12152010 Benedict XVI Saint Veronica Giuliani

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Dear brothers and sisters:

Today I want to introduce a mystic who is not from medieval times; It is about Saint Veronica Giuliani, a Capuchin Poor Clare nun. The reason is that the 350th anniversary of his birth is celebrated on December 27. Città di Castello, the place where he lived the longest and where he died, as well as Mercatello - his hometown - and the diocese of Urbino, live this event with joy.

Veronica was born, as I was saying, on December 27, 1660 in Mercatello, in the Metauro Valley, to Francesco Giuliani and Benedetta Mancini; she is the last of seven sisters, another three of whom will embrace the monastic life; They give her the name Úrsula. At the age of seven he loses his mother, and his father moves to Piacenza as superintendent of customs for the Duchy of Parma. In this city, Úrsula feels the desire to dedicate her life to Christ grow in her. The call became more and more urgent, to the point that at the age of 17 he entered the strict closure of the monastery of the Capuchin Poor Clares of Città di Castello, where he would remain for the rest of his life. There she receives the name of Veronica, which means "true image" and, in effect, she will become a true image of Christ crucified.

A year later, she made her solemn religious profession: the path of configuration with Christ began for her through many penances, great suffering and some mystical experiences linked to the Passion of Jesus: the crowning with thorns, the mystical nuptials, the wound in the heart and stigmata In 1716, at the age of 56, she became abbess of the monastery and would be confirmed in that position until her death, which occurred in 1727, after an excruciating agony of 33 days that culminated in such profound joy that her last words were: «I have found Love, Love has been seen! This is the cause of my suffering. Tell them all, tell them all!" (Summarium Beatificationis, 115-120). On July 9, he leaves his earthly abode to meet with God. He is 67 years old, fifty of which he spent in the monastery of Città di Castello. Pope Gregory XVI proclaimed her a saint on May 26, 1839.

Verónica Giuliani wrote a lot: letters, autobiographical texts, poetry. However, the main source to reconstruct his thought is his Diary, started in 1693: no less than twenty-two thousand handwritten pages, covering thirty-four years of cloistered life. The writing flows spontaneously and continuously, without erasures or corrections, without punctuation marks or distribution of material into chapters or parts according to a pre-established project. Verónica did not want to compose a literary work; What's more, Father Girolamo Bastianelli, a religious of the Filipinos, in agreement with the diocesan bishop Antonio Eustachi, forced her to write down her experiences.

Saint Veronica has a markedly Christological-spousal spirituality: it is the experience that Christ, faithful and sincere Spouse, loves her and of wanting to reciprocate with an increasingly committed and passionate love. In her, everything is interpreted in the key of love, and this infuses her with a deep serenity. Live everything in union with Christ, out of love for him and with the joy of being able to show him all the love that a creature is capable of.

The Christ to whom Veronica is deeply united is the Christ who suffers from passion, death and resurrection; it is Jesus in the act of offering himself to the Father to save us. From this experience also derives the intense and painful love for the Church, in the double form of prayer and offering. The saint lives with this perspective: she prays, suffers, seeks "holy poverty", as "expropriation", loss of herself (cf. ibid., III, 523), precisely to be like Christ, who gave himself totally.

On every page of her writings Veronica commends someone to the Lord, valuing their intercessory prayers with the offering of herself in all suffering. His heart is dilated to all "the needs of the holy Church", longing for the salvation of "the whole world" (ib., III-IV, passim). Veronica shouts: «Oh sinners, oh sinners..., all of you come to the heart of Jesus; come to the laver of his most precious blood... He awaits you with open arms to embrace you» (ib., II, 16-17).

Animated by an ardent charity, she gives the sisters of the monastery attention, understanding, forgiveness; He offers his prayers and sacrifices for the Pope, for his bishop, for priests and for all people in need, including the souls in purgatory. She sums up her contemplative mission in these words: «We cannot go preaching throughout the world to convert souls, but we are obliged to pray continuously for all souls who are in a state of offense against God... especially with our sufferings, that is, with a principle of crucified life» (ib., IV, 877). Our saint conceives this mission as "being in the middle", between men and God, between sinners and Christ crucified.

Veronica deeply lives the participation in the love of Jesus who suffers, sure that "suffering with joy" is the "key to love" (cf. ibid., I, 299.417; III, 330.303.871; IV, 192). It emphasizes that Jesus suffers for the sins of men, but also for the sufferings that his faithful servants endured throughout the centuries, in the time of the Church, precisely because of their solid and consistent faith. He writes: "His eternal Father made him see and feel at that point all the sufferings that his chosen ones were going to suffer, his most beloved souls, that is, those who were going to take advantage of his blood and all his sufferings" (ib. , II, 170). As the Apostle Saint Paul says of himself: "Now I rejoice in the sufferings that I endure for you, and I complete in my flesh what is lacking in the tribulations of Christ, in favor of his Body, which is the Church" (Col 1 ,24). Veronica comes to ask Jesus to be crucified with him: «In an instant -she writes-, I saw five resplendent rays come out of his most holy wounds; and they all came to me. And I saw how those rays turned into small flames. In four were the nails; and in one I saw that the spear was, like gold, red hot: and it pierced my heart, from side to side... and the nails pierced my hands and feet. I felt great pain; but, even in pain, I saw myself, I felt completely transformed into God»

