VII. "I am walking in a path by which I shall not return."

Job xvi, 23

Who can tell what a battle raged in Anna Maria's heart during those days of waiting? When it came to determining just how she should manifest her vocation to her parents, her mind was like a barren desert, or, rather, like a small boat, anchorless and rudderless, out on the open ocean, the sport of wind and wave. As St. John of the Cross would say, She had no other guiding light than that which burned in her heart," and that light showed her Carmel.

Finally she triumphed over herself, and made up her mind to tell her parents the great secret of her heart only after she had revealed it entirely to a priest of God, the surest interpreter of the divine will, and had listened to his wise counsels. This priest was Father Jerome-Mary Cioni, the Jesuit whom she had chosen as a confessor a short time before. It would be hard to tell which was more evident in the first conversation between these two ... the priest's lofty, spiritual wisdom, so necessary for the guidance of souls, or the girl's highly privileged beauty of soul, still in its baptismal innocence, enriched by grace and already ripe for heaven. The pious and learned religious saw immediately that this young girl had a clear call from God and advised her to tell her dear mother her heart's desire, while he would tell her father.

It was on her seventeenth birthday that, with tears in her eyes, she went to her mother and, clearly, humbly, and respectfully, told her the secret of her soul. Her mother's heart ached a little, but her father was grief-stricken; they saw themselves deprived of the presence of the angelic girl who was their joy and their hope. Nevertheless, mindful of the fact that God alone is absolute master of hearts and that He alone can inspire in them the desire for perfection, they did not oppose Anna Maria's resolution irrevocably but decided to withhold their consent until they were convinced that hers was a true vocation.

Although he had the greatest esteem for Father Cioni, Cavalier Redi wished to have his daughter's intention seriously examined by other competent persons. For this purpose he called in a Sienese priest, Joseph Mary, Canon Tonci, from the neighboring town of Castiglione. The learned and pious Canon knew how to read souls so well that, after his decision, there was seldom any doubt about God's invitation to chosen souls to "walk in the marvelous path by which they were not to return." The Canon rigorously examined Anna Maria's vocation and found it so true, so certain, so surely from God, that he himself was surprised. When he gave her parents his decision they bowed their heads to God's holy will, declaring themselves resigned to the sacrifice of the daughter who was so dear to them.

This, however, was not the end of Anna Maria's trials. At that time, in the neighboring Convent of Saint Mary of Grace the Provincial of the Discalced Carmelites, Father John Columbine was staying. Cavalier Redi, who knew him, after long years of friendship, for a wise and kindly man, begged him to question his daughter and tell him what he discovered. The Provincial came to the Redi house and painted to Anna Maria a picture of Carmelite life austere and formidable enough to make the most generous heart quail, but Anna Maria remained unshaken. The fear of privations and sufferings did not distress her, the thought of the adverse criticism of the world if she were forced to return to it did not frighten her, the remainder of family ties and relationship did not deter her; in the silence of her soul she made up her mind to be always God's, to follow Him even in His sufferings and on the cross, to be ready to pass by everything and everybody, and to set her feet in the way of glory and true happiness. When he had made sure that Anna Maria's vocation was a true one, the Father Provincial advised the parents of the fact and urged them to help her attain her end by permitting her to write the Mother Prioress of Saint Theresa's Monastery, asking to be admitted there as a novice. Likewise, Monsignor Inghirami, the Bishop of Arezzo, approved of the young girl's determination and assured her parents that God called her to serve Him in a Carmel of the Theresian Reform. Consent could no longer be withheld, and the young girl's joy was at its culmination when her father finally gave her permission to write the Mother Prioress, asking to be numbered among her daughters. What a glorious day that was for Anna Maria! Her thoughts raced to the dear Florentine monastery where Jesus was awaiting her, to whisper in her heart as once He whispered to Saint Gertrude, "I, the Lord, your God, I am your Love, I have created you for love, to enjoy in you pure delight."

Fortunate girl! Well she knew that the cloister to which God was calling her was really an abode where God would manifest Himself ever more clearly to her, where He would make her burn with love ever increasingly pure, where He would raise her from height to height until finally the topmost peak of human perfection would be attained! Meanwhile, her heart was glad with a gladness that dilated it with transports of lively faith, with throbbings of ineffably tender love.

In the midst of such peace and joy, a cloud, one of those faint clouds that seem to be the breath of dancing sunbeams, sought to shadow that holy soul, interrupting the hymning of a heart which sang only of love of God and for love of God. A temptation, perhaps a very strong one, sought to worm its withering way into that flowerlike spirit.

