When Antonio was around nine years old, shortly after his father’s murder, the young boy discovered not only that he was a child of sin, but also that God would be a mighty rival for the attention of his mother. For the rest of his life, Antonio would remember the macabre scene of his father Arsenio’s rotting body, covered by a bunch of branches and already infested by maggots, the day when his twenty-six-year-old mother Marguerita found the doomed aristocrat after being led there at the prodding of his hound. Antonio had been worried because three days had passed since his father – his kind father, his always solicitous father—had left for Villa Palazzi on what should have been a one-day excursion and had not returned. When his father’s dog had appeared at the castle at Montepulciano, desperately tugging at his mother’s skirt and whining without cease, Antonio had suspected it was the portent of some great evil and was not surprised – though he was horrified – by the sight of his father’s wasting corpse at the place where the hound had led them. Nor did his mother seem to be surprised upon finding the cadaver. “He was guilty of a great sin,” she stated grimly, as if it went without saying, “and the Lord has not tarried to exact His punishment. Now it is I who must change my ways before God or be condemned for all time.” Thereafter, everything changed in the life of the young Antonio who soon learned that his mother considered him the product and the evidence of her grievous sin, the transgression for which her accomplice had been damned. Eventually, Antonio would conclude that to Margherita, he was not only a son but also a mark of shame before her God, an object of “holy hatred,” though she loved him a sa façon, just like Abraham loved his son Isaac, whom he was nonetheless willing to immolate at the insistence of his God.

The day after Arsenio’s body was found, Antonio and his mother Margherita were both inconsolable, albeit for different reasons. Antonio mourned because he had forever lost his babbo, Margherita because she had recognized the gravity of her sin. Antonio did not know it at the time – he would soon learn it and much more – but his mother felt Arsenio’s murder was just deserts for nine years spent in exquisite and forbidden sin. On the day after the murder, Margherita spent most of the morning weeping and praying in the garden of the castle where she and Arsenio had spent so many delightful hours in each other’s arms. Antonio asked his mother if his father was in Heaven, and she responded peremptorily that he was not for he had spat in the face of the risen Christ. Antonio did not understand her. After all, Arsenio had been a generous and loving father, a man of peace, but his mother spoke about him as if he had been some monstrous criminal. “The chickens have come home to roost,” she told her baffled son, “and God has rendered His judgment against your father for nine years of habitual sin.” Then Margherita announced to Antonio’s grandmother – his beloved Nonna – that she and her son were forever quitting the castle and that she wasn’t taking any of her jewels with her. When Nonna protested, telling her there was no reason for her to leave, Margherita had responded curtly that she could no longer continue to profit from the lost decade she had spent as a kept woman in abhorrent concubinage. Arsenio’s murder had been a tipping point in the life of Margherita as Antonio would soon discover. Like Saint Paul on his road to Damascus, the scales had fallen from her eyes as she realized how vile she was in the eyes of God.

“Where are you going?” asked the perplexed Nonna. “At least, let me give you some money for the journey.”

“I’m not quite sure, wherever the Lord leads me. I guess I’ll go back to my father in Laviano, assuming he’ll take me back after I’ve visited such shame upon his house. Although my father was guiltless, I brought ignominy to his name. All the gossipmongers in town said his daughter was a whore and this even before I absconded with your son at the age of seventeen. As far as your money, I don’t need it as I have enough to pay for the journey to Laviano. It was you who didn’t want your son to marry me, since unlike you I am not of noble birth, just a poor maid whom you tolerated as the mistress of your son, a passing fancy who would eventually be replaced by a wife in a holy Christian marriage.”

“You were never treated as a maid, Margherita. You were the envy of all the women in Montepulciano, always bedecked in jewels, always dressed like a noblewoman, always sharing Arsenio’s bedroom in the palace. You have no reason to complain for with all the servants you have been imperious as a queen. And I can assure you that if you and Antonio stay at the palace, you’ll continue to be treated as members of the family. We’ll continue to pay for the best tutors for Antonio. His life certainly doesn’t have to change because his father died.”

“Don’t think you can continue to tempt me with your riches. A monkey, even if dressed in silk, a monkey remains. A regal outfit does not make up for a disfigured soul. As far as Antonio, what will he be taught if he remains at the palace? You surely failed to raise his father to be a righteous Christian man. At all events, Antonio also has some sins to expiate since he was conceived in sin.”

Antonio listened as his mother and grandmother spoke, understanding very little of their conversation. Why did his mother say his father was not a righteous Christian man? What did it mean to be conceived in sin? Why had his mother decided to leave the palace at Montepulciano where they had always lived? In the ensuing months, he would have more and more questions about his mother’s conduct, which even in the eyes of a child would seem outrageous and demented. As she took him by the hand and they escaped the castle on a Monday afternoon, with only the clothes on their backs, he realized that his life was about to change forever. He didn’t know it yet, but he was about to learn what it means to expiate a sin in the marrow of his bones.

