December 4, 1945prev home
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St. Martina
It is 8 p.m. I am invaded by a supernatural joy which is so intense that it already tastes like ecstasy. I don’t know what it comes from because there is no reason. I am weary, filled with pain, and dazed because I have had to speak a lot and also listen to things which are anything but a cause for joy: the ruin of spirits.... Just imagine how I suffered. And yet this very intense joy comes... very intense.
And then a place with stonework appears to me: thick, dark walls, damp, I think, the color of very light coffee or very dark mud. The place is like a rotunda from which corridors extend out in this shape: X . I say corridors because the sky is not visible. There is a high, dark ceiling like the walls and big square stones like the ones at the Tullianum.116
Right at the center of the rotunda a child appears to me. Not much older than a little girl. She must be twelve years old at most, and her body is even less developed than St. Agnes’,117 from whom she also differs because, in addition to being smaller, her hair is brown and her skin is a brownish white. She has two big, very sweet black eyes, a bit sad, as if tired, as if they have suffered a lot, or belong to one who has suffered very much. Her robe is completely white, made of linen, very loose, without a belt, elbow-length sleeves, from which two very shapely forearms emerge, ending in two little brownish hands crossed over her chest. The figure is luminous, but not excessively. It is not the radiant figure of a saint. It is a humble apparition, and yet it is luminous, with starlight within a light veil of mist. But it attracts me because it is light with a pure softness bestowing peace and joy. The contrast to the dark walls is very sharp. She looks at me and smiles.
Behind her back, along the two sides of the X which I have marked with the hyphen, some men in short yellow-gray robes are running off. Four are heading north, towards a barely visible, far-off light, as if the high corridor ended in an open place; the others are heading south, in a deeper darkness, to the point where I cannot tell exactly how many there are. I understand, however, that the girl is a martyr, for she is clasping a small palm to her breast, in her folded arms, a white palm, I dare to say spiritualized, as is the linen of the tunic, which is more immaterial and magnificent than even the most beautiful linen.
But I do not know who she is and ask, “Who are you?” She answers, “Martina. And this is the place where I suffered greatly. One of the places. For I have suffered greatly. So many martyrdoms before the sword. And those who are fleeing are the ones who tormented me. The ones heading towards the light are those I saved with my pain and baptized with my blood. The others are those who did not want to convert to Jesus. But now I am happy. There is no more pain. To come to glory one must suffer everything. Remember: I am Martina... and I am also particularly called upon in the invocations of the Church. Oh, for Jesus is good! And for a little pain He grants so much joy and so much power! Goodbye. I am your friend. You do not remember me. And yet you knew me and loved me when you were a girl my age. I have always loved you, though, together with Agnes. May the light of Paradise always shine in you and help you to bear the Light to so many souls. Good-bye. Receive this. I will sprinkle you with my balms.”
And she shakes the palm towards me and then folds her arms over her chest again and disappears from my sight with a soft, immaterial, unrepeatable song, and everything sparkles in the dismal place while she goes off, leaving as a memento only a tremendous indescribable fragrance.
I take up the Missal: four lines on St. Martina for January 30. I look at an old prayer book. She is not even mentioned. I search through my memory - nothing. Complete historical darkness. There remain, though, her friendship, her gaze, her smile, and the scent of her balms. And the previous joy lasts and takes me high up, very high up....118
116 See the entry for February 29 in The Notebooks. 1944.
117 See the entries for January 13 and January 20 in The Notebooks. 1944.
118 We pass over the remaining twenty-six pages handwritten pages containing two episodes from The Third Year of the Public Life (December 5 - 6, 1945) and about twentytwo pages from the next notebook containing the episode entitled “The Bread of Heaven.”