Visit to Chiara's house and tomb

Chiara is entombed in the wall of the chapel in the Mariapolis Centre at Rocca di Papa, above Foco. Those of us who had not been before to visit the tomb were given the chance on Saturday after lunch. We were also unexpectedly given the opportunity to visit her house, much of which has been left as a shrine to Chiara.
Here is a link to some photos taken with a phone camera of the chapel and Chiara's house. They are in a Flickr album. Not great quality I'm afraid, but for those who haven't been might give an impression at least.

Both the chapel and house have become a focus of pilgrimage - a modern type of pilgrimage with taking photos as a major feature of the experience. Eli is still living in the house, and Carina was lucky enough to encounter her at the bottom of the stairs - she has a lovely picture someone took of her with Eli. I was surprised to see most of the Volunteers wiping paper hankies or bits of paper or cloth against the marble front of Chiara's tomb in the chapel. I take it that the objects so treated were regarded as relics than souvenirs. In anthropological terms this is termed 'contagion', the idea that the power inherent in a person or place can be transferred to another material object. For some reason I hadn't expected to see this as a practice alive and well in Italy, or in the Roman Catholic world more generally. It helped me make sense of Chiara's notion of our bodies as eucharist for the earth, as it is a far more essentialist, materialist view of sanctity than I am used to, but evidently alive and well. I can certainly relate to the practice in the sense of seeing the inherent power of God in matter, or indeed transmitted into objects by psychic or spiritual energy - even if I wouldn't trace it quite so straightforwardly via objects in the same way.

The chapel has many associations for me as a place in which, over the years, I have given thanks for the graces received via the Ideal. It was not however a place in which I felt I could connect to Chiara specifically. Chiara's house, on the other hand, did feel like a sacred space. People spoke in hushed tones and seeing the desk at which she wrote, the chapel in which she prayed and the bed in which Chiara slept and died was very moving. As Angela Manning said, it was a place in which one did feel that Chiara was connecting heaven and earth. It was very peaceful and still, despite the procession of dozens of people through a relatively small space. Something of her presence and character are very strongly impressed in that space.