Simona Tronci has been a precious gift for our community, and we are sure that she is also a great gift for all the church and for all the charismatic renewal.
Simona was born in Cagliari on the 13th of October 1960.
She lived an ordinary adolescence, like many other girls.
She was brought up a Catholic by her parents and lived a traditional Christian life,
going to confession and receiving the Eucharist regularly.
Simona was the co-founder of our community, the Comunitaprima Vera, of the Catholic
Charismative Renewal, which actually means Spring Community, which was in 1977.
In the same year, she received the Effusion of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus fell totally in love with Simona, and by means of the Holy Spirit, strengthened her human qualities.
In fact, the Holy Spirit perfected and enriched her natural gifts with a charisma of singing, praise, worship, prayer, exhortation, and preaching.
This charisma deeply and indelibly marked...
the beginning of her new life under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
Simona changed her vision of the world and life.
After her high levels specialising in classical studies,
she enrolled at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cagliari.
She believed that through these studies, she could let human justice triumph.
She got brilliant results in her studies, but gradually she realized that before God, human justice is precarious and imperfect.
So she decided to change her studies and she enrolled at the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Cagliari.
She was the first girl in the city to be admitted on that course.
She was the first lay woman in that faculty.
In line with the School of the Holy Spirit and supported by the strength of her community,
She faced up to difficulties and prejudices, and coped well with them, while passing her exams with full marks.
Simona was the leader who inspired the ministry of prayer and praise.
She was also the one who enlivened the ministry of obsidian in our community.
Her evangelical emphases involved anybody who would approach there.
For reference, and for the charismatic renewal, she composed and sang many songs suitable for liturgy and for moments of grace.
One of her songs, entitled To Be Friend, has a very significant question.
To be friends, to be brothers in the Lord. What does it mean? What does it imply?
This is Her answer.
It means to discover one another, to look for one another, to understand one another. It means to love one another.
to share suffering with each other. Simona believed both in God's love
and in her brothers' and sisters' love. While strumming her guitar, she used to sing,
There exists one only love for those who are in the Lord.
There is no difference between my heart and yours.
in Christ we are one, just one love. In Simona's opinion, there was no space for a friendship
other than one lived in the Lord. According to her, a true friendship has to be rooted in Christ.
That is, sharing joyfulness and sadness, praying for another, helping each other to grow in charity
and faith, praying and singing together.
It was a German friendship which was scented with love of Christ.
Simona was never without her guitar.
One of Simona's greatest desires was that everybody from the young,
to the not so young could sing the Lord's praises.
She was defined by many as a teacher of prayer, such was the intensity when guiding individuals
to prayer, engulfing them in God's love.
The Lord put words and music in her heart and on her lips.
In her diary she writes,
My Lord, give me inspiration to compose songs that make my brothers praise and sing.
The world needs to hear singing.
The world needs to discover that there is a God, a God of love, that invites people to joy.
Simona was in love with life and she deeply loved God for the gift of life.
She was constantly thankful for everything she was given. Her friends, her boyfriend, her family.
She loved Nachar and all creation was for her a reason for praising God.
Everything was a gift from God and she was continuously giving thanks for her life.
Simona was thankful to God because she could walk, see, jump, run, sing, play and study.
During the day she was so in harmony with the Holy Spirit that she could see into your heart and whisper in words that you needed at that particular moment.
She would put her arms around you to console you.
To guide you along the right path, she would use authority and steadfastness, and to encourage you, tenderness and enthusiasm.
Her daily life gradually became her altar, where she could sing the joy of the Holy Spirit, and it then became her cross, from where she could completely love her Jesus.
Simona had a tender and trusted relationship with the Heavenly Father.
And she wanted to make him happy in everything she did.
Simona's greatest worry was that she could upset God either with gestures or decisions.
She wasn't afraid of God's plans for her.
She was loyal and had completely trust in him.
Every day she would ask him.
What would you like me to do today?
When she realized that she was weak and imperfect, she would pray to the Lord for her.
A night she would spend hours in contemplative prayer, and she would tell her diary about
the graces the Lord had visited around.
Simona's authentic faith and her charismatic prayer, enriched by her praise, singing and preaching, brought people who had lost their faith closer to Jesus.
Her prayer brought light and hope to the lives of the sick, unemployed and persecuted people.
Simona refused to conform to the false ways of the world.
Instead, she was constantly concentrated on the heavenly ways.
She used her love of sport, as she was a very good volleyball player.
She looked at her inner beauty rather than external beauty, which she cared about, but with simplicity.
Simona used to live in this world, but she wasn't from this world.
She lived for a short space of time, but she was always attracted by eternity.
She had money gift, a youth, a beauty, a health, wealth, super intellect, but like San Francisco, she left everything, which she thought could obstruct her from becoming closer to God.
For Simona, charity didn't just mean donating few coins. She wasn't judgmental when correcting people, she was humble when giving advice.
There was no pride within her.
She gave everything freely without expecting anything in return.
She had no favorite, only one desire, that her brothers and sisters around her would
come closer to Jesus, her friend who had changed her life.
Simona made numerous entries in her diary to Jesus and to the Virgin Mary between 1975 and 1984.
She had such an intimate relationship with Jesus which moved her inside to deeply understand the true meaning of the cross and Christ's suffering for men.
