THE SWAN SONG

St. John of the Cross thus explains the last verse of the "Canticle": "The will of the Spouse is entirely liberated from all things created. The sensitive part of her soul, with all its strength and its appetites, is under complete submission to the spiritual part. In consequence, she possesses all the strength and necessary dispositions to traverse the desert of death".

So it was with Sister Theresa Margaret. Her aspirations for Heaven became more and more insistent and filled with longing, and God Himself gave her to understand that He was going to shorten the road that leads to His Kingdom of Love.

Towards the middle of February, in the year 1770 she wrote her last letter to her father. She begged him most earnestly to make a novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for a most pressing intention of hers. She enclosed a little white paper cut in the shape of a heart with another in red paper superimposed, and asked him to keep it carefully.

Was she moved to do this by a sort of prevision of her death? We do not know, but we can easily believe so. A few days before Sister Theresa Margaret's death a lady who wished to take the veil at the monastery of St. Apollonia had been to visit her. Before taking the habit, however, she promised to come to see Sister Theresa Margaret again. "If you do see me," replied the Saint. The lady wondered at the reply and asked the meaning of it, but Sister Theresa Margaret thought she had already said too much and withdrew without saying anything else.

All her existence had been one long act of love. Delicate and frail as she was, she had not bent under the hardest renunciations or the most heroic sacrifices.

Having arrived at the end of the journey, and facing the dawn of eternity, she adorned her soul with new and hidden beauties. More than ever did she seem to reflect the purity and the whiteness of the immortal light in which she was so soon to be immersed.

During her life she had moved in the orbit of the Sacred Heart as if revolving round her mystical sun, and she had received from it waves of light and flames of fire.

Now the moment was approaching when she was going to plunge into the abyss of love of the Sacred Heart and there find her sweet repose.

In her impatience to take her flight to the bosom of Infinite Love, she seemed to already taste some of the joys that were to be the reward of her constancy. Her heart was ever uttering hymns of praise and love. Her prayers were ever more ardent, and her face aflame with divine light.

In her were most perfectly realized the words of the mystical doctor: "She is filled with love, she is absorbed by it and is protected in such a way that she cannot feel or taste anything else. She knows nothing but the act of loving. In this sublime state the Spouse discloses to the soul, as to a most faithful companion, His most marvellous secrets; and, as true and perfect love can hide nothing from the heart of the loved one, He does so more and more and with increased condescension". "The impetus she felt to unite herself to God," says Father Ildefonse, "had become more daring and more frequent; she thought of nothing else and sought nothing else."

It was Sunday, March 4, 1770. Sister Theresa Margaret went to her confessor and begged him to permit her to make a more detailed confession than usual and to receive Holy Communion the next day as if it were the last day of her life. Perhaps she had a premonition that in her last moments she would not be able to receive Jesus. Some of the Sisters have attested that Sister Theresa Margaret came out of the confessional with a very happy expression on her face.

The following morning she approached the Sacred Banquet with the others and from that moment seemed entirely rapt in God. She continued in that state all that day as well as on Monday and Tuesday, without any signs of illness. Tuesday evening, however, after having attended the Mother Prioress who was in the Infirmary, she descended to the refectory for the Lenten repast. She was alone there since her duties had prevented her from being on time to eat with the community. She had no sooner sat down than she was seized with the most violent internal pain. She dragged herself as best she could to her cell where she fell across the threshold while calling for help. A passing Sister heard her and helped her to her bed which was to be the cross on which she would consummate her sacrifice.

The little cell soon became the scene of a moving spectacle, all the Sisters had run thither and prayed in silence while waiting for the doctor. Sister Theresa Margaret did not ask for any relief. She had her eyes fixed on the Crucifix in her hands and, one by one tenderly kissed the Five Sacred Wounds while invoking the Holy Name.

"She had no other thought," writes Monsignor Albergotti, "than to unite herself to the sufferings of her Divine Master, and was happy to suffer pain for pain with Him."

At first they gave her a few drops of laudanum, but these had little effect in minimizing the agonizing pain which increased instead of abating, so that her whole body trembled as with a violent convulsion.

She passed the whole night thus without one single murmur or complaint passing her lips. Sweet and calm, she continued, even in this suffering, her colloquy of love which had lasted through her life. Every now and then she was heard to be offering herself anew as a victim of expiation.

Her heart was by now in complete union with Jesus in His agony at Gethsemane and in the oblation of the Cross.

So dawned her last day, but no one even suspected it. To the Sisters who inquired of her sufferings she replied that her pains were no longer excessive and that she was better than the night before.

This news gave them all fresh hope, but, in reality, it was a sign of approaching death and the inflammation was giving way to gangrene.

The doctors tried bleeding her, but this only caused her more suffering and served to show her heroism.

The end was approaching rapidly. The tears of weakness and death fell from her eyes, but her usual sweet smile was on her lips and gave evidence of the great love that still consumed her. The Nuns around her could not restrain their tears; they were lost in admiration of this little Sister of theirs who was so calm in her abandonment into the hands of God.

In her last hours she hardly seemed to feel any pain and the hidden joys of contemplation helped her to forget the last agony. Immersed in her thought of God, she awaited to be delivered from the prison of her body and in the exaltation of her love reiterated to the Eternal Father, "Break, Divine Flame, break the weak chain of this life, so that I may be able to love Thee in all the fulness that my soul desires".