***

When Margherita and Antonio arrived at the home of her father in Laviano after a long journey, she timidly knocked on the door, not knowing what her father’s reaction would be. She hadn’t seen him in nine years, the duration of her shame, and she knew her conduct had greatly pained him, upright Catholic man that he was. But it was not her father Luigi who opened the door but her stepmother Brigida, her ancient nemesis, whose hatred for Margherita had increased over time as she learned that Margherita was living in luxury as the common law wife of a powerful aristocrat. The only reason Brigida didn’t tell her stepdaughter to immediately depart was that her disabled husband Luigi – he had lost his right leg to a tumor years before – soon appeared on the scene and received Margherita as a prodigal daughter. He hugged her fondly and kissed Antonio on the cheek. Both Luigi and Brigida were surprised by Margherita’s appearance. They knew that she was reputed to dress like a member of the nobility and yet the woman who appeared at their door looked like anything but – no ornaments on her hair, no colors on her face, wearing only a coarse tunic she had taken from one of the servants at the castle.

“So, your lover abandoned you,” said Brigida in a trenchant voice as Antonio listened, “and now you come to us dressed in rags together with your spurious child, symbol of your shame. You should just find another man to satisfy your lust and your love for luxurious things. Even if you’re not as beautiful as when you left Laviano, still I don’t think it will be hard for you to find another illicit lover.”

Antonio tugged at the sleeve of his mother’s tunic.

“I’m hungry,” he said. “We haven’t eaten since we left the castle.”

“We’re busy,” replied Margherita. “You’ll be fed in a second.”

Then she turned to her stepmother Brigida.

“My accomplice died. We found him murdered in a forest. And it is true that I have lived a life of shame and that my son Antonio is a bastard. But I intend to make my peace with God and shall one day be declared a saint. I have no intention to engage in acts of concupiscence again, although it is true that the enemy of my soul has given me that temptation. But I have decided forever to abandon carnal pleasure as it is offensive to my God. I now spit in the face of the enemy just as I once spat in the face of my sweet Jesus.”

“Surely you jest, Margherita, when you predict such a lofty future for yourself. You are one of the greatest sinners in all of Tuscany. What gave you the outlandish idea that you would be among the Lord’s chosen ones despite your deep-seated perfidy and lust?”

“The Lord let me know it. I was illuminated by the Holy Spirit as I cried in the garden of my lover’s castle, having recognized the enormity of my sin.”

“So now you claim to be a mystic?” asked Brigida with scorn. “Is there no limit to your pride? Why would God Almighty communicate with a worm?”

“Believe me, I have no pride. I recognize I’m one of the most miserable creatures on the planet. I feel horror when I think of my past. Still, I’ve received an intimation from God that I could be forgiven… if I do enough to make amends for my many sins. I’m not claiming a miraculous ecstasy. He simply let me know it in a whisper within my mind. And there is nothing the Lord delights in as much as the penitent worm which has turned from its evil ways and accepted His grace.”

Antonio approached his mother once again.

“I’m hungry,” he repeated.

“Must you always pester me? Can’t you see we’re talking of important things? Don’t you realize we’re talking about God?”

At that moment, Brigida intervened.

“Go to the kitchen and ask Pilar to give you breakfast. Since your unnatural mother doesn’t seem to care whether you eat or starve.”

Then she turned to her husband.

“I don’t think we should let her live with us again. God only knows what opprobrium she has brought unto this house. If she’s a saint, as she claims to be, let her live off alms. But I guarantee that her new resolve to lead a life of virtue shall be forgotten in a week. She’ll soon give herself to another furtive consort. She needs to be desired and exalted, dressed in finery no matter what the cost. After all, the boy’s father wasn’t the first of her many lovers. Or do you deny that, Luigi? She’s often profited off her sensuality. I don’t want a hussy in my home.”

“My daughter, dressed in virginal white or covered with the dark dung of lust, is my daughter either way,” responded Margherita’s father. “I cannot turn her away as she comes knocking at my door dressed in poverty. Tell Pilar to prepare a room for her and the boy.”

Then Antonio began to see his mother’s transformation with curiosity and bewilderment. She cut off her hair completely. She covered her face in ashes. She dressed in threadbare clothes. She ate seldom and meagerly. She dedicated her day to constant prayer, often interrupted by violent sobs. She scraped her face with sharp stones to destroy its beauty. But what most perplexed Antonio was when she paraded through the streets of Laviano, a rope about her neck and a blindfold about her eyes, with Pilar leading her and Antonio at her side, screaming to the curious crowds, “Behold a woman who has been steeped in sin! Behold a woman whose misery knows no bounds! Behold a woman who forsook her God! Behold a woman who was defeated by her wayward body and succumbed to the wanton monster of her flesh!” Even at nine years of age, Antonio realized that his mother was somehow different from other women, recognized that she acted in a particular way. When she started scourging her back to blood with a leather whip like the flagellants during the days of the bubonic plague, the nine-year-old suspected that something was deeply wrong with the woman with the shaven head. She was simply not the same person who had raised him in the palace.

