Chiara taught us about Love

How important was it for you to meet Chiara Lubich, what impact did it have on you and your family, and what were the effects of your relationship with her and her spirituality?

Danilo: “In the environment where Anna Maria and I were raised, traditional customs were of great importance. The family was present, but it was united more often due to social customs. Upon meeting Chiara we understood that being Christians entailed a choice, above all. That’s why we suffered a lot to free ourselves from the mentality of those times, and the attachment to our roles, circles, and professional titles. I had undertaken the career of an engineer, but to live the Gospel completely, we started to host the poor, and practice the communion of goods. All these things were a scandal, since they broke away from the customs of a bourgeois city. So my parents didn’t understand our decisions and were against them. I remember that once, I had gone to speak in a mountain town since I was also the diocesan president of the Catholic men. I was suffering and torn inside. Right after that I went to Church and found myself before a statue of Jesus Forsaken. I immediately and clearly understood that facing such painful moments is also part of our being Christians.”

In 1956, Igino Giordani (Foco) wrote that “also the married people are capable of fulfilling their calling to the perfection of charity.” What do you think about this letter?

Anna Maria: “Chiara had deeply understood that also the married people are called towards sanctity. In order to live in this way, we had to detach ourselves from an idea of the family of those times, and that each of us and also our children had to make a personal choice. With great love she supported the single components of the family, and highlighted the personal calling of each one, so that we could become a family that put into practice the phrase of the Gospel, “Where two or more are united in my name, I am in their midst” (Mt, 18.20). Foco contributed greatly in bringing to light the divine part of the family, also giving value to the human aspect, since he loved his wife in an extraordinary way to the very end. He also loved our children, took care of them, making us understand the grace we were given. He felt the need to go back to the times of the early Christians, where they would say that also the married couples are consecrated people in all aspects, apart from celibacy, and all belong to God.”

You were there when Chiara founded the New Families Movement on19 July 1967. What struck you most at that moment?

Anna Maria:”It was during the first school of the married focolarini. At one point Chiara understood that a new reality was arising. Since the moment I had known her in Tonadico in 1953, I had felt that she had an eye on the whole humanity. Now she was opening out a vast horizon before us, entrusting us with the world of the families, painful and difficult family situations, and orphans whom she particularly loved… the engaged couples. Right from the start Chiara took to heart the youth who were preparing themselves for marriage, and what they were undergoing to increase the love for one’s fiancè/fiancèe. She wanted them to understand that love is a gift of God and that also the difficulties can find their meaning. She made them fall in love with love, that true love, and she did the same with us, married couples.”

You’ve seen the New Families Movement come to life and you’ve met families throughout the world who have found in the spirituality of unity the answer to the challenges families face within their own context. What has this experience meant to you?

Anna Maria: “We felt we were immersed in the reality of love which Chiara had for all families. She valued the culture and the characteristic nature of each nation and local tradition, but she also reached out to the very roots of humanity, to human beings created by God. Our experience in visiting families in different parts was an extraordinary one, because we felt we were brothers and sisters, as if we had lived a whole lifetime together. We went to the rich and to the poor. In the Philippines and Brazil, for example, we visited the slums where the streets were only a metre and a half wide and where the houses were like rooms scattered here and there. There too the ideal of unity arrived.!

What is the greatest gift that Chiara brought about in your family?

Anna Maria: “Chiara made us feel that we were loved and she taught us what true love was, with all its characteristics: it is the first to love; it makes itself one with the other. She made us see the beauty of unity lived with her and amongst us. She also provided us with the right conditions to have joy, fullness, strength in the face of difficulties or in the failures which occur in the life of a family. She gave us a light that was so strong that it revealed to us Jesus Forsaken as the one who generated this unity in the world, who accepted suffering out of love and who gave us this as a living reality. This has been the basis for understanding how to educate and to bring up our children.”

 Giovanna Pieroni