The Eucharist has always held an importance place in the life of Chiara Lubich, ever since her childhood. Both for her, personally, and in her experience with her first companions. The same was true throughout the decades in which the Movement was being built: it was marked by the presence of the Eucharist. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, since the Eucharist is the soul, the heart of the Church’s life. The action of the Holy Spirit, through the charism of unity, caused a great attraction in Chiara and her first companions for the Eucharist, so much so that they couldn’t wait for the moment of the Mass when they could share their life with Eucharistic Jesus. And later, when they began to travel around Italy, the first focolarine passionately peered from the train windows in search of church towers, so that they could look at them. There was the Eucharistic Jesus, there was their love. There is a wonderful interconnection between the Eucharist and the spirituality of unity.
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The Eucharist has always held an importance place in the life of Chiara Lubich, ever since her childhood. Both for her, personally, and in her experience with her first companions. The same was true throughout the decades in which the Movement was being built: it was marked by the presence of the Eucharist. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, since the Eucharist is the soul, the heart of the Church’s life. The action of the Holy Spirit, through the charism of unity, caused a great attraction in Chiara and her first companions for the Eucharist, so much so that they couldn’t wait for the moment of the Mass when they could share their life with Eucharistic Jesus. And later, when they began to travel around Italy, the first focolarine passionately peered from the train windows in search of church towers, so that they could look at them. There was the Eucharistic Jesus, there was their love. There is a wonderful interconnection between the Eucharist and the spirituality of unity.
Chiara wrote: “The fact that the Lord focused us on Jesus’ prayer for unity to begin this Movement, meant that he had to give us a forceful push towards the one who can accomplish this unity: Jesus in the Eucharist. Indeed, just as the tiny newborns instinctively nourish themselves as their mothers’ breasts, unaware of what they’re doing, likewise, from the very start of the Movement, it was noteworthy how many people became daily communicants. How is this to be explained? What the instinct is for a newborn, the Holy Spirit is for an adult newly born into the new life that the Gospel brings. He is thrust toward the “heart” of Mother Church and he feeds himself on the most precious nectar that she has, in which he finds the secret of the life of unity, and of his own divinization.
In fact, the work of the Eucharist is to make us God through participation. Mixing together the flesh which has been enlivened by the Holy Spirit and vitalized by Christ with our own, he divinizes us in our soul and in our body. The Church could be defined as: Oneness brought about by the Eucharist, because it is composed of divinized men and women, made God, united to Christ who is God among them. This God with us is present in every tabernacle of the world and he has gathers into his heart all our confidences, all our joys, all our fears. . .”
« How much comfort Eucharistic Jesus provided for us in our trials, when no one would give us an audience because the Movement was under study! He was always there, at all hours, waiting for us to come, waiting to tell us: In the end, the Head of the Church is me. And through struggle and suffering of every kind, who gave us strength, when we thought that we would have died many times if Eucharistic Jesus and Jesus in our midst, on whom we nourished ourselves, had not held us up? ».
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The Eucharist has always held an importance place in the life of Chiara Lubich, ever since her childhood. Both for her, personally, and in her experience with her first companions. The same was true throughout the decades in which the Movement was being built: it was marked by the presence of the Eucharist. And it couldn’t have been otherwise, since the Eucharist is the soul, the heart of the Church’s life. The action of the Holy Spirit, through the charism of unity, caused a great attraction in Chiara and her first companions for the Eucharist, so much so that they couldn’t wait for the moment of the Mass when they could share their life with Eucharistic Jesus. And later, when they began to travel around Italy, the first focolarine passionately peered from the train windows in search of church towers, so that they could look at them. There was the Eucharistic Jesus, there was their love. There is a wonderful interconnection between the Eucharist and the spirituality of unity.
