VIII. "Rocks standing on both sides, and steep cliffs on the one side, and on the other."

I. Kings xiv, 4

On a morning late in August of 1764, a dust-covered carriage coming from Bibbiena after several miles of rough going up and down steep and dangerous hills arrived at La Beccia, a hamlet of poorish houses that was the terminus for any sort of vehicle that brought visitors to La Verna. Two people of our acquaintance, Cavalier Ignatius Redi and his daughter, Anna Maria, alighted from the carriage and, after exchanging a few words with the driver, started to climb the rise of ground leading to the summit of that holy mountain where, as Dante sings, Saint Francis

"In the raw rock ...
had from Christ the last seal
which two long years his members bore"
(Paradiso, Canto XI).

The forbidding cliffs, the unbroken masses of gray stone, the scattered forests of spreading beeches and towering pines, the silence unbroken save by the soft whispering of leaves or the low sweet singing of birds, give the pilgrim a taste of that divine poetry with which virgin nature can speak to man. Anna Maria gazed with awe at the massive crags, the deep caves, the aged beeches. Exulting joy swept through her at the reflection that all this beauty was a mere vestige of God's glory. The sheer loveliness of the place, and its silence, made her think of Carmel's cloistered charms.

The two pilgrims ascended the road that becomes so steep that, to reach its end, one almost has to crawl on hands and knees. Cavalier Redi was hardly less taken by the beauty of the scenery than was his daughter. When they came to the little chapel on the right that commemorates the place where Saint Francis, before finishing his ascent of the mountain, paused awhile to rest after his long journey, Anna Maria recalled to her father's mind the story of what occurred there ... the little cherubs flying about, singing, alighting now and then on the Saint's head, shoulders, and arms, greeting him with joyful repetitions of "Hail, hail, hail!" It seemed that for her, also, the little streams and waterfalls with which the forest abounded had voices all their own to whose melodious canticles her own soul responded in a rhapsody that lifted her from the contemplation of nature's loveliness up and up to the very Sun of all goodness and beauty. The holy mountain seemed to her to be one of nature's poems flooding the soul with spiritual fragrance and sweetness.

At last, the two pilgrims reached the mountain's top. On arriving at the door to the shrine, Anna Maria read with eager interest the words cut into the stone ... "In all the world there is no holier mountain than this." This is no idle boast, for, in truth, Calvary and La Verna can be called, in a sense, one mountain, for on them both occurred those solemn and divine manifestations of love that are almost identical. Who does not know that on that mountain, on the same cross, hung suspended together Jesus and Francis? Who does not remember that miracle of love that there transformed the Seraph of Assisi into the likeness of the Crucified? It is impossible to climb those crags without being reminded of that day when

"On the holy mount, in dews of morning,
The Saint, Assisi's glory, prayed.
Fired with fire of Seraphs his yearning,
In garb of ecstasy arrayed.
Down to him from heavenly blue of sky
In gleam of gold on flare of red
Came Christ the Crucified from throne on high
To print those wounds from which He bled.
With grief and love the Saint grew faint.
In grief and love from hands, from feet,
From yawning side he shed his blood.
While dancing sun made haste to paint
The triumph of the Holy Rood,
Rock couch seemed changed to violets sweet."
(P. Manni, Le Stimate)

Certainly, this must have been the memory that planted itself in the mind of Anna Maria, when, with heart full of enthusiasm, she entered with her father into that sacred retreat where everything speaks of God and the Poor Man of Assisi. Before them was the chapel of Our Lady of the Angels, to the left the great square with the cross erected in its center. There was the well whose waters the pilgrims touch, there the temple's sacred portico. Anna Maria's soul literally swam in ecstasy. What memories, what exaltation for that heart so full of tenderness and love! Father and daughter entered the church, approached the main altar, and remained a long time in deep and fervent prayer. They then assisted at Mass and Anna Maria, as her father tells us, "went to Confession and received Communion devoutly."

The thoughts that passed through the young girl's mind at that time God alone knows. Later when she had become a nun, the Sisters were able to conjecture from what she rather frequently said that something of a spiritual nature, quite out of the ordinary, had happened to her at that time. "What it was," the monastic annals say, "one could never know from her, but perhaps it was a matter of knowledge to her father to whom she always expressed the greatest gratitude for having taken her to that Sanctuary." The heavenly delights which flooded her soul at that time were, one might say, reflected in her countenance, so that it seemed like that of an angel. On her knees on the bare floor, she abandoned herself to the Divine Heart of Jesus, remaining motionless there for an hour or more, until her father's voice, calling to her, broke the spell of the holy reverie.

