Oct 5, 2020 | Non categorizzato
On 3rd October, during the CH Link up – the bimonthly video conference that connects the Focolare communities around the world – Maria Voce made an appeal to everyone, asking for a significant new commitment: to live relationships on the model of “Trinitarian” ones, where each person brings out the other, finding in this way “his or her deepest identity” and thus laying the foundations for a fraternal society. The video call took place a few hours after the signing in Assisi of “Fratelli tutti”, Pope Francis’ latest encyclical. It was therefore impossible not to feel called personally. Below is a summary of the Focolare president’s speech. Question: Today, Pope Francis has been to Assisi and signed the new Encyclical with this beautiful title: “Fratelli tutti”. In a tweet he wrote: “The effort to build a more just society implies the capacity of fraternity, a spirit of human communion”. Were you surprised by the Pope’s choice of this topic? Maria Voce: Not at all! Because this is the greatest need of humanity today. The Pope was able to make it resound and with this encyclical he wants to bring us all together to seek the answer, to find an answer to this need of humanity. So it seemed to me that he became the voice of this bewildered world, that he has been able to take up this pain of humanity and present it to us. So we naturally ask ourselves: “What can we do? At this point, I would like to speak in particular to all those who feel called by God to do something, to respond, and to do it by giving themselves completely, giving themselves without measure, without fear, without interruption, giving themselves completely. All those who feel they have found in the charism of unity, in Chiara’s charism, something that helped them see that it is possible, that made them have a concrete, true, and deep experience of unity on this earth. I would like to say to them all: let’s do it together, let’s do it together! Yes, we have received a gift that has allowed us to experience it. But this calling to fraternity, which for us is the call to “That they may all be one”, (Jn 17:21) is the call to unity. This calling would want people to live on earth as in heaven, as – allow me to say this – in the Trinity, where unity and distinction coexist, where each person respects the other, each person makes room for the other, each person tries to bring out the other, each tries in a certain way to lose their own self completely so that the others can express themselves completely. In doing this they do not cancel themselves out; on the contrary they manifest their true and deepest identity. A unity as great as that has only one example: Jesus who was able to completely lose his being God in order to become man and to share on the cross – in the moment of his forsakenness – all forsakenness, all pain, all anguish, all suffering, all the extremisms, all the victimizations, the wounds that people of all times, and in all circumstances, have experienced and still experience. Jesus made them his own with this love that was so great that he managed to remake, to rebuild the unity that had been broken between God and humankind, among all people and also with all creation. If we manage to have such a great love, we can witness to the world that this unity exists, that this unity is possible, and that this unity has already begun. I would like, with all those who are listening to me now, that all of us together be a first response to the Pope, one that has already begun and that we could console him and give him hope, because something has already begun. That all together, we could, we who are just a small group inspired by the charism received from Chiara Lubich, be a start, a tiny but effective particle of that leaven that can spread through humanity and can transform it into a new world. I would like to make this commitment together with all of you. I’m for it; I want to give it my all, and I invite everyone to do the same, all those who want to! Here is the CH link up.
Oct 5, 2020 | Non categorizzato
On May 8, 2004 in Stuttgart, Germany, Chiara had about 9000 people in front of her at the first “Together for Europe” event. It was a historic moment, in which she offered the key to build peace in the mosaic continent that is Europe and in the whole world: to build pieces of universal brotherhood. Universal fraternity is and has been one of humankind’s deepest aspirations, and has been present in many great souls. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream that one day people (…) will come to see that they are made to live together as brothers and sisters (…) and brotherhood will be (…) the first order of business on every legislative agenda.”[1] And Mahatma Gandhi, said of himself: “My mission is not merely the brotherhood of Indian humanity (…) but through achieving India’s freedom I hope to achieve and progress the mission of the brotherhood of man.”[2] Universal fraternity has also been the aim of people whose motives were not inspired by religion. The motto of the French Revolution was: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Although many countries have formed democratic governments and have been able to establish, at least in part, freedom and equality, they have not yet achieved fraternity, which is more talked about than lived. The person who proclaimed universal fraternity and showed us how to bring it about was Jesus. By revealing God as our Father he broke down the walls separating people who are the “same” from those who are “different”, the walls separating friends from enemies. He freed every person from a thousand types of exploitation and slavery and from every unjust relationship, bringing about an authentic revolution, one that is existential, cultural and political. Many currents of spirituality down through the centuries have sought to carry out this revolution. A truly brotherly and sisterly life became, for example, the bold and tenacious dream of St. Francis of Assisi and his first companions[3]. His life was an admirable witness to fraternity that embraces all things, not only men and women, but the entire cosmos, including Brother Sun, Sister Moon and the stars. The tool Jesus gave us to bring about a sense of family in the world is love, a great love, a new type of love that’s different from what we usually understand by that word. In fact, Jesus transplanted on earth the way love is lived in heaven. This love requires us to love everyone, and not just our family and friends; it asks us to love people we like and those we don’t, to love our fellow citizens and foreigners, Europeans and immigrants, people from our own church and those of other churches, people of our own faith and those of other religions. This kind of love asks us to love even our enemies and to forgive them if they have done us wrong. What I am talking about is, therefore, a type of love that doesn’t differentiate among people. It considers those who are physically close to us, but also those we speak or hear about, those whom we serve each day with our work, the ones we read about in the papers or see on television. Because this is how God our Father loves. He sends sun and rain on all his children – the good and the bad, the just and the unjust (Cf Mt. 5:45). A second characteristic of this love is to be the first to love. The love that Jesus brought to earth is, in fact, a disinterested love. It doesn’t expect other people to love us, but always takes the initiative, just as Jesus himself did when he gave his life for us while we were still sinners, and therefore, not loving. … The love that Jesus brought on earth is not platonic, sentimental love, or just words. It is a concrete love that calls for action. This is possible if we make ourselves all things to all people – to be sick with the sick, happy with those who are happy, and be worried, insecure, hungry or poor with others. By feeling what they feel, we then do something for them. When this love is lived by more than one person, it becomes reciprocal. This is what Jesus emphasized the most. He said, “Love one another as I have loved you” (cf. Jn. 13:34). This is the commandment he called his own and “new”. It’s not only individuals who are called to live reciprocal love, but also entire groups, movements, cities, regions and states. Our modern times demand that the disciples of Jesus acquire a Christian social conscience. It is more than ever necessary to love other countries as our own. This love, that reaches perfection when it is mutual, reveals the true power of Christianity because it brings about the very presence of Jesus among us here on earth. Didn’t Jesus say, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt. 18:20)? Isn’t this promise a guarantee that fraternity can become a reality? If he, our brother par excellence, is with us, how can we not feel that we are brothers and sisters to one another? May the Holy Spirit help us all to form in the world, wherever we are, zones of universal fraternity, that grow and grow by living the love that Jesus brought down from heaven.
Chiara Lubich
[1]Cf Martin Luther King, Jr., Discorso della Vigilia di Natale 1967 [A Christmas Sermon on Peace 1967], Atlanta, cit. in Il fronte della coscienza [The trumpet of conscience], Torino 1968. [2]M.K. Gandhi, Antichi come le montagne [Ancient like the mountains], Milano 1970, p.162. [3]Cf card. R. Etchegaray, Omelia in occasione del Giubileo della Famiglia francescana [Homily on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Franciscan Family], in «L’Osservatore Romano», 12 aprile 2000, p.8. https://vimeo.com/465376766
