Focolare Movement
Prevention of Abuse
Media Area
Contacts
Philippines: School of interfaith dialogue

Philippines: School of interfaith dialogue

15 Mar 2017 | Non categorizzato

20170315-01Lake Taal offers an incredibly beautiful panorama, and this year it seemed more so than usual. The temperature at the beginning of March was still perfect, and in the evenings a fresh breeze continued through the night until the mist rolled in around the time the sun rose. Every two years in this part of the Philippines (Tagaytay is a bit more than 40 km from Manila), there has been a course on interfaith dialogue, and this year the chosen title was “Harmony between peoples and religions today.” The School for Oriental Religions (SOR) was founded in 1982 by Chiara Lubich during her trip to Asia. Today the Mariapolis Pace in Tagaytay hosts a training center and various courses for young people, families, priests and seminarians. In addition to SOR, there are two social aid centers. Two hundred participants gathered at Tagaytay from March 2–5, from Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan and of course the Philippines. There were also some Europeans and South Americans. All saw the need for training in order to face the universal challenges that diversity brings. The course is planned to be repeated in participants’ respective countries. Cardinal Louis Antonio Tagle, archbishop of Manila and president of Caritas International, addressed the group. The Filipino cardinal opened the school by proposing the theme of harmony. Harmony: a typical Asian value. In order to achieve it, one needs to keep in mind that everything changes, and that as one moves forward, the more this change comes rapidly. “The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself,” Tagle affirmed. What is required, therefore, is to stay open and not have any fear of the unknown. In addition, one needs to know how to mediate the differences, accept opposing positions and the possibility of conflict, and to come through it greatly enriched by the differences. Tagle appealed to Catholics to play a lead role with active nonviolence. This is not about being weak, rather demonstrating that working for harmony requires people who have a prepared mind and heart for dialogue and diversity. The four days saw presentations of the successful dialogue between Christianity and the great Eastern religions in India, Thailand, Korea and Japan. Hindu-Christian dialogue was presented through life experiences, social collaboration, and shared projects between the Focolare and Gandhian movements in the south of India, including philosophical and theological reflections. Classic Hindu song was demonstrated and explained. All this occurred in an atmosphere of vital, spiritual clarity. Commonalities have surfaced after many years of dialogue, as well as differences, but these have not lessened the drive to take on dialogue’s challenges. This experience contributed to fulfilling the message of the Second Vatican Council: to build deep relationships with those of other faiths. A new way has begun that can contribute to social, political and global harmony. It is not an end in itself, but a step toward true fraternity.

Chiara Lubich sheds light on family life

Chiara Lubich sheds light on family life

14 Mar 2017 | Non categorizzato

20170310-173707 -© Caris Mendes - Archivio CSC Audiovisivi

Copyright CSC Audiovisivi – Caris Mendes

“You are entrusting the family with an explosive mission, a reform that families can initiate in the world” – these were Igino Giordani’s words to Chiara Lubich in 1967, when she founded New Families, a branch of the Focolare Movement. After fifty years, precisely on the ninth anniversary of the founder’s passing away, the branch that blossomed from that seed manifests itself in the various events and initiatives in many cities worldwide. That prophecy has found ways and means to become a reality. More than a thousand people, of all ages, coming from 50 different countries, participated in the three-day Loppiano event. They were mainly Christians but there were also Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. The fruits of a story were visible in the interaction between the different generations: grandparents, children, grandchildren. The live-streamed programme, translated into 19 different languages, was based on three main themes: the family, a net of relationships; love as a response to critical situations in the family, and the family, a creative resource for all humanity. Parents and children shared their experiences. A teenager shared her suffering and that of her younger siblings and family caused by their father, a victim of alcohol. She transmitted hope that came from sharing. “The family is the most important thing”, she said, “and we must not be afraid to take the first step. It may be hard to do so, but if it is done out of love, it can cause change”. A couple related all about the search for their “prodigal” son, who destoyed the family business, entered into big debts and fled from the country. Their pain was excruciating but they realized that mercy had to win over anger. They decided to set off in search of their son until they found him. Their embrace meant the beginning of his new reconciled life. Basma, a Muslim and Tatiana, a Christian went up on stage together and related how they built a very strong sisterly bond between them by sharing the ups and downs of everyday life after Basma’s husband died and she found herself alone in a foreign country, with two children and without  support. Their story spoke of the encounter of peoples and indicated that it is only through mutual acceptance and hospitality that peoples can become a family of families.
33418363425_09b6296b64_k

