occupied with the most sublime thoughts: nothing about all the things on earth but rather the only thing necessary, which was to aspire only to the eternal, which almost, or completely, banished the grief. This prayer was etched within me in such a way that not only that day, but all my life it has served as a stimulus for virtue. ‘And I, what was I born for? To be saved’, etc.
Each day I continued to enter more into myself and the divine Providence that was already forming its designs within me, almost continuously putting objects in view that were, more and more, disillusioning me with the world.”
“I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (Jn 10:10)
Like Raphaela, from the bottom of my heart, with the conviction that “I am entirely God’s,” I ask him: What do you want to do with me, my God and Lord?
