January 2012
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” St. Paul says we are not only called to Christ’s world but that we already belong to it. Faith tells us that through baptism we are engrafted onto him, and as a result we participate in his life, his gifts, his inheritance and his victory over sin and the forces of evil. We have, in fact, risen with him. As long as we are on earth, however, our membership in this world of Christ is not full and totally unveiled. It is not yet stable and definite. As long as we live, we will be exposed to a thousand dangers, difficulties and temptations that can cause us to hesitate, slow down on our journey or even detour toward false destinations. “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” We can understand, then, the exhortation of the Apostle: “Seek what is above.” Materially you walk this earth, but spiritually you can leave it; give up the rules and passions of the world in order to let the thoughts and sentiments of Jesus guide you in every situation. “What is above,” in fact, points to the laws of a higher realm, the laws of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus brought on earth and wants us to fulfill here and now. “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” How then can we live this Word of Life? It encourages us to not be satisfied with a mediocre life made of half-measures and compromise. It encourages us to conform our lives — with the grace of God — to the laws of Christ. This Word of Life urges us to live and give witness in society to the values that Jesus brought on earth. It could be a spirit of concord and peace, service to our neighbor, understanding and forgiveness, honesty, justice, integrity in our work, faithfulness, purity, respect for life, and so on. The possibilities are as vast as life itself, but so as not to remain in the realm of the abstract, let us this month put into practice the law of Jesus that is a kind of synthesis of all the others: to recognize Christ in every neighbor and place ourselves at their service. We will thus prepare ourselves for the final exam of our life. Chiara Lubich
“They are young; they’re like a current: everybody sees their good number, but it is the wave that pushes them. Whoever rides on the wave, travels far, without effort.” This is the beginning of the letter from Father Pietro Raimondi, chaplain of the San Vittore prison in Milan, where a group of young people of the Focolare Movement, on Christmas Eve, brought a breeze of warmth, living together with the inmates a “silent miracle of light”. The whole story begins with the youth having started to animate the Sunday Mass in the prison: a moving experience that left its mark. A few months before Christmas, they wanted to launch the initiative “Good inside and good outside”, with the challenge to succeed in collecting sufficient boxes of panettone (Christmas cake) for each cell of the prison. “The cell is the only home of the inmate,” write the Youth for a United World, “and therefore in every cell – that is in every home of the big city that is the prison of San Vittore – we want to bring about the atmosphere of Christmas.” “It is they who come out with the ideas, the proposals, the best intuitions,” continues the chaplain. And whoever tells me that they are inconstant, and changing, I say that this is typical of liquid. But I add that liquid has a magic property: you cannot compress it. The pressure they exercise is enormous, they move mountains. They are young and they put pressure always inventing something new. Who listens to them is lucky and walks on water.” 
“Today we took the boxes of panettone to San Vittore!” Now it is one of the young people who speaks. “We were a nice team: some of us unloaded from the vans, some filled the bags, some took them to the metal detector… there was work for all! Then four of us had the beautiful gift of being the ones to distribute the panettoni in the cells. It is impossible to describe the emotion when we stepped over the threshold of the cells, and gave the panettone to each inmate, and saw their joy and gratitude. For the first time after a long time they could see not only guards and their cell companions. And so we experienced a different Christmas… a much more real one.” 
“The generosity of adults often sediments in routine,” Father Pietro writes. He has seen many Christmases at San Vittore. “Even the donation of the panettone to the inmates risks being transformed into an institutional gesture. Always the same person makes the donation, with the same van, belonging to the same firm. And the mechanical gesture of distribution kills the momentum of the original initiative.” “But these young people say to you “Well, why don’t we?” First they set a challenge to themselves and then to the whole world. They say, “We will not buy not even one box of panettone and we will not seek those who make a large donation. We will talk about the dark world behind the perimeter walls. We will talk in the streets, in the schools, to friends and in families. We will talk about those who we do not care whether they are good or bad, guilty or innocent, but who certainly need a gesture of love.” Those gestures that are not an aid to fill a void, but something over and above. And the response has been beyond all expectations. They aimed at distributing 450 panettoni, one for each cell. Soon they became 500, then 1000, and then 1400 and then they lost count. Today in prison, there were 1553 men and 96 women, without counting the personnel and operators. And it appears that everyone received a gift…” .
