Suor Maria Celeste 

                                          (credit: unknown artist, Wikimedia Commons)

                                                                                                           Florence, Italy        

                                                                                                           Mar. 31, 1634

Dearest Papa

Finally, I have some privacy. This convent does not grant us much of that. 

A last letter and it is meant to be read only by you. We both know our letters have been secretly opened in the past. Vincenzo will carry this letter to you. I trust him. How I pray the two of you will find peace between you! He is your son, Papa. You must, must, forgive his past follies.

I’m sorry this letter is such a mess. Jumbled. Repetitious. I do not have the strength to fix it. But it must get to you, whatever its flaws.

The truth I wish to tell first is that you were the only person in the world who understood me and loved me. This letter is a sad farewell from your grateful daughter. All my life, from the earliest I can remember, I knew I had your love. It made up for all the other sorrows of this world. Thank you.

I used to think you were invincible and immortal. I took this proposition as an axiom. I see now that you grow old, and now your aging years shall be lived in near-poverty. This is why I beg you to reconcile with your son. You must not get old unloved and unwell in addition to poor. I cannot bear such a thought.

This letter is not meant to be a confession, but it’s tone will almost certainly make it sound like one. However, I am past caring. I have been ill many times before, as you know, but never anything like this. I know this is the end.

I will try for mere truthfulness. In the face of death, all else is pretence.

The truth is that I have struggled with so much anger for the cruelty and stupidity of the people of this world in these last days. For example, I was clever and determined from an early age. These traits were inherited from you and nurtured by you. But I also saw more clearly as I matured that these traits stir envy in too many others in this fallen world. Traits that should be viewed as gifts bring such resentment from the “sinners”, as I once called them. Sinners. Yes, but now I know truly I too am one.  

In my girlhood, neighborhood brats bullied me whenever they could get away with it. Angela Teresa, especially.

I should have told you, Papa, I know.

I never told you that it was she who pushed me off the Fortezza bridge railing when I was seven. Twenty-four feet to the water below. She was enraged that I could already speak and write Latin better than she. So lucky I wasn’t killed!

Your friend, Antonio, saved me. He glows with heroism in my memories. Ask him to verify this story when you see him. Tell him he is a good man.

For years, I gave in to anger whenever I recalled incidents such as that one. Anger is my great secret sin.

Resa became a monster in my childhood memories. Three years older than me and much … “heftier” would be too kind a word. For years, I dreamed of seeing her caned twelve of the best on her drawers. In my fantasy, for years after I came here, Sister Carlotta administered the blows. She pumps water for all the Poor Clares in the convent. She has an arm like a smith.

But as I see the end drawing near, I have ceased to think or speak in such ways. Jesus said we must forgive a brother seventy times seven, then again. He was right, and I was wrong. As we are instructed to forgive a brother, so also, of course, we must forgive a sister. Then, as we forgive those who sin against us, God forgives us. So simple a rule, but still His mercy passes all understanding.

I relearned this truth just recently. I had come to hate one of the novices here in the convent. But we finally talked in Mother Superior’s cell. After an hour, I suddenly realized why Pia is as she is. Then, I forgave. It worked. Again. And oh, the tide of joy that welled through my being. All of me. Cleansed.

I had to go through a cycle, but I did arrive at forgiveness. It washes the spirit newborn clean. I see that now with sharpest clarity as I face my earthly end.

I have never let you see this angry side of myself, Papa, but now I am dying. I know it. I feel in my viscera my vital force is dwindling. Too great a looseness of the bowels for too many days. No matter what I eat or drink, no matter what cordials I mix – in my shaking condition – nothing does any good.

Now I leave my dying wishes to you.

I ask again: reconcile with Vincenzo. He has offended you, I know, but he does love you. He so longs for your blessing. He just cannot show it. Fathers and sons! Harder than mothers and daughters? I just don’t know. How would one judge such a thing?

Please also keep supporting the Poor Clares in any way you can. I know your finances have been painfully reduced by this present pope and his lackeys and the cruel, stupid measures they have taken against you. But they shall pass, as shall you and I. Then, only the love and truth we showed while alive remain.

