Silvia, the baptismal name given to Chiara, was born in Trent on 22 January 1920. She was the second of four children, Gino, Liliana and Carla. Her father, Luigi Lubich, a wine-seller, ex-typesetter, anti-fascist and socialist, had once been a close colleague of the once socialist Benito, and later the unyielding political opponent of the fascist Mussolini. Her mother, Luigia, was animated by a strong traditional faith. Following his medical studies, her older brother, Gino, joined the Resistance in the famous Garibaldi Brigade. Then he dedicated himself to journalism, working for the Communist newspaper, L’Unita.
When she was 18, Silvia received her teaching certificate with full marks. She would have liked to continue her studies, and she tried to be admitted to the Catholic University. It didn’t turn out: she came in last out of the twenty-three free admissions that were available. Since there was not enough money in the Lubich home to pay for her studies in another city, Silvia was forced to find work. During the 1940-41 academic year she taught elementary school at the Opera Serafica in Trent.
The decisive beginning of her human-divine experience was revealed to her in 1939 during a trip to the shrine of Loreto: “I was invited to a meeting for Catholic students in Loreto”, Chiara writes, “where, according to tradition, the little house of the Holy Family is kept within the walls of a great fortress-like cathedral. . . . I attended the course at a nearby college with everyone else. But, whenever possible, I would run to the little house. I knelt beside the wall, all blackened by the vigil light of the vigil lamps. Something new and divine was enveloping me, nearly crushing me. I contemplated in my mind the virginal life of the three (. . .) Every thought weighed upon me, squeezing my heart, my tears were falling uncontrollably. During every break, I ran there. Then the last day arrived. The church was filled with young people. A thought clearly entered my mind, a thought which was never erased: “You will be followed by a host of virgins.”
When she returned from the Marche to Trentino, Chiara found her students and the parish priest who had been following her so closely during those months. When they saw her so radiant and happy, they asked her if she had discovered her way. Chiara’s answer was disappointing for the priest, because she would only say which vocations she didn’t feel were hers, the traditional ones: not the convent, not matrimony, not consecration to God in the world. This was all she was able to say.
In the years following her visit to Loreto – from 1939 till 1943 – Silvia continued to work and study and to be involved in the service of the Church. When she became a Franciscan Tertiary, she took the name Chiara (Clare).
In 1943, when Chiara was already twenty-three, as she was on her way to fetch some milk a few kilometers from home, in a neighborhood called White Madonna, standing beneath a railroad overpass, Chiara heard the call from God: “Give yourself totally to me.” She wasted no time and, in a letter, she requested permission from the Cappuchin priest, Father Casimiro Bonetti, to consecrate herself totally to God. Following a deep conversation with the priest, she finally obtained this permission. On 7 December 1943 at six o’clock in the morning, she consecrated her life to God forever. On that day Chiara didn’t have the slightest intention of founding anything: she was simply “marrying God.” And this was everything for her. Only later did this day come to be identified as the symbolic beginning of the Focolare Movement.
“Contagious” is probably the best adjective to describe what happened in the following few months. Chiara was drawing youths around her. Some of them wanted to follow her in her path: Natalia Dallapiccola was the first, then Doriana Zamboni and Giosi Guella, Graziella De Luca and the sisters, Gisella and Ginetta Calliari; another pair of sisters were the Ronchettis, Valeria and Angelella, Bruna Tomasi and Aletta Salizzoni. . . And all of this was happening while the way of the focolare was anything but defined, except for the “absolute Gospel radicalism” of Chiara.
In those months the war was waging in Trent, bringing ruin, misery, and death. Chiara and her new companions were in the habit of meeting in the air-raid shelters during air attacks. Their desire was too strong to be together and to discover new ways of being Christian, of putting the Gospel into practice, following the overwhelming intuition that had led them to place God-Love at the center of their life. “Each event touched us so deeply,” Chiara would later say. “The lesson that God was offering to us through the circumstances around us was quite clear: Everything is vanity of vanities, everything passes away. But, contemporaneously, God placed a question in my heart, which was for all of us. And He also provided the answer: ‘But could there be an ideal that doesn’t die, that no bomb can crumble and to which we can give ourselves?’ Yes: God. We decided to make God the ideal of our life.”