“My body is a traitor,” she said to her father in Antonio’s presence when Luigi complained of her excessive mortifications. “I must subdue it like the treacherous beast it is, like the worst of my enemies on earth. For many years my body attempted to destroy my soul. Now it is I who must destroy my body. It is better to have a weak and suffering body than to lose your soul. Between me and my body, there must be a struggle until death.”

“You have to change your behavior, stop making a spectacle of yourself. Brigida is complaining that we have become a scandal to our neighbors and that all you do is remind people of your sin when it should be forgotten instead. Just last week you got on the roof of our house and proclaimed to all our neighbors that they should despise you because you are a sinner guilty of offenses of all kinds against both the Creator and His creatures.”

“I can’t change my behavior. It’s what the Lord wants. My past must not be forgotten. It must be atoned.”

“In that case,” responded Luigi, “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave, although it pains me to make such a request.”

“I think that’s for the best,” responded Margherita. “I must live a life without material comforts in order to obtain forgiveness for my innumerable sins. I must follow Saint Francis in his devotion to Lady Poverty and spend my entire day in contemplation of Jesus’ Passion on the Cross. If I follow the path the Lord sets before me, I may yet achieve salvation despite my manifold sins.”

“You’ve changed, Margherita,” said her father. “But in a sense you’re still the same, however chastened. You cannot live by halves. You’re driven to extremes. When you sinned, you cared not a whit about what anyone thought of you. Now that you’ve chosen to repent, you don’t care if everyone derides you. You’re throwing yourself headlong into the arms of God just like you once hurled yourself into a man’s embrace. But you can’t dedicate your whole day to religious reveries when you have a son to raise. The life of Saint Francis would have been completely different if he had a child.”

“Can I ask you a question?” queried Margherita.

“Yes?”

“Can I leave Antonio with you? You’re entirely right. It will be very difficult to raise a child at the same time I am seeking consolation in God. I have already learned that Christ crucified is a jealous lover. God is an exigent God. I can’t spend time which belongs to the Lord in feeding and bathing a son. I can’t prefer any creature to Jesus, not even the fruit of my womb, but must love all with the same healthy detachment.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” replied Margherita’s father. “Brigida will never consent to become your son’s nanny. And I’m disabled as you well know.”

Listening to his grandfather, Antonio shuddered at the idea of having to live alone with his holy and pious mother. He already suspected that she was no more concerned about him than if he had been any other mortal, that she hated everything in him that reminded her of his father, that he would forever see him as an obstacle in her relationship with God.

He already knew he couldn’t possibly be a rival to the Sun.

***

Soon Margherita decided to make her way to Cortona with her hungry child in tow.

“Why Cortona?” asked Antonio as they began to walk.

“Christ has given me the inspiration in a moment of light. There is a Franciscan monastery in Cortona that welcomes penitents seeking reconciliation with God. Perhaps we can benefit from the kindness of the monks, seeing that we have nowhere else to go.”

“I think we should just go back to Montepulciano. My Nonna will receive us with open arms even as your own father has rejected you.”

“Hush, child,” said Margherita. “The idea of returning to the castle is a temptation that I struggle with every day. But it comes from the Evil One, the tempter who seeks nothing less than my destruction and who constantly tells me it would be easy for me to seduce another wealthy lover because of my exceeding beauty. If I go back to a life of luxury and ease, I shall never make amends with my God and will lapse back into sin.”

“So, you have decided to forever quit the castle? Are we going to live by begging?”

 “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t realize the enormity of my choice. Living on my own will be a source of great difficulties. But the alternative is an irrevocable separation from my God.”

As usual, Antonio had a very difficult time understanding what his mother meant when she talked about the transgressions that gnawed at her soul, stubbornly and without cease. But even at his young age, Antonio had already concluded that there were certain aspects of his mother’s sudden change in conduct which he would never be able to comprehend. He had realized that she would never again be the seemingly carefree woman adorned by pearls and emeralds who had raised him joyfully in the palace at Montepulciano, riding her horses, eating at feasts, delighting in dances. And yet, the more he spent time with this new woman that accompanied him the more he wondered whether that joy had always been a pretense, whether his mother had lived with a hidden guilt for years…

Once they arrived at Cortona, disheveled and dressed in rags, Margherita and Antonio were approached by two pious women who noticed their destitution.

“What brings you to this town?” asked one of the women. “You must be hungry. Did you have food on your journey?”

“Not very much,” Antonio confided.

“Do you have lodgings for the night? Have you made arrangements?”

Margherita, who delighted in being scorned as her Christ was scorned, made an abrupt confession.

“I lived in sinful union with a man who was murdered, whose eternal soul I may have imperiled. And when I returned to my father, he banished me from his house as a result of his great shame. I’m a vile creature who deserves to live in penury. As far as finding a place to sleep, we just leave that to the providence of God.”

“My name is Raneria,” said the matron, “and this is Marinaria. We have a cottage adjacent to our home where you can spend the night.”

“And we’ll feed you,” said the other woman, looking at Antonio.

