Posted on 06/25/2012 4:06:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
ROME, June 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When Chiara Corbella learned she was pregnant with her third child, it was a great joy that ended in bittersweet tragedy for the young Italian mother, who died this month after postponing cancer treatment to save her cherished baby.
n a story that echoes that of Roman Catholic saint Gianna Molla, Chiara and her husband Enrico Petrillo embarked on a remarkable journey of faith in 2010 when they learned that they were pregnant with Francisco - and that Chiara had an aggressive form of cancer, reports the Catholic News Agency.
The news was especially poignant for the couple since both of Francisco’s elder siblings, Maria and David, had been lost shortly after birth. In fact, Chiara and Enrico had become popular pro-life speakers for their stories of their few treasured moments with each of their first two children before their brief lives came to an end.
This time, doctors said Francisco was healthy and developing normally. So when Chiara was advised to begin treatment immediately for her cancer, she declined, waiting for Francisco to be born in May of last year. The cancer progressed over the following year, depriving Chiara of sight in one eye before she finally succumbed on June 13, 2012.
“I am going to heaven to take care of Maria and David, you stay here with Dad. I will pray for you,” Chiara wrote to baby Francisco in a letter, one week before her death.
Chiara’s funeral Mass was celebrated by the Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who called Chiara “the second Gianna Beretta.”
Saint Gianna Molla was an Italian pediatrician who died in 1962 from complications caused by a fibroma on her uterus, after she refused both an abortion and a hysterectomy because she was pregnant with her fourth child.
Although a tragedy to outside observers - and certainly also for Enrico, to whom Chiara was happily married – the couple’s last conversations reveal, in the young husband’s words, “a story of love on the cross” that seemed to conquer even death.
“The truth is that this cross – if you embrace it with Christ – ceases to be as ugly as it looks. If you trust in him, you discover that this fire, this cross, does not burn, and that peace can be found in suffering and joy in death,” said Enrico, according to CNA. “I spent a lot of time this year reflecting on this phrase from the Gospel that says the Lord gives a cross that is sweet and a burden that is light.
“When I would look at Chiara when she was about to die, I obviously became very upset. But I mustered the courage and a few hours before – it was about eight in the morning, Chiara died at noon – I asked her.
“I said: ‘But Chiara, my love, is this cross really sweet, like the Lord says? She looked at me and she smiled, and in a soft voice she said, ‘Yes, Enrico, it is very sweet.’
“In this sense, the entire family didn’t see Chiara die peacefully, but happily, which is totally different.”
Enrico said he would tell his son Francisco when he was older that “the most important thing in life” is to “let yourself be loved in order to love and die happy,” and that “this is what his mother, Chiara, did.”
“She allowed herself to be loved, and in a certain sense, I think she loved everyone in this way,” he said. “I feel her more alive than ever. To be able to see her die happy was to me a challenge to death.”
Read the full CNA story here.
Exactly!!!! Straight to Heaven!!!
Thank you. What a beautiful woman.
Scripture says otherwise.
no such thing as purgatory.
Again, Scripture says otherwise. You'd better pray there's a purgatory because as St. John wrote in the Apocalypse nothing defiled shall enter heaven. If you arrogantly think that you'll be perfect upon your death and waltz right into heaven you're going to be in for a very rude awakening.
A few other things which Scripture teaches and which you've quite obviously never read:
"Understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:20-21
"And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Peter 3:15-16
I don’t want to beat you up or anything. Please note, it is not contradictory in the slightest. When you accept Christ’s work on the cross, His blood is what covers your sin. When the Heavenly Father looks upon you he will see His Son’s blood. That is the payment for our sins. Nothing else would suffice.
Ahhh, well it's clear then. Catholics believe this woman, who sacrificed herself to save her child, went to the same hell as anyone else down there - murderers, rapists, pedophiles, whatever.
Clarity is good. Thank you for explaining this.
Brought tears to these jaded eyes. God Bless you Chiara. Mother of the Year.
I can only hope and pray that we all stay focused on the infinite love of this woman for her 3rd child and her loving, unselfish act of sacrifice, and not get side-tracked on the path to Heaven.
For once, lets just enjoy this beautiful story of a mother’s love for her child without detracting from it. Just drink it in. Just bask in this mother’s love for her child and the joy with which she surrendered herself to the painful ravages of cancer. Pure joy. She was gleeful for the cancer to consume her, that her baby would live.
I can’t imagine such sacrifice. I can only be humbled by it.
My monitor got all blurry. Words fail me.
Regards,
GtG
Suffering is necessary in this life in order to follow the example of Christ Who suffered, not for His own sins (He had none) but for ours. Peter instructs us NOT to needlessly suffer for our sins since Christ has already paid that penalty.
Suffering after this life is pointless because we will be free from sin including any temptation when in the presence of Christ. When we see Him, we will be made like Him, according to the scriptures.
Contrary to what you say Baptists believe, they and other evangelical churches recognize that not everyone who calls themselves Christian will make it to Heaven. Only the blood of Jesus can wash away sin and redeem us to God. When we suffer for our sins in this life, it is discipline by a loving Heavenly Father, but it is not payment for our sin. Only Christ’s blood can pay that debt, set us free, and make us fit for Heaven where no sin exists.
Relying on penance and hail Mary’s in this life, or hoping purgatory in the next life will allow the sin debt to be paid to avoid Hell are both false doctrines which are leading many souls into that place prepared for the Devil because these lead people astray from total faith and dependence on the blood of Jesus and His finished work on the cross for our redemption.
