Dr. Plinio was introduced to the ways of the Gospel and the sublime horizons of the Catholic religion by a living example, present before him at home: Dona Lucilia. From this “book” he learned what innocence, holiness, intransigence, prudence and wisdom are; it was in his mother that he best understood Heaven!

Two musical instruments playing in harmony

“She transmitted to me all that was Catholic in her soul. […] As a result, I felt such profound consonance between the grace coming through her and the grace originating from other sources, that they seemed to be two instruments playing the same music in perfectly and entire harmony. Sometimes grace awakened in me an appetency for that which she would give me; other times she, or rather, the grace that came by means of her, caused me to desire what grace itself would impart to me directly. It was all one and the same circuit.” Thus, Dr. Plinio perceived all the consonance between Dona Lucilia and what he received through the Church without intermediaries. The Holy Church and his mother were like two instruments, such as a harpsichord and a violin, playing the same melody together in his soul. His mother was for him the voice of grace, and the voice of grace was the voice of his mother!

Living lesson in holiness

However, we could well ask ourselves here: how did Dona Lucilia pass on her Catholicity to Dr. Plinio? Did she give him instruction or classes? Did she explain to him what it means to belong to the Church? No! Like stained glass through which shine the rays of the sun, in her, grace was superimposed upon nature and penetrated her way of being, adding a new radiance to her natural qualities.
The Church and Dona Lucilia were for little Plinio like a harpsichord and a violin playing the same melody. His mother was for him the voice of grace, and the voice of grace was the voice of his mother!
French harpsichord - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Being close to her, seeing the calmness, the tranquillity and the serenity with which she carried out the simplest actions of her daily life, such as brushing her hair, making a gesture with her hands or even falling asleep in an armchair, grace invited little Plinio to acknowledge and to love all of the virtues. Her solemnity, her composure and her seriousness, especially, attracted his attention, making him exclaim: “How beautiful it is to be like that! How good, and kind she is, how ready to help! With her I can do anything!” Let us consider his own words: “I learned to an eminent degree from her. How? It was a look, an inflection of the voice, a caress… For example, to be seated near her. […] I remember her hands with tremendous saudades! […] I would gaze at those hands and I would think, in a vague way, because I was a child: ‘What a soul! What a heart!’” “In the final analysis, what did I see in her? […] It was the combination of qualities, which are evidently not antithetical because there is no antithesis between one quality and another, but they are almost paradoxical. In other words, without opposition, but owing to an optical illusion, they form something like a contradiction. What was this, primarily? It was a great elevation of soul, in the sense that her spirit not only turned with ease towards the highest regions, but dwelt within them. At the same time, she was the opposite of a dreamer, of a pure theorist, or of a person who lives wound up in preoccupations with no basis in reality. She was entirely inside her simple reality: taking care of everything, arranging everything, doing everything, loving this concrete reality and taking part in life with intensity, while her spirit hovered in that higher region, […] not by an artificial and uncomfortable rupture, but rather through a kind of comfortable omnipresence, entirely at ease, inhabiting both planes completely and recognizing the connections between them as a whole.”

Incomparable interpreter of the Holy Church

Innumerable were the occasions on which Dr. Plinio explained the major role of Dona Lucilia as a symbol of the Church in the formation of his Catholic sense. When he came into contact with the Church, it was not a surprise to him, for much of it – of the supernatural and of Our Lady herself – he had already met in the soul of his mother. We turn once again to Dr. Plinio’s own memories: “When I began to open my eyes to the Catholic Church, I saw, countless times, affinities between Mama’s soul and the spirit of the Church, so that I understood many things in the Church through knowing her. And later, naturally, I would see if the Church thought in that way, for it soon became clear to my soul that she was not the exemplar of truth, but the Church was. […] Many times, I understood certain points of Church doctrine more readily because I interpreted them in light of what I saw in her and had learned from her… […] She was for me an incomparable interpreter of the Church! […] She was, in my view, the ideal mother, and she gave me an excellent preparation to receive that faith!” “I remember the moment when, for the first time, I read the phrase ‘Holy Mother Church’. I was moved and thought: ‘It is true! I have a very fine mother, but the Church is more my Mother than she is.’ And so it will be to the end of my life, God willing. At a certain moment, I began to perceive what a magnificent example Mama was of how someone can be in complete conformity with the Holy Church. […] She was, for me, like a prefigure of the Church.”

Threefold motherhood

Plinio, through discernment of spirits, upon analysing Dona Lucilia, perceived a perfect harmony between her and the Church, constituting for him one single grace and prompting him to establish an immediate connection between them: on one side, he saw in her the spirit of the Holy Church; on the other, he saw her within the spirit of the Holy Church. All that was good in the soul of his mother had its origin in the Church, and the grace which he noticed in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Shrine, in São Paulo, seemed to be concentrated in the soul of Dona Lucilia. Thus, it was a single line: Church-Dona Lucilia, Dona Lucilia-Church, until the birth in his soul of devotion to Our Lady, which also crowned this circle of reversibilities. “I would never have known the Church entirely if I had not seen this maternal model. I give thanks to Our Lady for having given me this mother, whose great merit was to have set me on the path towards another Mother: the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. The soul of this other Mother, which is the Holy Church, contains a throne for a third Mother: Our Lady. Through one, I progressed towards the others. This maternal triad, one physical-spiritual and the other two spiritual and supernatural, vivify my soul and my piety.” ◊

Taken, with minor adaptations, from: O dom de sabedoria na mente, vida e obra de [The Gift of Wisdom in the Mind, Life and Work of] Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira. Città del Vaticano-São Paulo: LEV; Lumen Sapientiæ, 2016, v. I, p.154-157