All things pass. But the love shown in our forgiveness for each other endures. The greater the difficulty of the forgiveness, the greater the merit in granting it. This I have learned from Mother Superior and Maria, Mother of Christ, in my years here. It is very hard, but it is possible if we give our hearts, our trust, to Him. Possible for any of us to truly forgive.

I’m sorry this letter is jumbled, repetitious, but I am ill and slipping toward the final shade. I know only enough to know that this message to you will be my last honest communication with any in this world. I have days now. Perhaps, hours.

Please, keep supporting the Poor Clares in this nunnery. They do much good in this world, despite the vile poisons in other realms that corrupt precious Mother Church. She is assailed from without and within in our times. Were ever times as trying as these?

                                   

                                                                     Pope Urban VIII

                                      (credit: Pietro da Cortona, via Wikimedia Commons) 

And now, lastly, I can speak of the truth that you shall leave when you must pass. Only one in the past and very few in the future shall leave to their kind a truth as precious and prodigious as that you will leave. Therefore, please forgive the fools who govern the Church in our time.

What they have done and continue to do to you is past belief. You worked so hard for a lifetime to demonstrate the genius past all human understanding that is evident in the operations of our cosmos. The energy, beauty, majesty, mercy, wisdom of our world – no, our worlds, as you have demonstrated by replicable evidence past all question. Yet they chose to put you on trial. With no rights accorded to you and no legal counsel save your own.

Tried for heresy! When what you have showed is the very opposite of that! The universe is far more amazing than ever humans had known, and it can be understood by thought, study, and testing in this world of matter, space and time. The incredible world we have been granted by the generous One who loves us so. And still they insist that to speak of real observations of this world and build understanding from one’s observations is heresy. 

To use our God-given minds is heresy! 

I admit I raged at them sometimes. Never grow. Never learn. It passes all sense.  

Heresy!! And when you refused to recant, they showed you the instruments with which they would torture you if you did not change your mind. You, who began your serious university years as a student of Medicine. I hated them till only these last few days, Papa. I prayed for understanding of why.  

And then I found the peace that comes by forgiveness. Those authorities hurt me perhaps more than they did you because I love you so. Sometimes it was past bearing. When the messenger told us you were to be tortured, I fell in a swoon. Mother Superior thought I might never awaken. I was that cold.

But I have learned to truly, sincerely forgive.

Why?

Because, Papa, what they say matters nothing. Not to History. The truth you placed before people is out, free among mankind. It will never be recaptured and contained. Your discoveries and, most of all your method, have set humankind free. Now, we can face, and someday even master, this world.

You have won, Papa. What need we care for these flawed present judges? I know past all question that God loves you, wants you to be at ease. Wants you to retire in quiet, if rather impoverished, circumstances.

Above all, do not question your own courage. Yes, you gave in to their threats. You officially recanted so they would lift the threat of torture. You buckled to the will of a gang of bullies.

But what does it matter? What would you have gained if you had let them rack you? I repeat: your truth is out; it has become the truth of mankind. We grow in knowledge by observation, thought, and testing in reality. In the finest example of your method, you showed the mathematics of elliptical revolutions. This truth has spread to every corner of Europe. One day it will reach around the globe.

The beauty of that model! The awesome power of it!

Them and their vain little picture, hundreds of years out of date, unsupported by evidence or reasoning, devised by a man who, on his best day in this world, would not have been fit to fill one corner of your shadow.

Forgive them, Papa! Let their crimes go. I repeat: I have learned the power of forgiveness, how it cleanses and heals. Life here in this convent, a life that was a gift from you, has given me that. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” That is the simple formula that contains the magic.

As you and God know, I too have been a sinner. As have we all.

Understanding this simple truth brings forgiveness. Then love blooms within. This is the precious gift Lord Jesus left for us. I praise Him for His mercy in showing it to me before I meet him at the Gates.   

I must leave off. I am fainting weak.

Good-bye, Papa. There will never be another like you. I am so proud to have been your girl.  

                         All of all my love,

                                 Your ever-loving daughter,

                                              Virginia  

   

                                                   Galileo Facing the Roman Inquisition 

                                   (credit: Cristiano Banti, via Wikimedia Commons)