X. "In much experience of tribulation, they have had abundance of joy."

II Cor., viii, 2

Experience of tribulation is the positive sign of God's approval. This divine countersign could not be lacking to Anna Maria's postulantship, eventually, but her present sufferings were not those tormenting trials of the spirit which burn and consume the soul with unspeakable agony; rather were they purely physical sufferings which, borne in patience and offered in humility to God, produced that sovereign peace which turns pain into pleasure.

Due either to her prolonged praying while prostrate on the floor or to her delicate constitution, a large ulcer appeared on her right knee. This ailment Anna Maria concealed for some days, until a high fever forced her to acknowledge her illness and remain in bed. A surgeon had to be called. He pronounced an operation necessary. An operation on the human body, in those days, was, for the patient, a sort of living martyrdom, for strong anesthetics were, even when known, not so freely used as they are now. Anna Maria submitted to the ordeal with martyr like courage. "With pleasure," she said to the Sisters, "do I submit to this surgical operation that I may conform in some degree to the suffering of Our Lord Jesus Christ." She bore the pain of the operation in accordance with her hope, in patience. Once, under the knife, she groaned a little. This slight weakening shamed her somewhat and she begged pardon of those around her, as if she had committed a serious fault.

The continual fever and the constant and necessary lying on her left side throughout her illness furnished her with never ending torture. The assistant mistress of novices, when she saw Anna Maria in such enduring pain, in her goodness of heart did everything she could to relieve her. One day this good Mother prepared for Anna Maria a tasty little dish of meat and, quite pleased with her own considerateness, brought it to her. When Anna Maria had tasted it she quickly showed distaste. The Mother asked her why the dish was repugnant to her, and received this answer, delivered in Anna Maria's usual tactful but positive way, "You have given me so many good things that do not seem to me to be adapted to the life of a Discalced Carmelite, things not compatible with mortification."[1] The dish, however, was only a simple affair, merely a couple of eggs dropped in a meat soup and seasoned well. Edified by the manifestation of such great love for mortification, the Mother told Anna Maria that she might eat, in good conscience, everything in the dish, because in time of sickness the use of meat itself is, according to the regulations of Our Holy Mother, Saint Theresa, an act of observance, and thus she could acquire double merit, that of observance and that of obedience. Thereupon the young girl ate all without a word, but in such a manner that the Mother was convinced that her first refusal was based on love of mortification, and that her final acquiescence was an act of obedience.

While Anna Maria was suffering from the operation and the resulting fever, she bore other sufferings, as well, in silence and good will. She had read the lives of the Saints and marveled at their heroic actions in the mortification of the flesh, and wished to imitate them. Her heart was big and generous but she did not know that the Saints, in their activities, were always under restraint of the yoke of obedience and that, if they had not done everything under obedience, even their greatest sacrifices would have been of no avail. The assistant mistress of novices, while attending Anna Maria, noticed that, occasionally, her features would contract as if from pain. After a careful examination, the Mother discovered that the iron hairpins which kept Anna Maria's long, flowing hair in place, were, because of the high fever, causing severe head pains. She took them all out and, thereafter, in her knowledge of Anna Maria's fixed intentions to mortify herself and to suffer, was extremely watchful.

A greater pain than those of a physical nature took root in the heart of Anna Maria, ... the fear that her infirmity would prevent her from being admitted into the community; but the Lord, along with the favor of a complete cure, conceded to her likewise that of seeing all her desires satisfied. She had been told that she must depart from the monastery for a time that, during her absence, the nuns might decide in greater freedom the question of her admission. Before departing, according to custom, she presented herself to the community and asked to be accepted and admitted to clothing in the holy habit. With angelic composure the young girl addressed the nuns in language so earnest, so eager, and so full of reason that the hardest hearts could not help being melted. She acknowledged her unworthiness, but besought the nuns not to reject her. She promised that she would mend her ways, hoping to have the support and help of their prayers.

Such an attitude and such words could not fail to move the nuns, who wept at the appeal in joy and tenderness. They told her, at once, that, if it were the will of God she could rest assured that she would be accepted by the community. No other decision could be thought of; the Sisters thanked God for His great gift to them, and reminded each other of the prophetic hopes excited by the young girl on her first entrance into their convent ... "that in her they were acquiring a true and already formed daughter of the Holy Mother Saint Theresa, and that she would be one of her most accurate portraits."[2]

With her heart full of joy, Anna Maria wrote at once to her uncle, Father James Redi, the Jesuit, telling him of the great event, and asking him to thank the Lord for the goodness and mercy extended to her in receiving her as His spouse. In his answer, her uncle urged her to cooperate with all her might with God in His grace, and to become one of Saint Theresa's worthiest daughters. His words were, "Grow to love what she teaches particularly, that is, true humility, humble prayer, blind obedience. Foster the end she had in view in the founding of her Order, which was that there might be in it good and well-disposed persons who would never cease to pray for the salvation of souls... . Jesus, my dear niece, wishes to see you not only good, but saintly." These last words made the deepest impression on the young girl, reminding her forcefully of the resolutions she had so frequently made when she was home, resolutions which she now renewed.

She left the monastery on January 4, 1765, and was once again taken by her father to visit her sisters and the nuns at Saint Apollonia's Convent; from there they went to Prato to see once more and say farewell to her brothers, Gregory and Francis Xavier, at school in the Collegio Cicognini. She stayed with her father and brothers, these four days, at the Inn of Saint Nicholas, spending the time visiting the churches and monasteries. We know from the depositions of her brothers that, during these days, Anna Maria's desires and aspirations were so strong that she could speak to them of nothing else but God, the great grace of vocation, the obligation we have of responding to God's great love.