The saint is convinced that she already participates in the kingdom of God, but at the same time she invokes all the saints of the heavenly homeland to come to her aid on the earthly path of her dedication, awaiting eternal happiness; this is the constant aspiration of his life (cf. ibid., II, 909; V, 246). Compared to the preaching of the time, often focused on "saving one's own soul" individually, Verónica shows a strong sense of "solidarity", of communion with all the brothers and sisters on their way to heaven, and lives, prays, suffers for everybody. The penultimate, earthly things, on the other hand, even appreciated in the Franciscan sense as a gift from the creator, always turn out to be relative, completely subordinated to the "taste" of God and under the sign of radical poverty. In the communio sanctorum, the communion of saints, he clarifies his ecclesial dedication, as well as the relationship between the pilgrim Church and the heavenly Church. «The saints -he writes- are up there through the merits and passion of Jesus; but they cooperated in everything our Lord did, so that their whole life was ordered and regulated by their own works» (ib., III, 203).

In Veronica's writings we find many biblical quotes, sometimes in an indirect way, but always punctual: she reveals familiarity with the sacred Text, from which her spiritual experience is nourished. Likewise, it is necessary to point out that the strong moments of Veronica's mystical experience are never separated from the salvific events celebrated in the liturgy, where the proclamation and listening to the Word of God occupies a special place. Sacred Scripture, therefore, illuminates, purifies, and confirms Veronica's experience, making it ecclesial. But, on the other hand, precisely his experience, anchored in Sacred Scripture with an unusual intensity, leads to a deeper and more "spiritual" reading of the same Text, enters the hidden depth of the text. She not only expresses herself with the words of Sacred Scripture, but she really lives by these words, they come to life in her.

For example, our saint often quotes the expression of the Apostle Paul: "If God is for us, who is against us?" (Rom 8,31; cf. Diary, I, 714; II, 116.1021; III, 48). In her, the assimilation of this Pauline text, her great confidence and her deep joy, become a fact that is realized in her own person: «My soul -she writes- has united itself with the divine will and I have truly established myself and stopped forever in the will of God. It seemed to me that I would never be separated from this will of God and I came to myself with these exact words: nothing can separate me from the will of God, neither anguish nor sorrows nor worries nor contempt nor temptations nor creatures nor demons nor darkness , not even death itself, because in life and in death I want God's will totally and in everything» (Diary, IV, 272). Thus we also have the certainty that death is not the last word, we are grounded in the will of God and thus, really, in life forever.

Verónica is, especially, a courageous witness to the beauty and power of divine Love, which attracts her, seizes her, inflames her. It is the crucified Love that has been imprinted in his flesh, as in that of Saint Francis of Assisi, with the stigmata of Jesus. «My wife - Christ crucified whispers to me -, I am pleased by the penances you do for those who are in disgrace before me... Then, unnailing one arm from the cross, he gestured for me to come closer to his side... And I found myself in the arms of the crucified Christ. What I felt then I cannot tell: I would have wanted to always be at his most holy side» (ib., I, 37). It is also an image of his spiritual path, of his interior life: to be in the embrace of the crucified Lord and thus to be in the love of Christ for others. Verónica also lives a relationship of deep intimacy with the Virgin Mary, witnessed in the words that she says to her one day and that she reports in her Diary: «I made you rest in my lap, union with my soul was granted to you, and from she you were taken flying before God».

Saint Veronica Giuliani invites us to grow, in our Christian life, union with the Lord living for others, abandoning ourselves to his will with complete and total trust, and union with the Church, Bride of Christ; invites us to participate in the suffering-filled love of Jesus crucified for the salvation of all sinners; invites us to keep our gaze fixed on Paradise, the goal of our earthly path, where we will live together with so many brothers and sisters the joy of full communion with God; invites us to feed ourselves daily on the Word of God to warm our hearts and guide our lives. The last words of the saint can be considered the synthesis of her passionate mystical experience: «I have found Love, Love has been seen!».

Saint Veronica Giuliani invites us to grow, in our Christian life, union with the Lord living for others, abandoning ourselves to his will with complete and total trust, and union with the Church, Bride of Christ; invites us to participate in the suffering-filled love of Jesus crucified for the salvation of all sinners; invites us to keep our gaze fixed on Paradise, the goal of our earthly path, where we will live together with so many brothers and sisters the joy of full communion with God; invites us to feed ourselves daily on the Word of God to warm our hearts and guide our lives. The last words of the saint can be considered the synthesis of her passionate mystical experience: «I have found Love, Love has been seen!».

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