In January 1983, the Lord gave Simona a concrete answer.
It was also the year when she started to carry out her own clothes.
She was found with a lung cancer.
Atumu was weakening her body, but at the same time, her faith was growing stronger.
The Lord asked Simona to give up everything and follow him.
She offered herself entirely.
Doctors realized straight away that her situation was serious.
Her health improved many times after the community prayed for her, which amazed her doctors.
However, it wasn't today, God's plans for her were different.
During her illness, she used to write,
You came to me and asked if I really loved you,
to accept that you could take my life.
I answered and I still repeated,
Jesus, my Lord, my only true friend,
my life belongs to you.
my God you have created me father if it's better for me and for the salvation
of my brothers heal me but if my time in service has finished and it brings
salvation for me for my brothers and my family take my life you will be done
Simona embraced the will of God to that point where the illness wasn't her enemy, but actually
it represented the Holy Hood, in which she could lay down on, in order to go up to heaven.
Her illness was the way for her to become Eucharist, spiritual food for her brothers.
In fact, in her youthful age, long before discovering that she was ill, she had already
offered a life for the charismatic renewal, for the unity of brothers, for the communion
of the church and for the young.
In her Depeas days of life, the symptoms of her illness
tended to manifest more and become even worse. As they were progressing, they made her semi-paralysed
and forced her into a wheelchair. Shortly afterwards she was bed bound, deaf, blind
and unable to talk or move. She was waiting for the meeting with her love.
Simona lived her suffering like Jesus and she used to write.
If I look at your cross Jesus there is an empty place. I must put myself there
With the suffering Simona embodied the world
There isn't a big love there to give your life up for your brothers
Simona's heroism can be measured not with the suffering but the way she coped with it love
generosity, gratefulness, united with her Lord in the light of her faith.
Some theologians, who had the opportunity to get to know her very well, in her brief but profound existence,
have found strong similarities with the spirituality of Saint Teresa of the Tiltices.
Those who have known Simona have established in her an attitude of constant and solid faith,
that they have understood and experienced the mystery of the cross.
Her hope was based on the help of God and orientated her life towards God, which consisted of living next to the crucifix and to the Virgin Mary.
giving to the divine will and believing to love. For Simona, the love and the
charity transfer unconditionally without any reward. Simona worked in silence, not
waiting for recognition. She never wished
it any occasion not to do good to others for the seeking hospital, the poor, the
outcasts, even during an illness. At the peak of her illness she didn't want to go
without the eucharist every day.
However, she couldn't swallow anymore.
So under these exceptional circumstances, the old vicar permitted her to receive the
Eucharist by way of a few drops of wine.
She finally met the Lord the evening of the Wednesday of the Holy Week on the 18th of
April 1984 at the tender age of 23 years old.
More than 600 people attended a funeral to celebrate her life on Easter Sunday, which
was embellished by songs of the resurrection which she had written.
Thanks to the book, Falling in Love with Jesus, written by Father Clemente Giloni, who helped
the collective Simona's thoughts by instructing them for a diary, and thanks to some testimonies
from people who knew her personally,
The Archbishop of Calgary decided to start the request of a cause of beatification in the Tribunal of the Diocese of Calgary.
On this day, the Archbishop expressed these words.
Simona would be, without any doubt, an excellent role model for many young people and for all the Church.
Above all, in these difficult times, where many people are uncertain about their faith.
Now the tribunal of the Diocese of Calgary has already started the inquiry into Simona's heroic virtues through witness testimonials.
What we all need now is to pray and entrust the rest to the Lord.
Simona thought she was a seed, a seed of God.
Only now, after many years, we have understood that this seed has germinated.
A seed which had to die in order to germinate and bear fruit, to be harvested by all of
God's sons, in the church, but above all for the young, as a Simona had asked for
expressively in a
prayers. The time has passed and the medications of Simona have became a
valid support to grow for the community and for many brothers and sisters thanks
to the simplicity of her words.
We are just realizing how many people have followed their teachings,
and how many special fruits have come about in these years through conversions,
religious vocations, and other special callings.
Today Simona really has many friends, brothers and sisters in faith,
and she has become the most intimate, confident to whom to ask for strength,
interstation, and for spiritual and material needs.
We consider Simona as a light whose memories shouldn't be kept under the table in darkness
or confined to photos or writings.
Simona's life should be raised high, to be offered around, to be light for each of us,
so that in every place we may follow her example, her testimonies, in our families, in our parishes,
in our schools and work.
Because the Saints don't have age, they don't go out of fashion.
They don't belong to anyone, nor do they belong to just one particular place.
Saints are in the heart of God, and they belong to eternity.
Simona is one of breakable gophers, she has made the path clear for us.
Now we have to be committed to this path, so that one day we may be in gold hearts as well.
Who's Simona today? Simona is a young woman in love with life. Simona is a young woman
in love with the Holy Trinity. Simona is a bright indicator, pointing the way to Christ.
Simona is a young woman who does the works of the Holy Spirit solidly.
Simona is a fern in our slides so that no one goes to sleep during the journey towards holiness.
Simona is a gift that the charismatic renewal offers to the church to guarantee its journey towards holiness.
Simona is a gift of God for all. Amen.