That night, Antonio for the first time witnessed one of his mother’s ecstasies and it frightened him to no end. He had been playing in the garden with a friendly dog and had returned to the cottage shortly before sunset when he found his mother sitting on the bed in a catatonic state, motionless and absent, having lost all control over her senses. Her eyes were wide open, but Antonio sensed that she did not see him, that she was unconscious of her surroundings as she was silently weeping. She seemed to be insensible to all exterior stimuli. He called out her name and she did not respond. He took her by the shoulders and shook her, again to no avail. He tried desperately to wake her by screaming in her ear, even pulling at her hair, but she remained in her trance, speaking incoherently to an invisible interlocutor whom Antonio suspected was her God, since she constantly cried out the name of Jesus as she spoke.

“Yes, my Jesus!” she exclaimed. “I want to be your Mary Magdalene, the repentant sinner who stood with you as you suffered on the Cross. Yes! I want to wash your feet with my tears and dry them with my hair. I want you to love me as you loved the woman from Magdala, the first apostle to witness your Resurrection. I seek nothing, I wish for nothing but you, my Lord Jesus Christ.”

Then she was in rapt silence as she seemed to wait for an answer. Apparently, the response was the one she desired for her tears of sadness turned into tears of joy. Her face became suddenly radiant, glowing even, as she replied to the Christ in her bliss, “Yes, whatever you ask for, that I shall do. If you want me to live in dire poverty, in poverty I shall live. If you want me to join the Third Order of Saint Francis, that’s what I’ll do. If you want me to abandon all love of creatures except as I love them in you, yes, even my own son, I’ll have no objections to your demands. But I wish you would call me daughter rather than poverella. Please assure me that I’m in your good graces and will achieve salvation despite my long litany of sins.”

At that moment, Margherita started sobbing uncontrollably, alarming her son who had no idea what to do. Her tears were so copious, her desperation so intense, that Antonio feared that she might die.

“How can that be?” she demanded desperately. “How can you give me the grace of seeing you without giving me the knowledge that I’ll always be yours? I would never yield to creature or temptation for my hope is in you, my Lord. And why won’t you call me your daughter?”

At that moment, something happened that made the young Antonio conclude that his mother had finally gone mad. She began to utter the words spoken to her by the Christ and then responding in turn, as if she was having a conversation with herself.

“I cannot guarantee anything because you still have free will,” said Margherita repeating what she heard the Christ telling her interiorly. “And you still have many sins to expiate, my dearest poverella. You cannot yet receive from me the title of daughter as you are still the daughter of a most grievous and habitual sin, an ongoing transgression in which you engaged for a full decade. Know that the man who seduced you will be punished for a very long time. Know, too, that your temptations will not cease even though I have grappled with your invisible enemy and broken the power which your sad fall had given him over you. But the evil one will continue to whisper in your ear that you have every excuse to give yourself up to sin and that you will find rich and voluptuous masters to love you for your exterior loveliness. And yet, the only thing that matters is your inward beauty. Always think about the secret adornment of your soul and someday, the inmost desires of your heart will be fulfilled.”

“Then,” said Margherita, “why don’t you rid me of the chains of my body now? Why don’t you summon me home immediately? Grant me the blessing of a holy death so that I will forever be removed from the grasp of my enemy. There is no reason to delay. I have nothing but contempt for the world and my own body, so I welcome death this very day.”

She said nothing about the destiny of her son as she awaited Jesus’ response.

“You shall die on the day allotted by my Father for your death,” He told her, “not a day before, not a day later. What you must do today is purify yourself through a perfect Confession so that you can deserve my Mercy and continue with Me on the journey. Only then shall I be able to call you daughter.”

Then the Lord blessed her with a knowledge of each and every one of her sins, down to the most minute detail, and Margherita recoiled in horror as she engaged in a thorough examination of her conscience. There was no limit to her grief as she crashed upon her bed immersed in pain and pleaded for relief.

“Oh Lord,” she cried, “who shall prevent me from loving You?”

***

By the time he was twelve, Antonio became accustomed to his mother’s incessant ecstasies – entire days spent conversing with the Christ – and couldn’t figure out whether they were miracles or delusions. Her mother was obsessed with the atonement for her sins – she could never cease thinking about them – and based on what she reported, it appeared that the Lord was obsessed in a similar manner. Truth be told, Antonio suspected that his mother was focusing on Jesus’ few accusations and ignoring all the wondrous things He said to her during her raptures. Instead of remembering when Jesus told her that there was no other woman in the world whom He loved as much as her, Margherita placed emphasis on the few times He admonished her for not loving Him enough. Instead of reveling in Jesus’ constant reassurances that He expected her to have a place in Heaven with the virgin saints, Margherita despaired because the Lord recognized she was no virgin. But there was one thing on which his mother and the Lord agreed and which caused Antonio a great consternation: the need for Margherita to appease the Father for her manifold sins by punishing her body. And so she fasted, she self-flagellated, she didn’t sleep, she even contemplated disfiguring her lovely face with a knife since she thought her detested face was the enemy of her soul and an ally of the devil. She told her Confessor that she would not mortally wound herself, but that she needed to slash her mouth, nose and lips since her comely face had led to the destruction of many souls and had almost destroyed her own. “In obedience to our God,” she claimed, “all excess is permitted.” Fra Giusta Benegnati pooh-poohed the idea, telling her it stank of pride and may have been suggested to her by the dark angel of vainglory. “If you proceed with such a demented notion, Margherita, I shall never again give you the sacrament of Confession.”

