I feel the need to record an act of goodness by the Lord here.85 And it is the Christian death of my only uncle,86 rendered quite uneasy in relation to the good Lord by a series of very great misfortunes of all kinds, in addition to a discouraging and very painful illness which lasted exactly forty years in an increasingly serious form.
As a young man he was so very devout and observant that, as a family joke, they called him “the friar”; he then became quite the opposite, very restless and rebellious, to the point of bordering on and perhaps reaching hatred. And I greatly suffered over this. When he wrote to my mother, who was his sister, the letters were a sequence of insults, derision of God, and curses for life and for two wretched women, his wife, the first cause of his misfortunes, and his daughter, who had abandoned him after taking him from our home so as to be free in her... enterprises. Curses for his neighbor, curses for doctors and nurses, and so on. And I experienced such disgust that it was even physical. And yet, when I thought of him, I felt so much mercy and affection precisely because he was so unhappy, unhappy to the point of refusing the only wealth and relief remaining for the unfortunate: God. And, in addition, I loved him because he had been the occasion for great suffering and great grace for me.
His coming to us in Voghera when ill had been marked by copious tears for me. He loved me. But he was restless and nervous and had no sympathy for anything different from his way of thinking. Perfectly fluent in French, English, and German, from me - a ten-year-old girl already far advanced in French and muttering German - he demanded perfection in French and miraculous progress in German, which, by the way, I hated. And he would have liked me to become fluent then and there in English, which he wanted to teach me. I understand. His days as a paralytic were quite long, and he could not adjust to idleness. He wanted to fill his hours by acting as my language teacher. But I already had my studies... and if one considers that at sixteen I had finished classical studies, one can grasp whether I had things to study.... But he understood nothing. Original, like his sister, he wanted what he wanted. And whoever contradicted him was subjected to his tantrums, reproaches, accusations, and so on. And yet he loved me. He also called me, “Pretty, Pobly, Darling, Mary,” and with his arms and hands free from the paralysis which had immobilized his lower limbs, he would make lovely little pictures for me or prepare sweets, which I would eat with tears as sugar, for there was never a day when, egging on my mother with his complaints and accusations of indolence, sluggishness, and stubbornness on my part, he failed to get me punished by her, whose severity is still proverbial....
And, adding pain to pain, his coming cost me separation from home, from Father.... My uncle in fact had only a paralysis caused by a fracture of the last vertebras, a fracture which occurred in England. But the doctors, who see and understand what they manage to - very little - had decided he had a lung condition, in addition to a spinal problem. He died at age eighty-four of deforming arthritis... and never had lung disease over these past forty years.... But the fact is that for the learned doctors he had to have a lung condition and his proximity to me, a girl - may God forgive me! - was thus dangerous. But since the doctors who held that view had been close to Mother since she was a child and her dream was to shove me into boarding school to “mortify my character,” as she said - an idea Father combatted obstinately, the only point where he stood up to his wife - I think Mother, with the complicity of the doctors, played this card to succeed in her purpose. And Father was not strong enough to say, “Then my brother-in-law will have to go.” He limited himself to having Mother write a page with the statement that it was she who wanted me to leave home. A page I found among the family letters. And I was put into boarding school.... After four months my uncle received admission and employment as a secretary at the Civil Hospital in Bergamo.... But I remained in boarding school ...losing the joy of being with my father in the final months of his physical and mental integrity. Afterwards he was worn out -good, but with little memory and will.... And I no longer received anything from him but the comfort of caresses... and the agony of seeing him disabled.
All of this on account of my uncle. These were the sufferings he had given me. The graces involved encountering once again my Jesus at my boarding school, as if He had come back from a great distance and had granted me a loving appointment there, after being glimpsed in the mists of childhood with the Ursulines and then fading out of sight. Not out of faith, but out of sight. My suffering Jesus, who at boarding school - perhaps because an excessively heavy cross was already on my shoulders - showed Himself to me in all the smiling, pleasant delights of his extremely sweet Heart.... And I am what I am now because I then belonged to Him totally and for a long time. Nourished there with deeply and intensely Christian life, in love, with awareness of Jesus, at that age, which already knew what it wanted (ten to sixteen), I was later able to resist the many things which acted as a lever under my loving faith to turn it over and destroy it, and there were so many...! I got a number of jolts from age eighteen to twenty-five. But later... Jesus came for the third time and has not left me since....
