The seasons of life for the individual and also for the collective reveal their specific goal if they are fully lived. Holding to their right time makes us discover the message which every moment contains.

The Psalm says: “Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise.” (Ps 90,12). Wisdom is the mother who teaches us to recognise that which does not pass and all that through eternity has been shown through time. Calm fears, resolve anxiety, fills emptiness, opens hearts to neighbours.

“Sickness has healed me – a mother writes – , it has brought me a complete vision of existence which the course of my life had taken from me. Now I seem to know how to love my family.”

Love is perpetuated through the ages in the biographies of those who have passed before us and whose stories allow their lives to reach us. This is the communion of Saints.

This aspect highlights the relationship between the person and not only life but also death.

Chiara Lubich wrote in 1973:Were I to leave this earth today, and were you to ask me for a final word about what our Ideal is, I would have to say, certain that it would be understood in its deepest sense: “Be a family.” Are some among you suffering from spiritual or moral trials?  Be understanding to them, as a mother would, and even more.  Enlighten them through your words and through your example.  Do not allow them to lack the warmth of a family, but rather increase it. Are any among you in physical pain?  May they be our preferred brothers and sisters. Suffer with them. Try to understand their pain completely.  Share with them the fruits of your apostolic activities so that they know that, more than anyone else, they have contributed to them. Are any among you approaching their final moments of life?  Imagine you are in their place, and do for them what you would want done for yourself, until their very last breath. Are any of you rejoicing because of a success, or for any other reason?  Rejoice with them, that their consolation may not fade and their hearts not close, so that their joy may belong to everyone. Are some moving to another place?  Do not let them leave without filling their hearts with a single inheritance: the sense of a family, so that they may take it with them wherever they go. Never place any kind of activity, whether spiritual or apostolic, before the spirit of being a family with the brothers or sisters with whom you are living.’