Photo: SIF – Loppiano

In her address to the participants, Maria Voce commented on the richness of these stories. She recalled that the charism of unity “offers a light and a key to look at the world and its history, to understand the bond of each one of us with the whole of humanity”. She quoted words of Lubich, written in September 6,1949, which sounded like a new call:”My I is humanity with all the people that were, are and will be. I feel and live this reality: because I feel in my soul both the joy of Heaven and the anguish of humanity that is all a great Jesus Forsaken”. Maria Voce repeated Chiara Lubich’s initial appeal made to families when they were entrusted with that portion of the world that seemed “the most shattered, the most like Him Forsaken”. She reminded those present that the irreplaceable task of families “is to keep love always alive in their homes, giving new life to the values God gave the family, and to convey them generously and tirelessly everywhere in society”. And she continued:“This is a tough task, but we cannot let hope escape us, as Pope Francis would say”. The families at the Loppiano event expressed their commitment and determination to be witnesses of universal brotherhood – even though their share might seem a drop in an ocean – by two symbolic but concrete gestures: a moment of prayer and personal commitment represented by the flower every family stuck to boards outside the auditorium; and the twinning between families from two different parts of the world, to be extended to other families in the respective territories, in order to strengthen a network of relationships which answers to the needs of different parts of the world. Academics and experts in family support services, counselling, in pedagogical and psychological research and in other subjects about the family, participated in the Cultural Seminar on “The pact of reciprocity in family life, generating trust and relationships”. During this event, which took place on the first day, the hundred participants explored the reality of the family from the theological, anthropological, social, pedagogical and political points of view. Reflection on the value of the family as a resource for humanity, brought to light that the family’s future and the value of human life stem from within the family itself. At the end of the Seminar, the outline of a high level research centre emerged. Run by the Sophia University Institute in synergy with other institutes of international level, this interreligious, interdenominational, intercultural and interdisciplinary research centre aims at studying about this wealth of family life to be able to express it at universal level. Press Release https://vimeo.com/208162616

Pope Francis’s exhortation to “Go Forth”

Pope Francis’s exhortation to “Go Forth”

13 Mar 2017 | Senza categoria

PieroCoda_01A missionary Church that lives the Gospel and shares its life with the people of God: this is the direction his pontificate is moving towards, expressed clearly and prophetically in the Evangelii Gaudium. “This regards the progressive and hard-fought awareness, Piero Coda explains, “in line with the Church’s way of being present in the world, and its mission which has to be, from top to bottom, measured on Jesus’s style.” Four years after his election, we still have not recovered from the surprise his words, style and gestures arouse in us. We find it hard to realize what is happening. With radical clarity, he evidently inspires his ministry to live the “sine glossa” – with comments and compromises. We know that the formula is that of Francis of Assisi, which undoubtedly is why Jorge Maria Bergoglio felt God’s inspiration to take his name in this particular moment of the world’s history: to declare the spirit with which he wants to animate his service as the Bishop of Rome. He says this formula orders us not to measure the Gospel according to our own yardstick but to open our hearts and minds to the endless measures set by the Gospel. But isn’t this what the Church of all time is called to? So what novelty is there? To tell the truth, in every epoch conversion and reform assume a tone and pursue a path which, being the same as always, are those and only those that respond to the queries and wounds of the time we are called to live. If the conversion we were asked of yesterday, is in a sense, the very same as that which we are called to today, and yet today, it is something else compared to yesterday under the profile of its historical expression and implementation, it is because we are called to respond to God’s voice that reminds us precisely of those words of Jesus which the Spirit wishes to highlight and make us concretise now. It will be a response to the challenges and wounds of the present. It is a matter of a progressive and hard-fought awareness, according to which the style (that is, the content and form together) of the Church’s presence in the world and its mission have precisely been measured from top to bottom, according to the style of Jesus. I was really deeply impressed by the words which Romana Guarneri with her distinctive sense of history, said to me in a feeble voice just before she died: “Christianity still has to blossom.” I think that this affirmation can be interpreted in the sense that the time has come, in which from the roots of faith in Christ, a fresh, innovative flower can and must bloom, and which can amaze us again with its rare beauty, and give us new life. What in the end does 2,000 years of history mean? Has not Christianity expressed itself only in the existence and philosophy of Europe and the West? Of course, the expressions have been providential and precious, but other than definitive and absolute. In all that Pope Francis has put in motion in the Church, the real issue at stake is huge.  It may even be decisive for the Church in the unprecedented season awaiting it. Vatican II was not only a point of arrival, but more of a point of departure. None of the extraordinary heritage of Tradition has been lost, but all has to be reset in a disarmed listening to the Holy Spirit’s inspiration today. What God expects of the Church today – he said, not by chance on the 50th anniversary of the institution of the Bishops’ Synod, is enclosed in one word: synod. It is a walking together of men, women, youths, adults, and the elderly. It includes the various vocations and charisms in the Church, and different Churches, cultures religions, and visions of the world. All are involved – no one is excluded, starting from those who in some way are discarded. The mystical sense of “we” is the perfume, truth and measure of justice of a Church that “goes forth.” It is the yeast of that new cultural paradigm of that urgently postulated and invoked epochal change we are called to be the protagonists of, under penalty of the collapse and disintegration of the human adventure. Four years from his election we can say with simplicity, conviction and gratitude: Pope Francis is a gift for all of us, not only for the Catholics. This is because he urges us to become men and women that as the people of God, choose the morning star of the pathway, and as our existential and liberating code, nothing else but the beautiful, good, and joyful news of the Gospel. It will light up the fire – today as 2000 years ago – in the heart of the world.

