On the day of the centenary of the birth of the servant of God Natuzza Evolo (1924-2009), August 23, the church built in Paravati (her homeland in the Vibo Valentia area) and dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary refuge of souls becomes a diocesan sanctuary. This event puts us in front of a question that as Christians and as believers we cannot avoid in any way.
What is the legacy that this extraordinary woman has left in the thousands of people who met her or who had the opportunity to know her throughout the years of her existence and even after her death, with a growing interest in her life, in the fame of sanctity, which characterized her and which continues to characterize the process of beatification currently underway?
Certainly this woman was a living representation of God’s love.
In her motherhood we have somehow recognized the motherhood of God, that motherhood indicated by Pope John Paul I, now blessed, as one of the characteristics of the Lord. And who else if not Mary, with her Immaculate Heart, represents to the highest degree the experience of this motherhood?
Precisely for this reason Natuzza has always thought of Maria as a home and of this woman’s heart as the best refuge, where she can find that space to reconnect with the world, to recreate herself, to regain the strength necessary for her journey.
Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is not simply a devotion among others. By connecting to the experiences of the revelations of Fatima to the little shepherds Giacinta, Francesco and Lucia, Natuzza fits into this thread and deepens it through her testimony, her spirituality, her mystical experience.
It is beautiful that one hundred years after its birth, that church, built thanks to the generosity of the faithful, in a place that was certainly not favorable according to the building criteria, that temple that Evolo strongly wanted as a symbolic place, able to represent in a very concrete way this welcoming love of Mary, this motherhood that Natuzza herself witnessed throughout her life, becomes a diocesan sanctuary.
This title is not simply an honorific, but is a recognition of a place that represents the destination of many pilgrimages, that represents the focal point of many people who live within the spiritual itinerary indicated by “Mamma Natuzza”, as her numerous spiritual children called and call her.
It is about making more and more current that message that the evangelist John emphasizes several times, in the Gospel story and in his letters, and that is that God is love. And love is an experience, it is not an explanation, it is not a theology to be learned in a book, but it is an experience that is made within one’s own life.
An experience that comes from listening, just like Natuzza did throughout her life. She loved because she listened to the dramas of so many people who came knocking on her door, looking for comfort.
Love is passion for the other, that is, the ability to suffer together with the other, to rejoice and suffer in the lives of the people around us. Natuzza rejoiced and suffered above all because of the many dramatic stories that she herself encountered in her life. Stories of children, adults, especially young people whom she loved very much.
And for this he spent much in prayer and in the offering of himself. The offering also of his wounds and acute mystical sufferings in the image and likeness of the Passion of Jesus, a sign of his total love/identification with Christ.
Perhaps, without exaggeration, we could say that throughout her life Natuzza was herself a sanctuary, a sanctuary where everyone could experience the love of God through that motherhood that had the scent of Mary, that was the mirror of that Immaculate Heart refuge of souls, which is the title with which Mary presents herself to her, asks her and tells her in detail even the birth of that church that today becomes a sanctuary. It has been said of Natuzza with a very effective expression: she was a caress from God!
The most important things in our lives we always need to symbolize in some way, that is, to represent them through alphabets that can be understood by each of us. Thus, being able to say to someone “I love you” becomes a hug, being able to pray becomes the gesture of kneeling, being able to be forgiven becomes the cry of those who receive forgiveness.
These ways in which we recount much deeper experiences within us tell us of the intimate necessity of constantly having languages and ways to be able to say the unspeakable.
“No one has ever seen God,” writes St. John, “but if we love one another, his love is perfected in us.” Translated, all this basically means that the God whom no one sees becomes visible where there are people who sincerely love one another.
Natuzza spent her entire life loving, and if she suffered, she suffered for love. Her suffering is not a punishment from God, but a need of her own love. It is beautiful then, a hundred years after the birth of this extraordinary woman, to be able to express all our gratitude for the gift of her life, of her testimony, of the way in which she manifested this love and of which an evident trace remains in those places that are now places blessed by God and that the Church recognizes through the elevation to a sanctuary of that church so desired by Natuzza and that if it is proclaimed blessed will also welcome her mortal remains, now kept in a chapel of the Auditorium, in the complex that arose around the temple.
The great difference, however, that characterizes the memory of the saints is not that of turning to the past simply with a gesture of gratitude, but to continue to recognize that the life of this woman continues to produce life, continues to be the cause of life, of conversion, in the lives of many faithful who continue to turn to her and who with the passing of time become ever more numerous.
Certainly Natuzza would not have wanted any spotlight on her, she would not have wanted any notoriety. But God likes to take the humble and put them in first place, making them a mirror of that light that only those who let themselves be loved by God can reflect to the fullest.