Towards three o'clock another terrible convulsion seized her and left her well-nigh unconscious. It was then that Father Pio Covari of the Order of Preachers of the Congregation of St. Mark, came to see her. He was the extraordinary confessor of the convent and seeing her imminent danger, he gave her the Holy Oils and Absolution.

She held out her hands for the Sacred Anointing; her arms were outstretched like the Savior's on the Cross. On her lips hovered the Holy Name of Jesus. To the Sisters who were present she presented a spectacle similar to the one on Calvary and they had the sorrow and the joy of witnessing the death of a Saint.

The Sisters began to recite the prayers for the dying.

After a while Sister Theresa Margaret's expression seemed to change and, with her eves filled with an unusual light and a smile on her lips, she took her flight from this world to go to enjoy in eternity the sacred embrace of the Heart of Jesus.

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The next day her body was transferred to the chapter room and placed near the grille. Four candles were lighted one at each corner of the coffin and the curtains were drawn aside so that everyone could come and look at her face once more.

She was clothed in her brown tunic, white mantle and black veil. Her uncovered face was serene ... in her hands she held her crucifix and the certificate of her Profession; flowers were placed all around her.

In Carmel, death offers nothing fearsome. Austerity, suffering and pain of every kind are the burden of life. The last hour indicates repose; it is the supreme liberation, the definite emancipation, and it is exactly under this aspect that death is considered.

It pleased Our Lord even from that moment to make known her sanctity. The Sisters gathering there in prayer felt a new and mysterious veneration that made them bow the head as one does to the relics of the Saints.

The crowd at the funeral was immense. No sooner were the doors of the chapel opened in the morning than the people came surging in. They all wanted to see the young Sister. All tried to touch at least the hem of her habit with their rosaries and other devotional objects; many earnestly begged to possess some little thing that might have belonged to her.

The morning was now well advanced and they had to think of the burial. Each one, however, felt an indefinite presentiment of future grandeur and glory that would one day grace the humble Sister.

At the head of the bier stood one of the Sisters holding a cross. She was heavily veiled and faced the grille. Two other Sisters, similarly clad, stood on either side with candles, and behind them the rest of the community with lighted tapers. At a sign from the Mother Prioress, they all wended their way to the crypt where the monastery tombs lie. The bell tolled its mournful note at regular intervals and the chants of the Sisters became fainter and died away in the distance. In the deserted chapel a perfume of flowers and incense mingled with the odor of the hot wax from the candles.

The crowd dispersed rapidly and silently. Outside, the sun shone brightly on a beautiful spring morning. A rumor soon began to spread ... rapid as a thunderbolt.... A Saint has died ... a Carmelite ... the daughter of the Redi's. Already one heard the word "miracles" whispered from one to another. The monastery carpenter who had entered the convent in his office of undertaker, took away a violet from among the flowers around the body. With it he touched the face of a woman of his household who was afflicted with a monstrous facial malady ... she was instantaneously cured.

With one of these same flowers a peasant touched the arm of his son stricken with some repulsive skin disease. Not only was the son instantly cured of the sores, but was also restored to perfect health.

But the prodigy of prodigies, the news which ran like wild fire and filled the people with admiration was that the body, instead of decomposing, was still incorrupt and emanated an exquisite perfume absolutely beyond compare with any terrestrial fragrance. The Provincial of the Carmelites and the surgeon of the monastery attested that they were literally stunned at the beauty of her face. The lachrymal ducts were still moist and rosy, the lips fresh and pink, and her limbs soft and flexible as in life.

Two weeks after her death, the Archbishop of Florence came in person to see the miracle that God had deigned to operate in the person of this young virgin. The Chancellor and several dignitaries of the Florentine chancery accompanied him, as well as three doctors and the surgeon of the convent, Anthony Romiti.

Nearing the corpse, they found it exactly as described; the eyes were perhaps a little sunken and a slight froth had appeared at the nostrils. Much moved, His Lordship wiped away his tears: "It is for the greater glory of God," he said, and asked one of the Sisters to move one of the arms of the body. She raised it at arm's length out of the coffin and with equal facility did she replace it in position. They were about to close the coffin, when the Archbishop reached for a small linen cloth and reverently wiped the froth from the nostrils. As a testimony to the purity of her life, a most exquisite fragrance emanated from the froth and made him exclaim with emotion.

It was a memorable moment; all cried with joy. The marvellous preservation of the body was the most eloquent eulogy of the future young Saint. Her face was then covered with the little linen cloth. The body was then sealed in an air tight metal case with a legal inscription on it, bearing her name Sister Theresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Redi), with a brief notice of the attested observations on the body. The whole was then enclosed in a double case and placed in the burial place in the wall of the crypt, where she slept awaiting the day of her triumphs.

God, however, did not cease to glorify His servant. Whosoever possessed any object belonging to her could enjoy that fragrant and mysterious perfume. Not only did these marvels occur in Florence, but also in Arezzo her native city. Her mother was the first to enjoy the privilege there. What a joy it was for her to be told of the marvels and miracles --- results of her daughter's intercession.

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