It’s always wonderful — and a powerful grace — to visit Assisi. We’ll be doing that (as always, God willing) next September, when we visit the holiest places in Italy.

It brings to mind a number of happenings on visits to some of these before. In the case of Assisi: I was there for the first time in 1991, on my own, as a lone venturer. It was late in autumn (deep October), and because I wasn’t part of a pilgrimage, I had to find my own place. It turned out to be one with poor heating and old windows, allowing in damp cool air that made it somewhat penitential.

But did it bear fruit!

One fruit is the olive, and I remember walking back to the main basilica at Assisi from the small church where Saint Francis heard the Voice of Jesus (“Go rebuild My house“) and walking under a branch, overhanging the path and drooped with olives, one of which I plucked to try.

The olive was green — not yet ripe — and when I bit into it, its juice formed the most bitter taste I had experienced in memory. I couldn’t wait to find a fountain or bottle of water to wash it away. But before I could, as I walked quickly looking for water, the bitterness turned into the sweetest, most delectable thing I could remember!

I have no idea how that transition occurred.

I only know this: It tasted wonderful! A little grace.

There were many others.

At Assisi, I saw the doves that perch in the folded arms of a Saint Francis statue at the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels and felt the real, almost tangible grace at the great saint’s tomb. What a holy place, that crypt, and the same was true of the Portiuncula, the place where Francis died.

Many don’t realize that in addition to his love for animals, power in evangelization, and healing, Francis was an intense spiritual warrior, directly confronting the devil (after fasting and in the Name of Jesus, of course, in dramatic action) a number of times. The great saint taught utter courage and reliance on Jesus when face to face with darkness.

One place I didn’t get to see: where Francis received the stigmata. We’ll be visiting there during our pilgrimage.

But what I remember most, from my first trip — as a very active Catholic, but just before I became a full-time Catholic writer — was how, bundled in bed one night there in Assisi, in that drafty room, I too heard a “voice.” Clearly, out of the blue, came the words, “Communicate with confidence.”

Those words went right to my spirit and changed the way I approached writing.

As a journalist, one tends to use all kinds of qualifiers, for the sake of objectivity. But overdone, that can cause a lack of power in prose, and in the instant I decided to tell it just as it was, in straightforward fashion, without mincing words and not worried about skeptics. It changed my whole style and set me on my way as a Marian author.

I took it to be the voice of Francis, and immediately understood what it was saying. When one believes one is writing the truth, darn on the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

The words I heard so clearly were behind the way I was soon to write a book, The Final Hour, which became the most widely circulated one of my career, distributed to ten times the number of people who’d read a very well-known secular book I’d written for Random House/Pantheon, one for which I had gone on two national publicity tours, did dozens upon dozens of “phoners” (radio interviews via phone), and appeared on shows such as Today, Nightline, and McNeil Lehrer back in the days when there were only three major networks, plus PBS (and no cable or internet). It was reviewed by dozens of newspapers, including a huge review in The New York Times. It was also serialized by nearly a dozen major magazines and other publications. Yet it garnered a readership that was a fraction of Final Hour, about appearances of the Virgin Mary since 1830.

Lesson: listen to what the Holy Spirit says.

Lesson also: often what at first is bitter turns sweet, when we pray and suffer well.

Lesson: the Virgin Mary is the best publicist: The Final Hour had done what it did with no major national network appearances and just a handful of minor radio shows.

— MHB

[resources: Spirit Daily pilgrimage to holiest sites in Italy]

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