By then, Antonio had figured out that his mother somehow saw him as a co-participant in her crime and thought he had to engage in expiation for that sin with his very life. Margherita and Antonio lived by begging for alms and as word of her holiness spread throughout Cortona and its environs, they received huge baskets of food every day from wealthy benefactors. That did not mean that Antonio was allowed to eat well, however, for Margherita loved the poor so much that she gave them almost all the food and kept only the scraps – stale bread and moldy cheese – for herself and her son. If he complained – and the older he got the more he complained – she would respond that gluttony was a cardinal sin and that the body could only be mastered through privations. She added that by giving the best food to the poor, the two of them could store riches in Heaven and make the Lord forget that Antonio’s earthly life began with a sin.

And so it was with clothes. Margherita owned only three coarse tunics – Antonio was surprised she hadn’t given two of them to the poor – and she expected her son to live in a similar manner. He owned only one pair of pants and three shirts, two of them in tatters and the third used expressly for Mass. But one Sunday morning as he was getting ready to go to church, Antonio discovered that his best shirt had disappeared. When he confronted his mother about it, she blithely responded that a beggar had appeared at the door with a threadbare shirt and had begged for some clothes. She couldn’t give him the two old shirts – one must give where it hurts, not where it’s easy – so she had given him Antonio’s Sunday shirt instead. “Making amends for our sins doesn’t take place in a day,” she told him, returning to her old obsession. “It must take place during a lifetime.”

At that point, the youth exploded.

“I have no reason to punish myself for a sin I did not commit. Next time you talk with the Christ, ask Him if He holds your sin against me. You can’t force me to share in your inordinate penances since I am blameless. You don’t feed me adequately, you spend entire days in trances, worrying not a whit about me, and now you just gave away the only shirt that I’m not embarrassed to wear in public.”

“Humility, humility,” Margherita responded. “You might think that I’m a demanding mother, but I want to teach you the virtue of humility. Had my parents not pampered me for my beauty, I never would have become a proud adolescent who flouted the laws of God. And pride in one’s clothes is a dangerous earthly attachment. When Jesus sent His apostles on their mission to evangelize the multitudes, He told them not to take more than one pair of sandals. When Saint Francis preached throughout Italy, he had but one tunic. What do you care if people sneer at the way you dress if a poor man now has at least one shirt to brave the winter? Don’t you see that a foolish and misplaced pride condemns itself?”

“I’m tired of your excessive devotions. Nobody else lives the way we do. Do you think an ordinary mother would give the poor exquisite meals and the most savory morsels while feeding her child only the crumbs? Do you think another mother would take pride in dressing her child in rags? Do you think other women use a hard log for a pillow or sleep on the ground as you do? No, you’re a fanatic who publishes her penitence like a badge of honor. I want to return to the castle at Montepulciano where we wanted for nothing.”

Margherita paused while she considered her son’s words. Then she responded in a pensive voice.

“Perhaps we should return to Montepulciano so that I can obtain the full remission of my sins. Perhaps forgiveness is right where I fell.”

Antonio shook his head in incredulity.

“I think God forgave you long ago,” he replied sternly. “Doesn’t the Christ repeatedly tell you that you’re one of his favorites? Why return to a crime that is far behind you? Your sins have been forgiven a thousand times.”

“Still, it’s the people of Montepulciano that I’ve most offended. What example have I given to their daughters? My conscience won’t give me a moment’s respite if I don’t receive their pardon.”

“You spent eight days in Confession with Fra Giunta Benegnati. I’m sure you explained in detail each and every one of your sins. We’re not going to Montepulciano so that you can debase yourself once again by making another public Confession. We’re going to Montepulciano because I can’t spend one more day living with you.”

“You think I don’t love you, don’t you, Antonio? But it’s not that I despise you, it’s just that I must love you like another son of God and not my own. I must treat every one of God’s creatures just the same, not preferring anyone even if they are family but loving them only in God. Therefore, I should neither rejoice nor grieve over any created thing. So great is my love of God that beside it all love for neighbor and son seems only hypocrisy.”

“You can tell that to the Christ when you’re in one of your trances.  I’m quite sure I’ve heard enough.”

“Let me tell you why we only eat what’s left after the poor are fed. Jesus said the first will be the last and the last will be the first. We cannot eat to satiety and then give the leftovers to those who are desperately hungry. It’s not that I don’t care about you. It’s just that I want you to learn to be a man for others and be willing to sacrifice everything for Jesus and His poor. Before we satisfy our own needs, we must care for the pauper, the orphan, the abandoned. Believe me, I’ve asked the Lord to allow me to take upon myself the weight of their afflictions. I know that some call me an unnatural mother who neglects her only son, but they are people who belong to the world and not the realm of God. I don’t want you to be like the rich man who was unable to give up his earthly treasures when Jesus told him that unless he did so he would not enter Paradise.”

