Italian journalist Riccardo Caniato’s reflections on a book titled Martina: The Heart and the Rose (Edizioni Ares), which tells the true story of a girl who died from cancer at age seven in 2007, very much surprised me. Caniato then invited me to read the book, which I did.

In a meeting with him, Martina’s mother Giovanna shared with the journalist a wealth of notes, reflections, and memories about Martina’s painful experience. From the conversation and in-depth discussions with Giovanna and her more silent husband, the book was born.

The further I read, the more suspicion and a certain skepticism grew within me. At a certain point I decided to stop, because the way little Martina was presented, in everything she did despite the suffering and death that awaited her at just seven years old, from an aggressive cancer, seemed improbable to me. The little girl behaved like someone considerably older than her years. I told myself that it couldn’t be possible, that it couldn’t be real. That’s why I was on the verge of telling Caniato that, I was sorry, it all seemed unreal.

I had therefore interrupted my reading, but at a certain point I remembered the three shepherd children of Fatima and Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes. In those circumstances, as in so many others, there was initially an attitude of skepticism, or justifiable caution, on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities; but in the end, the truth of the facts prevailed. Then I told myself that I too found myself in that state of skepticism, the fruit of a rationalistic mindset that expects everything to be clarified and explained by the mechanisms of reason. God, however, sometimes bursts into reality with something that our common means of reason cannot explain.

So I resumed reading about Martina’s experience, forcing myself to look at it through the eyes of faith, and everything changed. Reading became a sharing in Martina’s painful and redemptive experience, right down to the pages of the last hours of her life, which I read with a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes.

The figure of Martina that emerges from the book is that of a child with a surprisingly mature faith, capable of entrusting herself to Jesus and Mary even in the midst of the greatest pain: something unheard of for a child of just five years old (the age at which she became ill). During her illness, she faced treatments, relapses, and suffering without withdrawing into fear. She kept smiling so as not to worry her parents, she encouraged the other sick children, and she prayed for their recovery. She was sorry that so many people lacked faith. Her testimony did not consist in denying the toil of suffering: at times, she asked Jesus why he made her suffer. Nevertheless, she continued to trust, certain that her suffering could become a gift for other souls. She wanted to remain lucid in the most difficult moments, asking her parents for prayers and Bible readings. She experienced her illness as a personal Via Crucis, uniting herself with the Passion of Christ. Her journey of physical suffering was intertwined with mystical experiences (visions, the scent of roses, inner dialogues), pilgrimages, and devotion to the saints. In short, her story speaks of love, hope, and trusting abandonment to God’s love, despite great physical suffering.

Caniato himself sees, in the many events that occurred in Martina, a resonance with aspects of the suffering endured by Jesus Christ. The journalist writes, “Like Jesus who accepted the Father’s will in Gethsemane and on the cross, Martina embraces her illness and its relapse with a ‘Yes’ to Our Lady, offering all her pain for the salvation of others.”

Martina’s testimony, along with that of many other children who have had similar experiences, like Davide and Giò, is undoubtedly a powerful call to faith for us adults, lost in our daily routines. Caniato writes, “Davide, Martina, Giò…, because of their transparency, incapable of manipulation and unfiltered by filters or ulterior motives, are the most credible human instruments through which God could reveal himself and ask for help, so that his holy Name might find an echo even among the adults of our increasingly self-absorbed and self-absorbed times.”

Children who experience illness and early death are therefore not only victims of a painful fate but also potential signs of enlightenment and conversion for adults. In this regard, Caniato echoes the words of Sister Maria Concetta Visone: “They didn’t study theology, they didn’t listen to much catechesis, they didn’t even have time to make choices in life, but they lived the Gospel, indeed they even embodied it, often without knowing it, with that simplicity that disarms, that converts, that bends the knee, that convinces without disturbing and that confounds the logic of the world.”

After recounting Martina’s story, the book features numerous testimonies of people who have converted, been healed from serious illnesses, or emerged from comas, all thanks to prayers offered before the photo of Martina Kluzer. The Church, in its wisdom, will evaluate these testimonies and those to come.

Father Serafino Tognetti, in the afterword to the text, sees an immediate connection between the Christian life of children and the mystery of the cross, and finds it in Martina’s suffering as well as that of other children before her: little José Sánchez del Río, proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis on October 16, 2016, and the three shepherd children of Fatima. Yet, he observes, in recent years the Church’s preaching seems to be moving in a completely different direction. A preaching focused solely on improving earthly conditions would, in his view, miss the core of the Christian mission, namely, liberation from sin and the salvation of souls. And this is where his criticism lies: “Now, if today the Church’s preaching is ordinarily and exclusively focused on social issues, if the Church’s presence in the world is reduced to seeking the improvement of human conditions, a downward imbalance occurs. John the Baptist presents the Messiah as “He who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), not as someone who fixes it as best he can by reducing the ills of purely human life.”

Quoting Don Divo Barsotti, Tognetti explains that service to others is important, but that offering oneself for another, as Martina did, would achieve a more radical union. Here are Don Divo Barsotti’s words:

Even if we gave health to the sick and a home to all men, we would have accomplished nothing. The greatest charity is supernatural, which unites men to God. What is greater than taking on the burden of sins and imploring mercy for all? When you care for a sick person or assist an elderly person, you remain distinct from them, whereas if you offer to atone for another person, you truly become “one” with that person. In making reparation, you identify with the one who has sinned.

Finally, referring back to what Caniato said in his contribution, Tognetti explains even more clearly:

“So children understand, they see pain with new eyes, which adults struggle to grasp, because we naturally want to see pain eradicated from the world first, and then, eventually, sin. The divine perspective is different: at Fatima, the Virgin told the little shepherds that many are damned because there is no one to pray and make reparation for them, and from that moment their lives were entirely focused on reparation through the offering of their sufferings, both small and great.”

In Tognetti’s view, the fight against evil is not won primarily with arguments, but with the testimony of the Paschal pairing of cross and resurrection. For this reason, he believes, it is necessary to disseminate this book and this testimony. I think it is important to quote his final words:

Jesus saved the world with a double act, which becomes a single act: his death on the cross and his glorious resurrection, and Martina is a witness to this. For this reason, this book must be read and shared. We must all be drawn to live in the risen Jesus, where the reality of Christian life is absolute, clear, and all-encompassing. Martina was a trailblazer; she showed us, with her simple existence, the way.

Reading this book was important to me and, in a certain sense, it took me by surprise, or at least gave me a jolt that broke the daily routine of my life, which at times was asphyxiating in terms of faith. Martina’s story taught me that we must always have, or learn to have, our eyes open, to glimpse, sometimes in subtle ways, God’s will in my life and what He is asking of me.

And as I was writing these notes, almost by mysterious coincidence, my friend Monsignor Nicola Bux, a liturgical theologian, sent me a text message with the words spoken by Saint Francis of Assisi before the Crucifix of San Damiano. At the conclusion of reading the book on Martina, I feel it is right to quote them, because they express what I would like to happen for myself too:

“O high and glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart. Grant me true faith, sure hope, perfect charity, and profound humility. Grant me, Lord, wisdom and discernment to fulfill your true and holy will.” Amen