Here are FR threads about St. Gianna Molla
Prepare to be amazed! The 2nd miracle of St. Gianna Molla
Daughter of St. Gianna Molla to Visit U.S. for the First Time
A Holy Couple Reunited in Heaven—Death of Pietro Molla, Husband of St. Gianna Beretta Molla ....
Catholic Health Center for Women Opens in Manhattan (Gianna Center)
Daughter of Saint Gianna Beretta Molla Attends US March for Life
A patron saint for life (Gianna Beretta Molla)
Pope Canonizes Gianna Molla; Secular Media at a Loss
Bl. Gianna Beretta Molla
Gianna Beretta, Who Died for Her Unborn Child, to Be Canonized (She Refused Cancer Treatment)
Gianna Beretta Molla Offered Life For Her [Unborn]Child
Blessed Gianna[Gianna Beretta Molla]
Purgatory has the misconception of being a bad place. I am not here to change your mind nor convince you any way or the other. As a Catholic I do not fathom to understand God and I certainly do not assume that because of something I choose to do will effect my standing in Heaven. I choose Love as I would hope you do.
Christians bought with the blood of Christ have no sin or stain on their soul. It has been removed as far as the east is from the west. Why would God lobe us so much to die for us but leave the work unfinished? If you are in Christ you are a new creation, part of the spotless Bride right now! No further payment or purgatory needed
“Suffering in this life is necessary in order to follow the example of Christ.” What do you think Penance is? It is doing the will of God. Not just having the right thoughts or the right intentions, but actually doing. Our actions might not be heroic, like the Italian mother, but what we do must be the right things. If not, well, as Catholic saints or Puritan divines alike told us, we may be on the road not to heaven but perdition.
When we die, we are then confronted with the truth of our lives. If we have been faithful to Christ, are pure in out thoughts, words and deeds, then when we face him, it will be with joy. But if we have not, then what? If we hate him in this life, we will hate him in death. But Most of us have been inconstant lovers: when we confront him knowing how we have failed him and let him down, shall we not shed tears of remorse? Shall we not burn with shame?
I’m not sure what that has to do with a belief in purgatory. When we stand before Christ in the judgement of believers, we will be rewarded extravagantly for the least little thing we did for Him. Our worthless deeds will be consumed and disappear. Heaven is a place of eternal joy not shame and remorse. I guess we will have to agree to disagree, but I think Scripture is clear that Christ has made us a new creation already at the time we first believe. We are anxiously awaiting to see and have revealed to us what He has already made us. His sacrifice is sufficient.
My point, Robby, is that purgatory is a fictitious invention of man, not something God made. It doesn’t exist.
Our (i.e. pertaining to believers not unbelievers) suffering here and now is NOT to pay for our sins. It is to learn holiness and to set an example to others so they can see Christ in us.
No penance or self-affliction or other human effort will ever pay for, purge or redeem us from sin. These are ONLY and EXCLUSIVELY accomplished by the blood of Christ through faith in His blood.
Prayers, fastings, watchings, and spending time in quiet solitude communing with God can be beneficial to put our hearts in tune with God. These are worthless if there is any hint of doing them to earn forgiveness. We must do them BECAUSE of the great debt we have already been forgiven, IF WE HAVE INDEED BEEN FORGIVEN.
If anyone seeks forgiveness from God, let him first and only flee from God’s wrath through the blood of Christ. There will be no second chance after this life because it is appointed to man once to die and after that the judgment.
Catholically speaking, love is irrelevent. This mother loved her child enough to sacrifice her life to save it, yet the Catholic position is that the best this non-Catholic can hope for is purgatory, and that only to escape hell.
Even then, it's dicey. For what if she doesn't accept Catholic teachings in purgatory? What if the best conscience of this noble, loving, courageous mother makes her choose, oh, Protestant beliefs instead (I won't strain the point by bringing in brave, loving Hindu or Buddhist mothers, who, as everyone knows, would never be allowed into purgatory no matter what they did). Nope, in that case, eternal purgatory, or eventual hell, it is for her.
Yet ole' Teddy Kennedy... well, he was Catholic all the way, and had enough golden-robed prelates swinging incense around his fat corpse to shovel it straight to purgatory, if not grease the palm of St. Peter himself and let him belly right up to heaven's best bar.
Change my mind or convince me in any way?
Don't worry about it.
Feel free to ignore the fact that neither Christ or the Apostles ever even implied that anything in the Septuagint was in error or wasn't the Word of God, but I'll stick to all of the Scriptures Christ and the Apostles taught from. Since you prefer to agree with the Pharisee canon that Luther fell back on to avoid what he didn't like, why not toss out the rest of what Luther didn't like? You know, James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation and so on? Sorry, but people who claim to believe in the Bible but throw out a portion of His Word aren't reliable interpreters of Scripture.
In fact, even according to the subset of the Bible such folks do accept, it's clear they shouldn't throw out portions of the Scripture Christ never said were in error :Gal 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.
Of course, no where does Scripture say all such false apostles will even know they're false apostles. In fact, they've probably been deceived themselves, but still:
2 Cor 11:13 For such false apostles are deceitful workmen, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2 Cor 11:14 And no wonder: for Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light.
have a nice day
Can we please carry on this dispute elsewhere? Thank you.
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