“Francesco, I am going to heaven to look after Maria and David; you will stay here with Daddy. I will be praying for you. God, from all eternity, wants you to live. He will show you the way if you open your heart to Him. Trust in Him; it really is worth it. Your mother, Chiara.”
The twenty-eight-year-old Chiara Petrillo wrote these words just a week before she died of cancer in Rome on June 13, 2012. Over two thousand mourners attended her funeral. At the end of the ceremony, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Vicar General of Rome, remarked: “I do not know what God intended for us, our city, and the world by this new Beretta Molla, but I do know we cannot be indifferent to it.”
Chiara and Enrico first met in 2002. They were both musicians. They went out together, quarreled, broke up, and got together again only to get married at last on September 21, 2008. Soon Chiara became pregnant. The doctors determined the child had anencephaly (congenital absence of the brain) and advised terminating the pregnancy. The parents refused to follow their advice. Maria Grazia Laetizia came into the world only to die half an hour later, having received the sacrament of Holy Baptism.
Several months later Chiara found herself expecting again. It turned out the little boy’s legs and bowels were undeveloped. Little David went to heaven just a few hours after being born. A third pregnancy seemed more promising. The child was developing normally; but in her fifth month of pregnancy Chiara felt a small lesion on her tongue that turned out to be aggressively cancerous. She decided to postpone treatment until after the delivery so as not to harm the child. The decision cost her her life. Francesco was born in perfect health on May 30, 2011. Immediately after the delivery, Chiara underwent chemo- and radiation therapy; but in April of 2012 she learned it was no use. The treatment had begun too late. The cancer spread to the eye, and Chiara had to undergo more surgery.
Her death agony began in the evening of June 12. Franciscan Father Vito d’Amato, the couple’s spiritual director since the time of their wedding, arrived as soon as he could. At 1:00 am he said Holy Mass with the family gathered around the young mother’s bed.
On June 12 the priest read the Gospel parable of the salt and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-16). “Jesus is the light,” he said. And he asked Chiara, “What is the (light) stand?” Without hesitation she replied, “The Cross.” Father Vito then said, “Chiara, since your light burns so brightly, you are on the cross with Jesus.” After receiving Holy Communion, Chiara became even more radiant. “It is done,” she whispered. She was not just peaceful but positively happy—Fr. Vito recalls. She thanked everyone and worshiped God. The final hours of her life she spent in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, which had been brought into her room. She died at noon exactly on June 13. Enrico requested she be laid out in the coffin in her wedding dress: “Chiara has gone to the Bridegroom, who loves her much more than I.”
Marriage in Mary’s embrace
Chiara and Enrico prepared long and seriously for the sacrament of matrimony. Their friend and confidant, Fr. Vito d’Amato, baptized their children and accompanied Chiara to the very last moments of her life. It was he who suggested they should entrust all things to the Blessed Mother and provided them with the words of the Marian consecration, which the couple said daily and remained faithful to even to the very end.
They would not listen to the anti-life urgings of their doctors and were able to bear heroically the repeated blows that beset them mercilessly. “The final months were at once very hard and quite marvelous,” recalls Enrico. “Chiara suffered very much. We did everything together, unhurriedly, celebrating every moment. During that time our relationship deepened considerably, and Jesus was always with us. It is so beautiful knowing Christ Himself stands beside a person’s cross!” Asked if he was not at times jealous of Jesus, Enrico replies with a laugh: “How could I be jealous of Someone I also loved!? Besides, Jesus is the only Bridegroom whose love never disappoints. Chiara went away to be with her Beloved! It was from her love of Christ that she drew the strength to be my loving wife.”
By what miracle was Enrico able to derive happiness from experiences that would bring many a family to the depths of blackest despair? Fr. Vito d’Amato is convinced it was the philosophy of life they shared: never to consider anything as belonging to oneself, but rather to accept everything as a gift and to be able to recognize the Face of the Giver in all things. “Either you accept your life as a gift and can share this gift or else you constantly seek to possess and amass things, which you then fear to part with. A person who cannot accept life and share it with others treats others as a potential threat, even if that other is their own little child”—says Fr. Vito. And he adds: “Chiara left this world happy, since she did not die regretting any decision she had made. She often said that if she had had an abortion, she would probably have spent every living moment trying to forget that day. At the same time, she considered the heavenly and earthly birthdays of her two children as the happiest days of her life.”
