Episode Transcript  

One

The Beginnings 

Normally, we think of saints as something from the past, like Simon and Jude, whom we celebrated yesterday. Today, we celebrate a modern saint, an ordinary person just like us. Her name is Chiara Badano. She was born on October 29th, 1971, in a small town in northern Italy, to Ruggero and Maria Teresa Badano, who had longed to have a child for many, many years. Chiara was a loving and exuberant child, and, despite her headstrong and sometimes defiant temperament, had a close relationship with them. 

When she was nine, Chiara attended her first meeting of the Focolare Movement, a worldwide movement of lay people who strive to lead people to Jesus primarily through genuine friendship and prayer. An image of Christ that the Focolare Movement uses captivated Chiara, and she began to develop a deep life of prayer. Her spirituality deepened so much that her high school friends began to tease her in good jest and call her “Sister.”

But Chiara was a supremely ordinary teenager: she loved sports, such as tennis and swimming. She loved hiking, and she loved listening to pop music and dancing with friends. When she was sixteen, Chiara went to Rome on a summer trip with the Focolare community. On that trip, she met the founder of Focolare, Chiara Lubich, and they began writing to each other. Chiara was full of fire for her faith, and her love for Christ burned radiantly in her heart. Chiara Lubich gave Chiara a new nickname, “Chiara Luce,” meaning “clear light.”

Two

Cancer 

Later that summer, Chiara felt a pain in her shoulder when she was playing tennis. At first, she thought it was simply fatigue or tendinitis. But the pain continued. So she went for testing, accompanied by her father. Ultimately, the doctors concluded she had a rare form of bone cancer that was incurable. 

When they come home, Chiara is in shock, stunned because she is only seventeen and she was just told she would die soon. Her mother, who wasn’t with them, meets them at the front door and accompanies her to her bedroom. A close friend of mine got to know her mother and told her that when Chiara sat down on the bed, she could see there was a struggle within her. 

Chiara had been formed by the spirituality of Focolare for seven years, and they have a strong spirituality of accepting and uniting their suffering to Christ for the love of Him and to help him save souls. So you could see the battle, “Do I accept this - do I not accept this?” There were no words, but you could see it on her face. Chiara lays back on the bed…a few minutes go by…those were the longest minutes as her mother watched her daughter go through this battle to accept or not. Then Chaira sat up in bed and smiled at her mother. Her mother knew that Chiara and Jesus had won the battle.

From that moment on, and remember Chiara was just seventeen, there was no looking back. Chiara continued her battle to overcome cancer and live, but it was no longer a battle of accepting or not. She had accepted this suffering, whatever it would entail. 

Three

Always joy-filled 

Her father told my friend that Chiara was always filled with joy. But he wondered if she was faking it, putting on a good face to console her family and friends. So he thought, I will look in the keyhole when she is alone (they had an old house with the old-fashioned keys). When he looked through that keyhole, and even when she was by herself, she was always smiling.

As the illness worsened, she gradually lost use of her legs and became confined to bed. Throughout her suffering, she offered it with a spirit of trust and surrender to God. One of her repeated phrases was, “If this is what You want, Jesus, so do I.”

Four

Trust in Divine Providence

What strikes me about Chiara is the fact that as she came back with a terminal diagnosis at the age of almost seventeen and she sits on the bed, falls back on the bed, and there's a battle, a real battle, and then she and God win that battle at that moment on that bed because she truly trusted in divine Providence. She knew she believed that Jesus would accompany her and help her in this, and so she was free and she was at peace. Jesus was gonna be there for her. That's trust, I mean total trust.  A total trust that Jesus was going to make this the best, no matter what. 

Five

Live in the Present Moment 

So, what do we do when we struggle to trust God, especially in very difficult and painful situations? I think Chiara would say that we shouldn’t live in the future because all the pain and loss in the future is so heavy of a weight that it will crush you in the present. Just live in the present moment and say yes to God in this moment, only this moment, say to Jesus, “If this is what You want, Jesus, so do I.”

Just keep saying yes in the present moment, not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future, but the present moment. “In this moment, Lord, I say yes. Lord, yes, I love you. Yes, I trust you. Yes, we can do this together, yes.” Just keep saying yes, in this moment, not the moment after, but this moment 

That's the only way to live, just say yes in the present moment! Just live that moment. But living in the present moment is a virtue that can only be gained by practice. And we shouldn’t wait until the storm of pain or loss or temptation is raging to begin to practice. We must begin to practice living in the present moment and saying “Yes” to Jesus when all is calm and boring. Make it a habit before it’s game time. So when it’s overtime and the game hangs on you, you can say yes to Jesus when it’s tense, really tense. 

So, as a resolution, let's begin today to practice living not in the past and not in the future but only in the present moment, saying yes to what Jesus is asking of us at this moment.

Blessed Chiara, pray for us. 

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