When they came out of the church, a friar led them to the monastery. After they had eaten, he offered his services as guide around the holy places. By a footpath skirting the edge of the precipice, from which they could see in all its enchanting beauty the panorama of Casertino, they reached in a few moments the chapel of Blessed John of La Verna. In this place, the Servant of God had lived for thirty years a life of most heroic penance and mortification, a life that the Lord Himself frequently relieved by the granting of heavenly visions and ecstasies. Thence they took the road again, always under the friar's guidance, and came to "Saint Francis' First Cell," commonly called the "Chapel of the Magdalen," where Our Lord appeared to the Saint as he was praying near a great stone which served him as a dining-table. After they had visited the "First Cell" they climbed down to see the marvelous "needle rock" where the Seraphic Father felt that he was more than ordinarily susceptible to the Divine Voice. In that solitude, among the cliffs and frowning precipices, his inner ear was better primed to hear the sounds echoing through his great soul. He who lives the spiritual life finds solitude to be his true environment.

When they had reached the bottom down among the great crags and cliffs our pilgrims were able to examine at close quarters that huge splinter of rock that shelves out from the face of the mountain so abruptly and menacingly that the beholder catches his breath in amazement; nearly forty feet in length, seventeen in breadth, and thirty-five in height, it seems almost detached from the mountain, for, at the point of contact, in comparison with the bulk of its outer part, the stem of stone is thin and tenuous.

A short distance from this "splinter" or "needle" rock, is the two hundred foot precipice down which the devil, appearing to Francis when he was praying, attempted to hurl him. The Saint fell part of the way, but, calling upon the Most Holy Name, saved himself by clinging to a stray vine and drawing himself up on the rock which yielded to his form as would wax. Our pilgrims descended by a little ladder placed there for the purpose, gazed upon the impression of the Saint's body, and kissed that holy stone. Thence they climbed to another small chapel that commemorates the place where Friar Leo, the Saint's companion, saw his ecstasy and the mystery of the imprinting of the sacred stigmata. Then, after a bit of a walk, they entered the Chapel of the Cross, Saint Francis' real cell. To the left of this chapel is the small portico that leads up a stairway to the Oratory of Saint Bonaventure where the holy doctor wrote, in 1260, his "Itinerarium mentis in Deum," that canticle of sublime doctrine and ineffable love which shows man the direct way to heaven.

Finally, the pilgrims reached the chapel of the Sacred Stigmata. Here, our young girl, as if her soul were flooded with sweetest and tenderest devotion, approached that stone which had been the couch on which had taken place the stupendous miracle, the astounding martyrdom of love. Having in the eyes of her soul a clear vision of the mystical seraph who stigmatized Saint Francis, she devoutly kissed that stone, and, recalling the great mystery that there had taken place, experienced a sweet and pious envy of the Poor Man of Assisi when "lifted up and drawn to God by the ardor of his desires, he was transformed by the vehemence of his compassion into Him Whom an excess of love had led on to bear the cruelest of punishments.[1]

Perhaps, too, there came before her eyes that scene in which the mystical seraph, "with six wings resplendent with light and fire, descended from the heights of heaven, carrying in the embrace of his wings the image of a crucified man whose hands and feet were tightly fixed to the cross."[2] Then, like Saint Francis, she "recognized the hidden truth of that mystery and understood how the friend of Christ must wholly and entirely transform himself into the likeness of Jesus Crucified, not so much by the martyrdom of the flesh as by fire that would be completely spiritual."[3]

The picture of the impression of the Stigmata which she summoned to her mind caused her to burst into tears; like Francis she, too, would embrace the cross of the Savior; like him she, too, wished to live only with, in, and under that cross, even when it was heaviest, most burdensome, most shameful; like him she, too, wished to carry that cross always, and to carry it without consolation or relief.

It would be hard to say how long Anna Maria would have been lost in thoughts such as these if the friar who was guiding her had not asked her to walk into the next grotto where the bed of Saint Francis is found ... a big piece of stone placed horizontally, about the length of a man's body. This was the last place they visited. After dinner, they went down the mountain and found awaiting them the carriage that was to convey them back to Bibbiena.

Up fatiguing heights and down steep gullies the carriage labored on and on. Anna Maria seemed absorbed in the thought of the heavenly beauties that she had just been seeing and admiring. Every few moments she would gaze backwards at La Verna and scan from a distance its dark mass of beeches and fir-trees, its great cliffs that seemed melting into one huge mountain of rock; from afar it looked like a pile of ruins of a medieval fortress. Little by little it disappeared, and, finally, they arrived at Bibbiena where they were welcomed by the family of the Lord Bishop of Poltri, who was one of Cavalier Redi's most devoted friends.

The next day, after a visitation of the churches of that region, they took the road back to Arezzo. The whole pilgrimage made upon Anna Maria an indelible impression. The ecstasies, the raptures, the loving colloquies that the Seraph of Assisi had had upon that mountain and the unutterable sweetness that had come upon herself at the thought of the Lord in that environment she could never erase from her mind and heart. The more she contemplated the mystery of love wrought in the members of the Blessed Poor Man of Assisi, the more she longed to fly at once to her dear monastery of Florence. The day was now not far off. The time for her departure had been set.

[1] St. Bonaventure's In legenda S. Francisci, cap. xiii.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

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