“I still say I want to return to Montepulciano.”

“You realize your grandmother is dead, don’t you? During one of my ecstasies, I saw her soul in Purgatory. She is there because of the way she raised your father, never teaching him the virtues but satisfying his every whim and not putting a check to his sensual nature. Your uncle Giovanni is now in charge of the castle.”

“I’m sure my uncle will take me in. My babbo and I spent so many days together with him hunting with his bloodhounds. And why won’t you ever say my father’s name? He was named Arsenio and gave the two of us nothing but love.”

“All right, Antonio. I’ve thought about returning to Montepulciano for years. The criminal must always go back to the scene of the crime. And if you decide to forsake me, I shall have more time with God. But I shall mourn you like a lost soul for I know you cannot possibly profit from living in the castle with Giovanni, since despite its glitter, it is a place of filth.”

The following Saturday, Margherita and Antonio left for Montepulciano with only a loaf of bread and a bit of cheese. She did not allow her son to eat meat, as she thought fasting was salutary for the soul. At all events, she wanted to be in town for the Sunday noontime Mass. That is where she had decided to make her public profession of penance. That is where she planned to ask the citizens of Montepulciano to grant their forgiveness for all the years of crime she had spent in their midst. When she arrived at church, she was dressed in a coarse black tunic and with her emaciated body, her closely cropped hair and soot on her face, nobody seemed to recognize her. As soon as the Mass was over, she stood at the altar and asked the people to hear her out. The churchgoers were curious as she spoke to them in tears, speaking about divine justice. As she told her tale, they figured out who she was, and they marveled at her transformation. It was obvious that the lovely woman with auburn hair and a shapely silhouette was long gone, replaced by a wretched mendicant dressed in tatters and with a ruined face who briefly fell prostrate on the ground shrieking in pain before standing up and continuing her confession.

“I have come to you with ashes on my face to reflect the foulness of my soul,” Margherita stated as she softly wept. “I realize that knowing my criminal life persons like you ought not only to refuse to salute me but also to stop yourselves from addressing me a single word. I spent a decade of brazen concubinage in your community, never caring about the harsh judgment which the Catholic citizens of Montepulciano held against me as I focused on trivial vanities. With my partner in crime, I insolently flaunted my sin, not giving any thought to Christian virtue or to the judgment of my God. I lorded over you as if I were a queen and that is what I was, the queen of harlots. But the good Lord who sees the soul and not the body rendered His wrathful judgment against my lover, probably for all eternity, and in my shame, I left Montepulciano and decided to live in poverty. Today I feel nothing but contempt for worldly ornaments or objects of luxury. But I cannot live in peace without your pardon.”

Then she started sobbing uncontrollably as Antonio looked around to see the reaction of those in attendance. Although at first they had listened with curiosity, as soon as Margherita began to cast aspersions against his father, their mood changed suddenly. After all, Antonio’s uncle Giovanni was sitting in the front pew of the church and the citizens of Montepulciano, many of whom depended on him for their livelihood, knew that he would not be pleased by this ghost from the past who came back to proclaim his brother was in hell. So the crowds began to jeer and Giovanni ordered some of his men to move Margherita away from the altar so she would be silenced.

“He told me! He told me!” Margherita remonstrated as the men pushed her away. Antonio knew the men would not understand her, but he understood exactly what she meant. It was Christ Himself who had told her in an ecstasy to denounce his father’s debauchery. It was Jesus who called his father the enemy of Margherita’s salvation. Under the circumstances, Antonio also understood that there was no way his uncle would take him in. Antonio was doomed to share in his mother’s life of endless guilt. Even if God told her a thousand times in her mystical trances that He forgave her, that her transgressions had been blotted out, she could never forgive herself nor the lovely body that had been the instigator of her crime.

***

Soon after the abortive mission to Montepulciano, Margherita advised her son that the Lord Jesus had demanded that she make a vow of silence. She was not to engage in conversation with anyone – Antonio included – and could only speak to the poor she assisted or to perform her duties at the hospital for indigents which she had founded. If she needed to talk, then she could talk to Jesus. Antonio felt more solitary than ever. Now it was not only the ecstasies that kept him from his mother. Given the Christ’s mandate, for all intents and purposes, she was entirely absent from his life. She avoided any interaction with Antonio other than to say prayers with him before he ate the paltry meal she had prepared for him – grudgingly, since it took time away from her duties before God. More than once she told him it wasn’t fitting for her to spend time with him which could be used for divine praise and busybodies muttered that the only person she failed to take care of was her son. As for her own needs, Margherita refused to eat anything other than to consume a consecrated host as she attempted to purify herself through a holy anorexia. Antonio marveled at the fact his mother could live without food. He concluded that the masses knocking at their door every day expecting to be fed by their mamma were correct. Margherita was some sort of blessed soul given her voluntary starvation, her indefatigable service to the poor and her daily converse with the Christ.

