BIS Reads // Witness to Joy

On All Saints Day this past year, I taught my 5th grade faith formation students what it means to be a canonized Saint in the Catholic Church.

We went through the basics: you have to be dead, you have to have lived an extraordinarily holy life, and you have to intercede for those who are still on earth.

We discussed many saints from an array of vocations, cultures, and backgrounds.

Afterwards, the students chose a Saint to draw and wrote a prayer asking them for their intercession.

To Be Like Jesus

As the children worked, one of my students sat contemplating this newfound understanding of sainthood. She asked me, “So, Saints are all totally different, but they are also all like Jesus?”

I thought about her question for a moment before realizing she was precisely correct. This is exactly what it means to be a Saint: to be completely unique in your route to sanctification, but in your own way, to resemble Christ.

In the book Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy, close friends of Servant of God Chiara tell the particular story of her resemblance to Jesus. Through her dating, marriage, and motherhood before an early death at the age of twenty-eight in 2012, Chiara’s particular reflection of Christ is a modern and relatable model of holiness with a deep and true joy in the midst of intense sorrow.

{formbuilder:OTk3ODc=}

Chiara // A Witness to Joy

The book begins with Chiara and Enrico’s dating relationship, engagement, and marriage. The Italian couple, who lived in Rome and spent quality time in Assisi, met at Medjugorje, a Marian apparition site, on pilgrimage in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

While the route to marriage was a bumpy and stressful road for the two of them, including breakups and heartache, the strength of the love in their relationship became a cornerstone of their story: strengthening and bringing joy to the hardships that followed them.

A Witness to Life

Throughout Chiara’s three pregnancies, the couple found immense joy in their children regardless of their length of life. Chiara and Enrico’s first two children had terminal conditions. Despite knowledge of the children’s deaths to come shortly after birth, both were carried to term in a great act of charity and respect for human life. Chiara expressed great joy at every kick in her stomach.

Furthermore, Chiara delayed chemotherapy for her own illness in her third pregnancy to ensure the health of her son. Chiara displayed true motherhood in her knowledge of her children as not her own, but also as God’s. She expressed a willingness to do everything in her power to love them, protect them, and lead them to her Heavenly Father. 

Carrying Crosses, Radiating Light

Beyond her family, Chiara’s story is also full of other moments and relationships she brought joy to, including beautiful friendships with Father Vito, an important figure in the spiritual lives of the couple, and Simone and Christiana, a married couple and the authors of this book.

Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Witness to Joy is a quick and phenomenal read, one I would recommend to all women, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as her story contains an aroma of holiness that so clearly reflects the light and joy of Christ. The book will make you cry, but despite the tragedy and death, the tears are tears of joy, tears at the sight of the immensely beautiful image of Christ Chiara becomes as her story unfolds.

Just as the Cross, a symbol of death, is the tool Jesus uses for salvation, Chiara’s story displays sacrificial love and an acceptance of her own cross in a way that will not be forgotten and has her swiftly on the route to canonization.

Annie Navone is currently finishing her MA in Theology from the University of Notre Dame and ministering in parishes and schools in Tampa, Florida. Her greatest passion is Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a Montessori method of catechesis for young children. In her free time, she enjoys walking along the beach, cheering on the TCU Horned Frogs, journaling in Adoration, and spending time with close friends.