That is why I loved this uncle who died now. After the death of my mother - who, as usual, made the accusation beforehand that I would not come to the aid of and love my uncle - I at once took up caring for him, by writing and sending money for his whims as a patient. In my will I even made it obligatory for my heir to maintain his monthly check for the rest of his life. And, at the same time, I spoke to him clearly about my way of thinking, my faith, my love for the good Lord, my devotion to the Church, and so on. Do you know I said at the close, “That’s the way I am and that’s how you should consider me. I do not judge you in your ideas, although knowing you lack faith brings me pain because I know this takes away from you the only comfort you could have. But I ask you not to be disrespectful towards my ideas”? And he understood me so well that he immediately received the Sacraments, sending me the leaflet from his Communion, like a poor child who wants to show he has been good - poor Uncle!
The Superior has now written me to say he became fervent and died serenely in a Christian manner, speaking of me with affection as long as he could. Isn’t this an act of the Lord’s goodness? I worried so at the thought that he would die without being in God’s friendship! And God makes me happy by showing me that we do not pray and suffer to no end and also that a frank profession of faith can rouse people forcefully and lead them back to God.
Poor Uncle, who died so alone.... Will it also happen to me like that? Poor Uncle, who remained without news for so long, on account of the war. But he will now know that I was just as anxious about him as he was about me during the months of war and the impossibility of writing letters. He now knows everything and is in peace.
And, since I am in a mood for stories about myself, I shall also tell you about an incident - establishing no connection with my uncle; though - which is taking place for the third time in a few days. Waves of intense fragrance of flowers and very fine incense, like styrax and similar resins, suddenly filling my room and then just as suddenly departing. Marta, too, perceived it yesterday, sitting at a distance from me. But it is very intense alongside my bed. I had not smelled those waves for months.87
85 Right after the episode written on August 29, 1945.
86 Aristide Fioravanzi, of whose death the writer had received news on July 21, perhaps initially by way of a concise postcard, which has been preserved, from the Religious Home of the Bergamo Congregation of Charity. She was mentioning this again because she had received a letter, which she attached to the notebook. The text read: “Home, Bergamo, August 18, 1945. Miss Valtorta, your uncle died on July 14 at 1 p.m. and died in a Christian manner. At Christmas and Easter here at the Home he always received the Sacraments; moreover, in these last months he did so a bit more often. A few days before dying he received Communion once again. You can rest assured that he prepared properly for death, saw it coming, and desired it, for he could not endure any longer, since, in addition to his pains from deforming arthritis which increased daily, he also had an intestinal disease which caused him great suffering and took him to the tomb. He accepted death peacefully and calmly and was conscious until the end, losing consciousness only in the final two hours. He was always cared for with love by the physician, the sister in the ward, and the nurses. I, too, often went to see him, since I had known him for a number of years as a result of the service we both engaged in at the Main City Hospital. And insofar as I could, in view of our scanty means, I also tried to satisfy his desires. You can be sure that Divine Mercy has received him with goodness. We are seeking to intercede for his good soul with Holy Masses, Communions, and Rosaries. He will also pray a great deal for you. He loved you very much and suffered immensely over you, both because he knew you were exposed to the bombings and because of a lack of news. Pray for me, too, as I shall for you. Respectfully yours, Superior of the Community.” For the events and persons mentioned here, see the Autobiography, particularly the section devoted to “Voghera” in the Second Part.
87 We pass over about forty handwritten pages (August 31 to September 2, 1945) containing three episodes belonging to The Second Year of the Public Life.