One morning, while they were awaiting the hour for lunch, Anna Maria withdrew to her room in great haste. Her brother, Francis Xavier, knowing that she had gone to her room to pray, decided not to disturb her and waited for her in patience at the foot of the stairs. After some minutes he saw her coming out of her room with her face all alight. She ran towards him, threw her arms around his neck, and said with great emphasis, "Dear, do you love God?" He answered, "To the best of my ability, as a sinner." Then, as an even greater light spread over her countenance, she pressed him to her bosom in seraphic ardor and, with eyes lifted to heaven, replied, "Love Jesus well and truly; if you only knew how beautiful, how dear, how lovable He is!" Her brother, wondering, stood there looking at her. Her face seemed increasingly suffused with a sort of heavenly light that made it resplendent, even transformed it. What had happened? Evidently, in the silence of her little room, when she had given herself wholly to the contemplation of the infinite love of God, her heart had been fired by that mysterious flame that was now utterly consuming it. With eyes cast up to heaven she had probably been chafing under the restraint of some almost indefinable anguish at not being able wholly and entirely to be united with Him Who had wounded her heart, then, when no longer able to resist, had risen from her knees and, on coming upon her brother after she had left her room, had given full vent to the love that was over-flowing from her heart.

From the beginning God seemed to will to enrich her with the gift of that deep and sublime contemplation which He communicates only to pure and innocent souls. We can truly say that Anna Maria, even during the time spent outside the monastery, lived like an isolated person, alone with God and His lofty upliftings. Deprived of everything, seeking only Him alone, she was literally laid siege to by God to force her, from the very start, to offer herself wholly to Him, her Maker; this siege was nothing else but His total enveloping and consuming of her spiritual being with His purest fire of love. What wonder then that she was always so great a lover of prayer, and that, in her praying, time did not count? Every place was for her a place for prayer. Everywhere, she withdrew into herself, everywhere, she sought to be hidden in God.

After she had received her brothers' promise to live good lives in fidelity to God, she bade them farewell and left for Florence with her father. She stayed outside the Monastery two months, that is, from the fourth of January, 1765, to the evening of the tenth of March, living during this time with Lady Isabella Mozzi, a daughter of the family of the Counts of Montauto. This noble woman was edified beyond belief by this charming young girl who seemed to carry everywhere with her the loveliness and perfume of heaven itself, and to leave everywhere the luminous trace of that sublime love that burned in her generous heart. "She associated with the different people she met," this noble lady has written for us, "with the greatest circumspection so far as her own actions were concerned, and with scrupulous regard not only for social duties but also for what was becoming to her as a Christian girl of noble family." Always grateful to anyone who had done her a favor, and wishing to show her gratitude towards all the servants of the Mozzi household, she wrote to the Countess, as soon as she had entered the monastery, thanking her for the kindness shown by herself and her servants, begging her to give those servants, as a small reward, purses of money, a few medals, and some objects of devotion.

During these two months, after she knew definitely that she was going to be received into Carmel, in the desire to bid quite a formal and demonstrative farewell forever to this world and its luxury, she began to wear clothes of real beauty and style and, with them, a pair of red-leather gloves which, in the fashion of the day, extended up to her elbows. These gloves are still kept at the Monastery as precious relics.

At this time, a friar, seeing Anna Maria finely dressed and not being able to understand why, took it upon himself to tell her that it was improper for a future bride of Christ to come out in all this elegance. Anna Maria, taken quite by surprise by his remark, answered with the utmost simplicity, "Nevertheless, some day I shall be a saint!"[3] So positive an assertion from the lips of this angelic girl, who until now had seemed so humble, would excite surprise and wonderment, if the facts revealed in this short history of her life did not force us to believe that this reply of the Servant of God was, as in the like case of many another saint, the result of super-natural conviction. To mention only one instance, Saint Vincent Ferrer frequently proclaimed, in prophetic words, his own future canonization. When he was a mere child of ten, he begged some peasants who were cutting down a cypress tree in the neighborhood of his father's house to desist, telling them that this cypress was to grow and grow, and that from it the statue of a saint was to be made, and, he added, "That saint am I!"

Another incident of Anna Maria's life, having all the appearances of prophecy, took place when she was a nun. During recreation one day the Saint was embroidering some scapulars of the sort nuns usually give to benefactors and friends of the monastery. One of the Sisters inspected her work and saw that it was not of the highest order, and jokingly remarked, "Sister Theresa Margaret, there is nothing very beautiful about those scapulars of yours." The smiling Saint replied, "I know that my scapulars are not pretty, but, one day, they shall serve as gifts to Cardinals!" After a century and a half, these words have been fulfilled to the letter, for her little scapulars, preserved for so long a time from "moth and rust," were given at the time of her Beatification to two Cardinals, one to Cardinal Verde, Postulator of her Cause, the other to Cardinal Rossi. The latter, a Discalced Carmelite of the Tuscan Province, began in his early youth to smell the sweet fragrance of the "Lily of Florence," for he made his novitiate in Alcestri where the incorrupt body of the Saint has rested for years.

Anna Maria was still outside her dear Monastery, still far from "that house of angels," but she was near her good Mothers in heart and soul. She was entranced by the thought of that happy moment when finally she would be able to complete her holocaust of love. Meantime she awaited in patience the advent of that day on which, clothed as a bride of Christ in Carmel's holy habit, her soul was to begin on earth the ecstasy of love that would carry her to the foot of the throne of the Eternal Father.

[1] Testimony of Mother Anna Maria of St. Anthony of Padua during the Canonical Process.

[2] Deposition of the contemporary religious in the Canonical Process.

[3] Canonical Process.

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