As usual, Margherita imputed her transgressions to her son and demanded that he share in the penance imposed on her by Jesus. She told him to seek a salutary silence immersed in prayer and to avoid contact with children of his age, particularly of the fair sex, as far as possible. Antonio was dumbfounded by his mother’s divagations. He had gone to catechism classes with the Franciscans at his mother’s prodding and had never heard that there was a duty of silence but rather a duty of delight. He firmly believed one should find joy in all God’s creatures including one’s fellow man. He could not possibly understand why his mother thought the good Lord would be pleased with a life of utter silence after giving man the gift of speech. But Margherita was not without her own inexorable logic. If Jesus’ gentle words were best heard in the silence, why not keep silence at all times?

One day Antonio arrived at the cottage with a friend from school, a lovely girl of nubile age with ample breasts and a ready smile. As soon as Margherita saw her, she told her son in a stern but even voice that she must depart. The good Lord had told her in an ecstasy that the salvation of her son was not assured, and she feared lest he might inherit the cursed and execrable sensuality of his parents.

“That child is a temptation, do you understand me, Antonio, a temptation!” she cried out at her bewildered son. “The Catholic faith tells us that we must avoid all occasions of sin. And I also know that your fate is to be a Franciscan friar for Jesus has given me that knowledge. How could you achieve such a glorious destiny if like your father you make a habit of consorting with women and giving into lust?”

Antonio was flabbergasted as often happened when he was faced with his mother’s peremptory faith. Natalia was just a friend, and he had never felt lust for her or any other girl. In vain he protested that he was guiltless, in vain he told her she was exaggerating. Margherita would have none of it and addressed Natalia directly.

“I demand that you leave immediately and – more than that – that you never address a word to Antonio again. You should know that he’s made a vow of silence before God and your friendship with him – chaste as it might seem – may degenerate into something lamentable and dark. The Christ said, ‘if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out!’ You must nip this relationship in the bud rather than allowing it to fester and consume you.”

Antonio screamed at his mother.

“You don’t own me! You don’t own me!” he cried out. “You may dream of making me a Franciscan priest, but I’ve never entertained such a notion. You see everything through the eyes of your shame, your stubborn guilt. But I think of friendship as something holy and pure. God didn’t create humanity to be obsessed with sin, nor to live in constant fear of His punishment. You’re a sanctimonious prude and I won’t live according to your rules. I’ve had enough! Do you understand that? I’ve had enough of your shit!”

“How dare you speak to your mother in such a manner? I’m trying to protect you from the fate that befell your father. The flesh was the occasion for his downfall. Don’t you know the sins of the father visit the sons? I want you spotless, undefiled and pure. Even a single solitary sin can separate you from your God, like a little speck in your eye will not allow you to see the Sun. And habitual sin will completely blind you from seeing your own misery and imperfection, let alone having the beatific vision.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Antonio replied. “I haven’t even held Natalia by the hand. And you’re the one that doesn’t understand religion. You confessed your sins long ago, so they don’t even matter but you just won’t let it go.”

At that moment, Margherita began shrieking loudly, and Antonio regretted what he had said as his mother appeared disconsolate.

“I just don’t want you to suffer as I have suffered for my enormous crimes. I don’t want you to ever feel separated from God. I don’t want you to feel utter fear in the marrow of your bones. I don’t want you to contemplate eternal punishment for failing to obey His Commandments. I long for holiness, and have repented of my sins, but the evil inclination is still there. I fear that I will forever continue to be soiled. Oh, Antonio, how I long for your salvation!”

“That’s all right, mother,” said Antonio reassuringly as he embraced the desperate Margherita with both arms in an effort to comfort her. “You don’t need to cry. I didn’t mean to grieve you. You just have to realize – how can I put it? – you just have to accept that you’re somehow special. Not everyone gets to speak with Jesus directly as you do. But you can’t expect me to live in constant fear of damnation. You find great sins where others might find trifles. You are terrified by sin. Your past, even if forgiven, does not cease to haunt you. You keep scratching at the scar until it bleeds.”

***

As the months passed, Margherita’s devotions increased to such an extent that Antonio couldn’t stand to be with her. She had taken Saint Paul’s directive to pray without cease so much to heart that whenever she was not rapt in ecstasy, she was engaged in prayer, often weeping for her sins and slapping herself in the face in expiation for her unforgotten crimes. And she forced Antonio to participate in her prayers, often for hours at a time, until she collapsed on the ground and lost all control of her senses.  All the while, Margherita forbade her son from leaving the house other than to go to school – his only respite – lest he be led into temptation. Things got so extreme that Antonio considered suicide. There was no escape from his tormented mother.