One day, in the darkened cellar underneath the home of Natalia Dallapiccola, the girls from Trent were reading the Gospel by the light of candle, as was their custom by now. They opened it by chance to the chapter containing the prayer of Jesus before his death: “Father, that all be one” (Jn 17:21). It’s an extraordinary but complex passage of the Gospel, which has been studied by scholars and theologians throughout the Christian world; but in those days it was a bit forgotten because it was so mysterious. And then there was that word “unity” which had become part of the Communists’ vocabulary, who, in a certain sense, had claimed a monopoly on it. “But, for them, those words seemed to become illuminated, one by one,” Chiara writes, “and they placed within our hearts the conviction that we had been born for ‘this’ page of the Gospel.” Later, in Christmas 1946, the girls chose as their motto: “Unity or death.”
A few months earlier, on the 24th of January, a priest had asked Chiara: “Do you know what the greatest suffering of Jesus was?” In keeping with the mentality of the time, Chiara responded: “His suffering in the Garden of Olives.” But the priest corrected her: “No, Jesus suffered most when he was on the cross and cried out: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Struck by his words, as soon as she was alone with her friend, Doriana, she said: “We only have one life, we’ll follow Jesus abandoned.” From that moment on he would be Chiara’s only spouse in life.
Meanwhile the unrest caused by the war didn’t let up. The families of most of the girls fled to the mountain valleys. But the girls decided to remain in Trent: some because of work or study; some, like Chiara, in order not to abandon the many people who had begun to gather around them. Chiara stayed with an acquaintance named Carmela until the following September when she found a flat at Number Two Piazza Cappuccini on the outskirts of Trent. This is where some of her new friends – first Natalia Dapiccola, then the others, began living together. It was the first focolare: a modest two-room apartment in the clearing shaded by trees at the foot of the Capuchin church. They called it simply “the little house”.
The girls who lived there and those around them noticed that their lives had taken a qualitative leap during those months. They had the impression that Jesus was fulfilling his promise among them: “Where two or more are united in my name, I am there with them” (Mt 18:20). And they never wanted to lose him, and they did everything in their power to avoid anything that, through their own fault, cause him to leave them. This is the “focolare,” the place where the fire of Love warms the hearts of all and satisfies everyone’s mind. “But to have him with us,” Chiara explained to her companions, “it is necessary to be ready to give our lives for each other. Jesus is completely among us when we are united in this way. For he said: “May they be one in us, so that the world may believe.”
In fact, around Chiara and the girls of the focolare, an impressive number of people declared adherence to the project of unity which appeared new, though just beginning to take form. And then there were the numerous conversions, conversions of all sorts. Vocations that were saved and new ones that blossomed. Almost immediately, even children and adults began to follow the girls of the focolare. What remains in everyone’s memory from those times are the crowded and intense Saturday-afternoon meetings, held at three o’clock in Massaia Hall. There Chiara would share her living Gospel experiences and announce the first discoveries of what would later become her “spirituality of unity.” The fervor grew out of proportion until, in 1945, some 500 people – of all ages, vocations, and social backgrounds – desired to share the ideal of the girls in the focolare. They put all their spiritual and material possessions in common, just as is reported of the first Christian communities.
We read in the Gospel: “Give and there will be gifts for you.” These words were transformed into a daily living experience. The girls and their friends always gave and received, they always received, again and again. Once, only one egg was left in the house. They gave it away to a poor person who had knocked at their door. During that same morning someone left a bag on their doorstep. Inside there were eggs! It is also written: “Ask and you shall receive.” And so they asked not so much for themselves, but for the needs of their needy brothers and sisters. And even in the midst of the wartime everything arrived: sacks of flour, cartons of milk, cartons of jam, bundles of wood, clothes and apparel. It wasn’t rare inside the Focolare to find the table set, and regard being shown not to people of regard, but to the poor who sat at the table where there was a focolarina and a poor person, a focolarina and another poor person.
On the feast day of Christ the King 1945, Chiara and her companions knelt around an altar. They turned to Jesus with the simplicity of those who know they are children of the Father. And they prayed: “You know how unity can be accomplished, that all be one. Here we are. If you like, use us.” The liturgy of the day fascinated them. The psalm 2 read: “Ask me and I will give you all the lands of the earth for your inheritance.” And so, in their evangelical simplicity they asked for nothing less than “the farthest corners of the Earth”. For them, God was all-powerful. The way of acting of the girls from the “little house” astounded everyone who met them.
All of this didn’t go unnoticed by the city, which consisted of only a few thousand inhabitants at that time, nor the attention of the Church of Trent. Archbishop Carlo De Ferrari understood Chiara and her new adventure and gave her his blessing. His blessing and approval accompanied the Movement till his death. From that moment, almost imperceptibly, new frontiers opened in the region, with invitations to Milan, Rome, and Sicily.
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