One evening, as often happened, after the family had retired, she remained for a spiritual conference with her father. These colloquies sometimes lasted until one in the morning. Their talk on this particular evening was more intimate than usual, and suddenly the thought of their imminent separation struck home to the heart of Cavalier Redi. Almost in tears, he said to Anna Maria, unexpectedly, "So, dear child, you leave me!" In the evening's failing light the faces of her ancestors in their portraits seem to come to life, and to breathe, and to be part of this moving scene, and to bow in reverence to the gentle child who, while mirroring in herself the glories of her forefathers, at the same time raised them to new and superb heights by her own Christian heroism.

Anna Maria felt within herself the heartbreak that must be her father's, but, without a tear, after a short silence, retired to her room. "At my surprising out-burst," relates Cavalier Redi in the Canonical Process for her Beatification, "an outburst of the only kind, perhaps, that could touch her heart under the circumstances, she stood, like one unconquered and unconquerable, almost as if in ecstasy, for some time before me, then, without a word to me, went to her room."

He who knows what it means to remain speechless in the face of trial will be able fully to comprehend how great an impression her father's tears made upon Anna Maria's heart. Shut up in her room, she battled with her emotions in that sort of strife that frequently makes one recede from his strongest and most valiant determinations. In that agonizing soul-storm, she heard the voice of nature tempting her... . "Give up that thought of yours! Remain here in the house of your fathers! How shall you live in silence in a monastery when you recall the grief you have brought upon your father? Stay, stay, and console him who has loved you so much." Tremendous the temptation, fierce the fight, but when she recalled the mysterious voice of Saint Theresa which had so insistently invited her to enter Carmel, she fell on her knees and said to Jesus, "Yours shall I be, be the cost what it may." With this sentiment which, in other circumstances, we shall see written with her own blood, Anna Maria triumphed over her father's loving tenderness.

After this victory it was not difficult for her to conquer the onslaughts which she had to endure at the hands of a chambermaid who, whispering light and silly words in her ear, tried to make her regret her inexperience of this world's vanishing pleasures, and at the hands of a relative who did her best to wean her away from her holy resolution. The insinuations of the first she rejected as diabolical, those of her relative she brushed aside with gentle prudence, repeating always, "God wants me for Himself, and I wish to be all His," and the Lord, Who was with her, showed the will to reward her for her many victories.

Cavalier Redi, as if to make reparation for his moment of weakness, courageously and generously sought to hasten his daughter's entrance into Carmel. He begged the Father Provincial to ask the Mother Prioress to yield to his daughter's plea as soon as possible. The answer was not long in coming, and, when it came, it was like a message of heavenly consolation to Anna Maria. Father Peter Alcantara, a Discalced Carmelite, brought the letter of acceptance to Cavalier Redi, but, before reading the good news to Anna Maria, he pretended that she could not be received into Saint Theresa's Monastery because the number there, according to the constitutions, was complete. For a moment or so, the young girl was in doubt as to whether or not to believe the friar; then she said, that "if there was no vacancy in that monastery, the Discalced Carmelites were in Parma, also." "What would you do, daughter," interrupted her father, "if you could be received in no Theresian monastery?" She answered very frankly, "In that event, I would become a Capuchin nun, in order to live in a severely strict community."[1] Then was consigned to her the reply of the Mother Prioress who at that time was Mother Magdalen of Jesus (Quaratesi). Anna Maria read the letter eagerly. At a glance she saw all her hopes realized.

How could it be otherwise? She had written so well that little letter of appeal! In it she had revealed the most ardent desire to enter into that "house of angels ... to outrival those holy religious in the holy love of God." From that letter which breathed forth the perfume of virtue, the Mother Prioress realized what ardor burned in that innocent heart, understood at once that Anna Maria's desires were only the will of God. Therefore she accepted her, and told her that she might come at once to Florence, to begin there in her monastery the life of a religious. How satisfied and contented was Anna Maria! The desire to become a saint now grew greater within her; anew, she offered her heart to God, protesting that she wished to live wholly for Him, and wholly in His love.

These sentiments are well expressed in a letter she wrote at that time to Cecilia Albergotti, the young woman who had come to visit her at Saint Apollonia's. "I impatiently await," she said among other things, "the hour when I shall go to your holy monastery where I shall be extremely happy, and I hope, thanks to your good example and that of the other Sisters, to become what my dear Spouse, Jesus, desires me to be. Since He has done me the great good of calling me to so perfect an order, I hope that He will give me all effective aids towards becoming a saint."

However, before saying farewell to the world forever, she wished to prepare for the great step by making a pilgrimage to Mount Alvernia where Saint Francis of Assisi had received the sacred stigmata, where she herself might be fired with the desire of emulating him in his seraphic ardor.

[1] Can. Proc.

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