Maria Voce: The family – a creative resource

Maria Voce: The family – a creative resource

11 Mar 2017 | Non categorizzato

20170311-184047 © Caris Mendes - Archivio CSC Audiovisivi

Photo credit © Caris Mendes – Archivio CSC Audiovisivi

“This evening I invite you to dream with me about a different world, the one we would like to live in” Maria Voce said, having heard the stories and commitments of many families from the stage. They seek to live the charism of Chiara Lubich, in their daily lives. It is a spirituality that “encourages us to look at the world and history from a different point of view. It helps us understand the bond that connects us with the whole of humankind, and which is not merely personal. This bond embraces the whole of our being, our affections, our relationships, our weaknesses, emotions, sufferings, commitments and dreams.” She reminded us that: “When Chiara founded the New Families Movement on the 19th July 1967, she said: “… it is important that you (…) have in your own family life an experience you can share with others“[1], (to be) another Jesus: Jesus who looks at the world, at the crowds, and has pity on them. Because within this section of the world … I place upon your shoulders those most broken, most like Him forsaken.[2] Today I believe we can say that this invitation to families is being made once more, to every family. “What kind of family can create a world imbued with brotherhood?” Maria Voce asked. “Only families renewed from within in this way, despite being weak and imperfect, as we all are, can give the world the healing light and love it needs, so that society can find genuine models to follow.”
20170311-184223

Photo credit © Caris Mendes – Archivio CSC Audiovisivi

She invited them to do this “By sharing material and spiritual goods, freely”, by “accepting others for what they are, caring for them, living alongside one another happily”, “handing on values from one generation to the next”, and practising “the forgiveness and correction which are so necessary for human development”, and “meeting the needs of those in need” those nearby. After stressing the essential tasks of families and their commitment in the New Families Movement, she mentioned some concrete examples: “In a town near Chicago, Carole realised that other families struggled with the same problems she faced in caring for her severely disabled son David. She organised a series of activities bringing young disabled people together, engaging many families from her part of the town and involving the town council, which was then awarded a prize for social development.” She ended saying: “t might seem a dream. These experiences show it is already a reality, which might be very small or just beginning, but which contain the overwhelming power of life.” Read full text ___________________________________________ [1] C. LUBICH, talk given to the first school of married focolarini on the occasion of founding the New Famililes Movement, Rocca di Papa, Italy, 19.7.1967, Trascription. [2] Ibid.  

Domenico Mangano

10 Mar 2017 | Non categorizzato

Dated March 9, 2017 the Official Edict from the Bishop of Albano, Italy, Marcello Semeraro: “His authentic Christian witness is a constant invitation to the collective holiness, which finds maximum expression in reciprocal assistance while following the same path of holiness. Becoming saints out of love for one’s neighbours.”  The Volunteers of God of the Focolare Moviment joyfully welcome the bishop’s initiative. Read a short biography here Contact: postulazionedomenicomangano@focolare.org