«I’ve been working in an NGO since 2008. I started out in this job coordinating an area under the direction of the executive director. Then, in the end of 2010 I took some holidays. When I returned to work, I found that the executive director had offered her resignation and I was asked to take her place. When I began, I found things that were left suspended and among them something rather delicate. It had to do with theft. During 2007 and 2008 the ex-director had stolen the taxes from the salaries of the workers and from the NGO, and had not paid them to the State. And so we had to pay a fine of some 75,000 dollars, which was an enormous amount for our organization. Perhaps to cover up what she had done, the former director had paid a certain amount on behalf of each worker that corresponded to the amount that had been deducted from their salary in those years. And she kept for himself the amount that the organization was expected to pay to the State. Each of us received this unexpected bonus without knowing the reason why, and we were very happy and surprised. I received an additional 12,000 dollars in my salary. Happy as I was, my conscience told me that something was wrong, and so I decided to return the extra monies. I contacted some lawyers to know what I should do and they advised me to falsify the documents, even my work contract, etc. According to them, the State would never have figured out the situation and would have enforced the fine anyway. But I wanted to remain faithful to my decision to build a more just society. “What would Jesus do in my place?” I asked myself. He would certainly have gone against the current. And so I decided to act accordingly and even to involve my colleagues in my decision. 
I told them that the first thing they should was to return the monies that didn’t belong to us and to write to the Finance Ministry explaining what had occurred and asking that the fine be cancelled. To my great surprise all of my colleagues agreed this. Meanwhile, the ex-director, who had left the country, let me know that she was very angry with me and that my decision to return the monies to the State was exaggerated. She couldn’t understand my actions and said that this would destroy the team spirit that it took years to build. But for me and my colleagues it meant being faithful to our duties as workers, certain that God – who sees all things – would help us. After three months of contacting the Finance Ministry, we received the happy news that the fine had been cancelled. Moreover, the officials were impressed with the honesty of our gesture in returning the monies to the State. We experienced an answer from God toward those who love and strive to remain faithful to Christian their values. Recently we had to submit our NGO’s financial statement. The Tax Council concluded by recognizing our NGO as a reference point for the transparency of its administration and for the way in which we solved problems together». A. G. – Luanda – Angola
“As you know, a new chapter in the history of Egypt had begun this year, with the unexpected fall of the dictatorial regime. At nearly a year from the initial signs of hope and freedom as a breeze of fresh air, we find ourselves in a delicate phase where along with the great economic crisis and fear of the future, insecurity and discouragement reign among all. But in spite of this difficult situation, we have seen with astonishment the intervention of God who, in a discrete way, is helping us sew a hidden tapestry, weaved with real brotherly relationships. 
While the newspapers and television were transmitting to you the bloody attacks on churches in various parts of the country, and the acts of violence against the crowds during the peaceful manifestations in Tahrir Square, at the same exact time, in one of the districts of Great Cairo, Christians and Muslims were working together,– all animated by the Ideal of unity that Chiara has transmitted to us – in a project, even if a small one, but is a symbol of unity: the project “I belong”. In front of the mistrust, disinterest and indifference of many Egyptians, the goal of the project is to give back to the people the sense of belonging to their country, encouraging them to discover its cultural treasures, starting by cleaning the dirty and neglected angles of the city. Thus, an initiative was born – promoted by the Egyptian artist Elhamy Naguib – to paint murals that express brotherhood, peace and harmony that help make people responsible in civic engagements. So, we launched ourselves together with 40 young people and adults, for 2 days, painting the wall of a school in a poor district, with the theme “We have the right to dream!”. We were 8 months away from the 25th January revolution. Even if everything was legal, the next day we got news from the municipality to erase the painting, without any explanations. We felt as our small flame was dying.