Many have defined the Servant of God Simona Tronci extraordinary in the ordinary. She was born on October 13th 1960 in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) of a well-off family, the third of six children. Simona led a normal and ordinary life: school, religious instruction and sport during her childhood and adolescence. For her teachers at school she was a dedicated pupil, diligent and bright. She attended a Classics High School in Cagliari where she graduated with flying colors. At 17 she met a group of peers with whom she built strong friendships, also nurtured by a common experience of faith and spiritual growth. With her new friends she started a group called Spring of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (which was later called Community), for whom she was both a leader and an inspiration. With the rise of that Charismatic group, Simona’s virtues became more prominent and more powerful. Day after day, though unaware of it, Simona would write a ‘sacred history’ about herself… The closest of her friends in prayer was Giuliano and they became the official founders of the Community. Ever since we met her, when we saw her and listened to her, we immediately realized that Simona was someone special. We could feel that when we were by her side… from her face, her look, her smile, her sweet and fine speech. As months went by, everyone who approached her considered her ‘interesting, pleasant’… although no one, either in her family, or her friends, teachers, priests, could ever imagine that the person standing among us was a saint. We grasped that after she went up to Heaven at only 23 years old. We grasped that as soon as we had a chance to read her diaries… so rich in spiritual feelings and insights, praise, prayers, petitions and intercessions, continuous yearning to get ever more converted day by day.
We were impressed with Simona’s special energy, her overwhelming enthusiasm and her total love for Jesus, and so, gradually, these special gifts of hers infected us… Simona had understood that, by surrendering to God, she turned herself into safe hands… She had understood that following Jesus did not mean losing freedom but winning true freedom. She embodied Paul’s words ‘Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep’ [Rm 12:15]. God’s own work was indeed made manifest and concretely present in her in a comforting hug, in her supportive mercy, gentleness and enthusiasm. In her life love and mercy came first. She made every effort to help a group of poor people in the city, not only by offering them material aid, but above all by witnessing the Lord and by bringing them the Word of God. All her deeds or gestures originated from love. In addition to prayer of praise, her main charism was evangelization through the power of song and a life whose witness constantly smelled of the Mercy of Christ. In addition to the Bible, which she always had in her handbag or backpack, she always carried around her guitar, which in her hands became the channel of the Spirit, voice and sound melting into a single melody, as an instrument of conversion that touched both hearts and minds. While praying and playing, she added sound to the lyrics of songs she composed herself. As we read in her diary: ‘Grant that I may compose songs to lead my brothers and sisters to prayer; the world needs songs to be heard. The world needs to rediscover there is a God of Love calling you to joy.’ She was zealous in faith and encouragement to give witness to Jesus, alive and present in everyday life, in the sphere of work and of the family. Being so full of enthusiasm, Simona accompanied many suffering people to Lourdes. She also offered rich and deep teachings on prayer and the spirituality of the Charismatic Renewal. She did not accept any thanks or praise for herself but asked those ‘thanks’ to be raised to God, because he used her as His instrument! Simona was for all of us and for those who approached her, a teacher in prayer. For Simona the Community was supposed to embody not only our mission, but our vocation. As she herself said: ‘We are not together just to help one another in our practical human needs, but above all for apostolic needs. We are together to have Jesus among us. … to witness a life renewed by means of the Gospel and modelled upon the example of our Saviour.’
In 1979 she enrolled in the Faculty of Law, after brilliantly passing the first exams, she developed the idea that the justice of God oversaw human justice and she enrolled in the Political Theological Faculty of Sardinia in the same city of Cagliari. On that occasion too, the ordinary became extraordinary in Simona: she was the first girl to be admitted to the Theological Faculty. She did not choose consecrated life, as she was engaged and planned to get married to her young boyfriend. That made her even more extraordinary in her ordinary lifestyle. In her daily life Simona sought to discover how to become a saint and she really grasped that. In the Community she would say to us: ‘it suffices to do our Lord’s will. If Christ is present among us, in the Community, we live out the holiness that comes from God. That holiness is entrusted to individuals, to the believers of the Community as a gift not only to be preserved but to be developed again all together’ The Servant of God told us that if we were afraid of the Cross we would never become ‘like Christ’, that is holy. ‘If we embrace the Cross that leads us to holiness, He will help to bear it and will make it feel lighter for us.’ So, she started feeling a deep desire to understand the value of the Cross. In her diaries she wrote:
‘Jesus, we still fail to understand what you suffered on the Cross….’
She wanted to fully understand the sufferings of Jesus. That prayer repeatedly came up in her diaries and the Lord gave her concrete answers in January 1983 when she was diagnosed with cancer. Simona accepted God’s will so fully that her illness was not her enemy, because she saw the Cross as ‘the lift to Heaven”. That dramatic situation only affected her body, whereas her spirit remained steadfast, rooted with faith in her beloved Jesus. Again, she wrote: ‘…I feel that my life is being renewed within me, I listen to a certain courage that strengthens me, a new faith that comforts me.’ So, a pilgrimage between Cagliari and Paris started, for check-ups, surgery and chemotherapy. Simona spent the final period of her earthly life in bed, paralyzed, unable to move, almost deaf, dumb and blind awaiting the great encounter with her Beloved. When her illness got so much worse that her suffering could hardly be described and she could not even swallow the smallest fragment of the consecrated host, she was authorized to receive the Eucharist exclusively under the species of the wine. Drops were taken from the cup with a syringe and she was hardly able to receive them. Simona was born to heaven on April 18th 1984, Holy Wednesday. Her funeral, or better her wedding bed decoration, was celebrated on Easter Sunday and was accompanied by the resurrection songs she herself had composed. The Diocesan Court of Cagliari has now completed the investigation of her Heroic Virtues and the Diocesis of Cagliari, on July 16th 2020 declared that the Beatification and Canonization Process of the Servant of God had also been completed. All the files are now in the Vatican at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, waiting for a new procedure to start.
What teaching did young Simona leave us? That we are all called to holiness. Women and men religious, married or not married, young or elderly people. She taught that it is precisely within the Community that fraternity and mutual help in pursuit of holiness may grow stronger. It is surely true that the path to holiness, both at personal and community level, is not easy. It is really a challenge against the temptations of the flesh and of the world. Simona often wondered whether we had preferred to do Jesus’s or the world’s will. She made her own choice, which was doing God’s will! Now it is up to us to choose to become holy without growing tired or ever losing heart.
Antonella Tanda
Comunidade Primavera [Spring Community]
For more information:
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
FR. CLEMENTE PILLONI, Innamoratissima di Gesù – Simona Tronci (1960-1984), Edizioni Shalom – Collana “I Testimoni”, 2008.
FR. CLEMENTE PILLONI, Deeply in love with Jesus – Simona Tronci Servant of God, Alfa Editrice, 2010. (Translation of the book: “Innamoratissima di Gesù”)
FR. CLEMENTE PILLONI, Lei ci ha creduto, Alfa Editrice, 2013.
DVD: COMUNITA’ PRIMAVERA, Simona, Carisma d’Amore, 2018, Language: Italian; Duration: 53 minutes.
SITE: simonaservadidio.org
E-MAIL: info@simonaservadidio.org