Things came to a head one Friday when Margherita was leading her son in prayer. It was around three o’clock in the afternoon, the time when the Lord would appear to her in her ecstasies, without fail. But Jesus did not make His presence known to her that day and Margherita became increasingly desperate. She rent her garments, scratched at her face, pulled out her hair as she pleaded with her Lord to make His appearance before her. Finally, she took her son by the hand and marched into the streets. Antonio had no idea what her mother’s intentions were, but as usual was swept up in his mother’s acts of extreme piety. As they walked to Cortona’s central piazza, they ran into a beggar on the streets. He immediately recognized her, as he had often been the beneficiary of her charity.

“Have you seen Him?” she asked the beggar in a frantic voice. “Do you know where He has gone?”

“Seen who?” asked the beggar.

“My crucified Lord Jesus. Might you have seen Him on the road?”

The beggar did not know how to respond. He looked at Antonio and said, “She’s not well, is she?”

“Have you seen Him?” Margherita insisted.

“No, my lady, the Christ expired a long time ago.”

“I see Him every day. Where has He gone? Where have they put Him? Is He no longer in His burial place?”

Antonio correctly divined that in her mind she was Mary Magdalene incarnate, Christ’s greatest female apostle personified. Then his mother accosted another passerby, an old woman holding her grandson by the hand.

“Where have they put Him?” Margherita asked amid desperate tears. “Who removed the stone that guarded His tomb?”

The old woman quickly took stock of things and concluded that the woman was demented.  She clasped her grandson tightly by the hand and hurried away.

“Mother,” pleaded Antonio. “Let’s just walk back home. I’m sure Jesus will appear to you eventually. After all, He always does. You can’t expect to find Him in the cobblestone streets of Cortona.”

“I must find Him,” she repeated, tugging at the collar of Antonio’s shirt with both hands. “Who else can forgive my sins? I am a wicked, wicked woman.”

“No, you’re not. You’re a good woman. You’ve always been a good woman. The Lord Himself has told you that He loves you beyond measure.”

“Why is He absent then? Why does He punish me with His silence?”

Then she approached a teenager and vehemently demanded to know where her Lord Jesus had been taken. The adolescent looked at her and laughed.

“You should take her to the insane asylum,” he addressed Antonio. “This woman is completely mad.”

“Yes, I am,” replied Margherita. “Pazza d’amore! Crazy for love!”

Soon a crowd formed around the wailing woman and some began to jeer at her.

“I think I saw Him clanging the bell atop the cathedral,” someone mocked her.

Another cried out that he had seen the Christ buying prosciutto at a local store.

“Come,” Antonio begged. “Let’s go to your Confessor, Fra Giusta Benegnati. He’ll know where the Christ has gone. The Franciscan monastery isn’t far from here.”

“Yes, yes! He will know. Let’s hasten to the cloister.”

When Antonio and Margherita arrived at the Church of the Friars, Fra Giusta was just concluding Mass. Antonio told him about the condition of his mother before he let the woman speak.

“I have been looking for Him all day. Do you know where they have taken Him?”

“The Lord will be waiting for you in your cottage, where He appears to you every day. Don’t you know that when you think you are far from Him, He is closest to you?”

Margherita agreed to return to her cell adjacent to the house of Raneria and Marinaria. Soon enough she entered one of her ecstasies and she saw the Christ. But that day something miraculous happened. As she was speaking with the Christ, Antonio saw Him appear. He saw Him with his own eyes. It wasn’t just the voice speaking in the mouth of his mother. He was seeing Jesus, resplendent in His beauty.

“Why do you seek Me in the streets of Cortona when I am always in your heart?”” asked the Christ of Margherita. “You have to seek no further than the recesses of your own soul.”

And then he added, His words piercing like the Sun, “I delight in your devotions to me, Margherita, your acts of complete self-surrender, but you cannot force them on your son. You should continue to teach him to believe and trust in Me but never force him to engage in your acts of extreme penance. You must be patient with all men, but most of all your son. Never spare him a meal, never dress him in rags, and don’t force him to live in silence. There is no reason to bar him from having friends, for friendship is one of my Father’s greatest gifts to man. Most importantly, never punish Antonio because he is evidence of your own sin. You must learn to love your son again. Hating him even if it is proof of your remorse will take you far from Me. It is the only thing that blocks your path to sainthood. Love him as I love you, Margherita, as if he were the only creature on this earth.”

“I will do so,” responded Antonio’s mother. Thereafter, she would never veer from the Lord’s instructions, and her only demand would be that Antonio join her nightly in an hour of prayer. Of his own volition, he also decided to attend Mass on Sundays.

“And you, Antonio,” Jesus added, “from now on listen to the voice of your merciful mother.”

And Antonio concluded that his mother was not demented or if she were demented, it was a most sublime dementia that she experienced. Five years later, he took on the habit of a Franciscan monk, not because anyone had forced him to do so, but because of his own free will he had decided to consecrate himself to God. The seed planted by his mother had sprouted as He received unimaginable graces from the Christ.

Margherita would never see him again, for her duty had been fulfilled. Thereafter, she lived in complete seclusion, apart from creatures, immersed in God.