In the morning of June 13, Enrico asked Chiara: “My darling, is the Lord’s yoke really easy and light?” Though the dying woman was breathing with difficulty, she replied with a smile, “Yes, Enrico, it really is.” During those long months of the couple’s struggle, people often asked them if they loved the cross. Chiara and Enrico would then say with one voice, “No, we do not love the cross, but rather the One who hung upon it.” The pearl they discovered in that sea of tears (of which they were not at all ashamed) was the mystery that the cross is light only when we bear it together with Christ. “We were in love with each other and at the same time we were in love with Jesus. Our life was full and our love stronger than death”—says Enrico. “We received the grace of never resisting or setting limits to grace. We said ‘yes’ and clung as hard as we could to Christ’s hand, since what He was asking of us could not be endured on our own.” When Chiara learned there was no saving her, she asked her husband: “Enrico, if you knew this sacrifice would help ten people, would you agree to it?” – “Yes, but only with the help of grace.” – “I too, Enrico; that is why I am praying for the miracle of a cure, but really I do not desire it.”
Fr. Vito says that Chiara and Enrico’s witness brought home to him both the beauty and the limits of human marriage. The Italian word coniugi (i.e. the married couple or the spouses) means literally “those who bear the yoke together.” Enrico and Chiara agreed to bear Jesus’ burden together. That is why they found it light and easy. On their wedding day they made a covenant with the Almighty, and from Him they drew strength for the four years that seemed to them like an eternity of suffering. At the same time, human marriage is but a sign of the union to which we all strive: namely, the loving union of the Creator with His creatures. Christ wants to be the Bridegroom of every human soul. The earthly wedding ceremony emphasizes that the love between a man and a woman is an image of the Divine Love. Enrico adds that on the day Chiara died, seeing her radiant face, he text-messaged a friend: “Our lamps are lit. We await the Bridegroom.” Indeed, they were ready; and He came.
Odor of Sanctity
Saturday June 16, 2012 marked the solemnity of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom Chiara and Enrico had recited their “totus tuus” every day. Over two thousand members of the faithful and some thirty priests gathered at the Church of St. Frances of Rome. Presiding over the liturgy of the Holy Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary was Fr. Vito d’Amato. The Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, was present as one of the concelebrants.
For the occasion Enrico had composed his own songs about marriage. So joyful a character did they impart to this extraordinary funeral Mass that some of the participants thought there must be some mistake. Little Francesco, who had just turned one year, ran happily around the pews. It would be a good many years before he would understand the words of his mother’s testament, which his father read from the pulpit: “One day we are born so as never to die. My child, whatever you do in life, never be discouraged. Remember that if God takes something away from you, He does so in order to give you something more. It is good to look around you for examples in life that remind you that you really can experience great happiness even now on earth as long as you allow God to lead you. Only one thing counts in life and that is love. The goal of our life on earth is heaven, and sacrificing your life out of love is a very beautiful thing. Francesco, I am going to heaven to look after Maria and David; you will stay here with Daddy. I will be praying for you. God, from all eternity, wants you to live. He will show you the way if you open your heart to Him. Trust in Him; it really is worth it. Your mother, Chiara.”
All this must sound so improbable that we might be tempted to dismiss it, saying, this is not the way for ordinary people. But, as Fr. Vito says, Jesus does not command us to change water into wine, but only to fill the jars with water.
This article is based on material found in the French weekly Famille Chrétienne, no. 1808 (8-14 August, 2012).
The Prayer of Consecration to Mary that Chiara and Enrico recited every day
O Virgin Mary, You who are my Mother, who love me so much on God’s behalf, accept this day my desire for a total consecration to You. I give You my whole self and my whole life, I give You my body, my thoughts and feelings, my profound ability to love and perceive the truth. All that is my mine, let it be Yours and belong to You. I give You all, that I may belong totally to Christ, Who is the life of my life. In trust and with love I say again to you: “Morning Star, lead me to Jesus!” Totus Tuus!