![Brazil. Fraternity, law and social change]()
Feb 1, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
A new legal thinking and practical application runs that have succeeded. This is what was presented at the three-day gathering in Mariapolis Ginetta, near to San Paulo, Brazil on January 25-27, 2013. The meeting included 180 lawyers, judges, public judicial ministers, public ministers, public defenders, probation officers, public administration workers, and teachers from all over Brazil.
The numerous experiences that were related corroborated and confirmed the effects of fraternity and its potential. There was the ‘adoption of citizens held without public defence that was carried out in Pernambuco within the framework of criminal law. Here teachers and students offered assistance to detainees who had financial problems. There was the application of alternative penal measures for environmental crimes in the Amazon, through work for the environment that has had the effect of reducing recurrences. There was the work of the core research team of the Centre of Law and Society at the Federal University of Santa Catarina for training in law and the promotion of peaceful conflict resolution through dialogue and reconciliation. Family mediation and defence for the weakest members of society, through the interpretation of the law was also achieved.
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Throughout the congress proceedings the many students present were given ample opportunity to voice concerns, questions, discoveries, share experiences and, above all, present their hopes and expectations for a human formation that involves fraternity. At the opening of the congress there was a message from Maria Voce, who is president of the Focolare Movement, a lawyer and among the first supporters of Communion and Law which is an expression of the Focolare’s dialogue with the legal culture. After reminding everyone that “when you live love towards others you respect every law, you interpret the law and you apply it in justice,” she proposed – after decades in which individual rights were held up as the “path to equality” – it was time for a reassessment of our duties since, “without respect for them our relationships are less than correct.” Duties call to mind our responsibility for each other as individuals and as community. This helps to maintain and strengthen the bonds of society.
In this time of crisis and change fraternity taken as a legal category was shown through the work of the conference to be a lens that highlights and brings about something new. Fraternity involves a turnaround, a reminder to the justice system of the individual human person behind each face. It leads beyond a subjective individual right and opens one to a vision of humankind as “us”. It does not reduce Law to a mere production of norms, but sees it as a tool for healing broken relationships. As Cardinal Odilo Schrerer, Archbishop of San Paulo put it, on the afternoon of the 26th January: [Fraternity is] a proposal of “such great interest, of enormous social importance, crucial for society, culture and civilisation.” He went on to say: “We need to continue digging for the gold so that we can offer this gold to all.”
Those who attended the congress return to their homelands with the mission of spreading the experience they lived here, and the commitments they have made demonstrate this. Other congresses are planned for the University of Santa Caterina and Marilia (SP), in the Brazilia Sergipe Tribunals, in the cities of Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Manaus, as well as the formation of a group of regular gatherings for delving further into the research and praxis.
To find out more: www.comunionediritto.org
Feb 1, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
We love our brothers and sisters, and with this we know that we have passed from death to life.
‘We know…’ The Apostle is referring to a knowledge that comes from experience. It’s like saying: ‘We’ve experienced it, we’ve touched it with our hands.’ It’s the experience that the Christians evangelized by John had at the beginning of their conversion. When we put God’s commandments into practice, in particular the commandment of love for others, we enter the very life of God.
But do Christians today have this experience? They certainly know that God’s commandments have a practical purpose. Jesus constantly insists that it’s not enough to listen to the Word of God; it must be lived (see Mt. 5:19; 7:21; 7:26).
Instead, what’s not clear to most, either because they don’t know about it or because their knowledge is purely theoretical without having had the experience, is the marvellous feature of the Christian life the Apostle puts into light. When we live out the commandment of love, God takes possession of us, and an unmistakeable sign of this is that life, that peace, that joy he gives us to taste already on earth. Then everything is lit up, everything becomes harmonious. No longer is there any separation between faith and life. Faith becomes the force pervading and linking all our actions.
We love our brothers and sisters, and with this we know that we have passed from death to life.
This word of life tells us that love for our neighbour is the royal road leading us to God. Since we are all his children, nothing is more important to him than our love for our brothers and sisters. We cannot give him any greater joy than when we love our brothers and sisters.
And since love of neighbour brings us union with God, it is an inexhaustible wellspring of inner light, it is a fountain of life, of spiritual fruitfulness, of continual renewal. It prevents the rot, rigidity and slackness that can set in among the Christian people; in a word, we pass ‘from death to life’. When, instead, love is lacking, everything withers and dies. Knowing this, we can understand why certain attitudes are so widespread in today’s world: a lack of enthusiasm and ideals, mediocrity, boredom, longing to escape, loss of values, and so on.
We love our brothers and sisters, and with this we know that we have passed from death to life.
The brothers and sisters the Apostle refers to here are, above all, the members of the communities we belong to. If it is true that we must love everyone, it is equally true that our love must begin with those who normally live with us, and then reach out to all of humanity. We should think in first place of the members of our family, the people we work with, those who are part of our parish, religious community or association. Our love for our neighbour would not be real and well-ordered if it didn’t start here. Wherever we find ourselves, we are called to build the family of the children of God.
We love our brothers and sisters, and with this we know that we have passed from death to life.
This word of life opens up immense horizons. It urges us along the divine adventure of Christian love with its unforeseeable outcomes. Above all it reminds us that in a world like ours, where the theory is of struggle, the survival of the fittest, the shrewdest, the most unscrupulous, and where at times everything seems paralysed by materialism and egoism, the answer we should give is love of neighbour. When we live the commandment of love, in fact, not only is our life energized, but everything around is affected. It’s like a wave of divine warmth, which spreads and grows, penetrating relationships between one person and another, one group and another, and bit by bit transforming society.
So, let’s go for it! Brothers and sisters to love in the name of Jesus are something we all have, and that we always have. Let’s be faithful to this love. Let’s help many others be so. We will know in our soul what union with God means. Faith will revive, doubts disappear, no more will we know what boredom is. Life will be full, very, very full.
Chiara Lubich
First published in May 1985.
