Maria Goretti, as we know, is the Saint of purity and forgiveness.
Her painful and radiant story is well known: she was a little girl who knew how to live what Pope Francis calls the holiness of everyday life, the holiness of “the next-door neighbor,” and this led her, at the most extreme moment of her life, to forgive Alessandro Serenelli, who had attempted to assault her and then, when rejected, killed her.
What we want to ask ourselves today, however, is: what does Maria Goretti still have to say to our lives? Why do we still feel her to be alive and feel the need to turn to her in prayer?
The answer to this question, as we approach the 2025 Jubilee - which will see us all as pilgrims of hope - lies precisely in the fact that Maria Goretti, in every moment of her life, right to the very end, was a messenger of hope: she knew how to see horizons of goodness and glimpses of light where apparently there was only darkness.
“God will not abandon us”
Marietta’s life (as she was affectionately called by her family) was indeed very hard: she was only 10 when her father died, but in the face of that loss, Maria spoke the first words we know of from her, and they were words of invincible hope: “Mom, don’t worry, God will not abandon us.”
And this little girl teaches us through her actions the way of those who live with hope, because, naturally, she takes her mother’s place in doing the housework and caring for her siblings, so that her mother Assunta can go work in the fields. Assunta recalls: “Marietta took care of the housework, and then I would come at the last moment to give her a hand. She corrected her younger siblings […] I never noticed any fault in her. If I sometimes scolded her, it was because I was nervous, worried about the farm. Marietta calmly accepted the scolding and continued with her chores, without sulking at me at all. She had a generous heart toward me and her siblings.” A generous heart, a radiant heart, hers…
Her gaze always turned toward heaven
“Mom, when will I make my First Communion?” This was Marietta’s greatest desire, and when that day arrived, earlier than the canonical age, her heart was filled with great joy!
«What remained engraved in my mind,» a witness present in the church would later say, «was Marietta’s attitude: she seemed like a little angel standing there with her hands clasped, completely absorbed in the presence of the Lord.» Her mother Assunta echoed him: «Maria made her First Communion just like a saint.» And at the end of that day, she had only one desire: «When will we go again?» and, turning tenderly to her mother: «Mother, I will always be better».
Hoping beyond all hope: «I want him with me in Paradise»
The epilogue of Marietta’s life is well known: Alessandro Serenelli, after attempting to assault her, strikes her and mortally wounds her, but she responds to violence with love: when the parish priest explicitly asks her whether she forgives her murderer, she replies: «Yes, for the love of Jesus I forgive him, and I want him to come with me to Paradise».
If Alessandro wrote the darkest page in his story on July 5, 1902, Maria, by forgiving him, gave him back hope and the possibility of a new life: Alessandro and Maria would in fact meet in a dream filled with lilies, in the cell of the Noto prison, toward the end of 1906. Alessandro himself recounts it: «I see myself before a garden, with all white flowers and lilies in one corner. At a certain point I see Marietta coming down; beautiful and dressed in white. As she picked the lilies, she presented them to me and said, “Take them,” and smiled at me like an angel. In the presence of that smile, I gather courage and accept those lilies until my arms are full of them. Soon, however, I notice that those lilies in my arms are gradually transforming into little flames. Marietta smiles at me again and disappears. I wake up with a start: “Now I too will be saved,” I say to myself, “because I am certain that Marietta is praying for me. She came to visit me and grant me her forgiveness.” From that day on, I no longer feel the horror I once felt about my life».
And so, following her example, let us too become pilgrims of hope, and if we are going through a time of profound darkness or difficulty; if we carry within us an anger that will not dissolve and we cannot forgive, let us turn to her with confidence, so that she may grant us her courageous heart, capable of lifting its gaze, capable of seeing beyond and charting horizons of hope!
