Focolare Movement

Are we at war?

Nov 21, 2015

Pope Francis has described our times as a Third World War in pieces. Igino Giordani experienced the horror of two wars, being directly involved and receiving a serious wound that was with him for life. But he never let that discourage him and was a relentless peacebuilder. We offer some of his thoughts.

Monumento_guerra“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends and hate your enemies.’ “But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:43-48). This precept contains an untiring pardon that continually restores the circle of life that flows between two points: God, Me, Brother. It brings a work of peace with a view to unity wherever it has been interrupted. Peace is made with enemies, not friends. This would appear obvious, but usually it is misunderstood in a fear that makes you fear war and fear peace. While love unites, fear heaps together. One is centrifugal and generates the community by removing the roadblocks and limits; the other is centripetal and predetermines the occlusion of the communicating vessels. One illumines, the other darkens. One is a regime of freedom, the other a terrifying tyranny. Where there is love you deal in reason; where there is fear you do not understand reasons, you act instinctively: see ghosts and shoot. Social organisations that prescind the law of charity no longer see brothers and sisters, but mammals to be exploited and killed, even worse than some ancient societies were towards slaves. Where charity is lacking, people must be held by the police and enclosed in concentration camps. . . Jesus comes to put man on his feet, in freedom; and his followers should continue to apply the strength of his ideas, continually finding solutions for man in God. If not existence will unfold as a deadly search through a strenuous construction of hateful motives: a progressive hypothermia that gives the illusion of a vital process. Love drives out fear. Those who love are unafraid: their Self – the possible subject of fear – no longer exists. The Other exists, the Other with whom our Self has identified The Other dressed as a brother, is Jesus. In this way, especially now, the greatest barrier of all is removed: fear. Under the influence of fear the Self fears that it is alone: alone in the darkness, boxed in, in a box that soon resembles the walls of a tomb. If you step out of that solitude, you are free. You encounter the brother and with him place yourself in God. (Igino Giordani, Il fratello, (Rome: Città Nuova, 2011 [1954]), p. 85 – 87.

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