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3 Dec 2012 | Non categorizzato
Msgr Gerard De Korte and Dr Arjan Plaisier
During the last meeting, in February 2012, the idea of an event at an international event was born for Chrisitans of all the Churches and Communities. Seventy members of the Focolare Movement – already involved for some time through focolarini who belong to the Reformed Church – offered their support for the success of the event that took place on the 6th of October 2012 in Den Haag. The highpoint of the event was the moment of reciprocal forgiveness, for the offenses that were given and received: “for the arrogance with which we have looked down on one another, for the ease with which we have lived the break with the Roman Catholic Church,” for how we have considered each other’s Church as a Church from which the Holy Spirit was absent.” Everything took place beneath a large Cross that was carried by three young people. And everything was entrusted to Christ Crucified and Risen, asking also for His forgiveness. One witness that was offered by a Focolare couple – she Catholic and he Reformed – gave a glimpse of a possible way for continuing to love the other’s Church as one’s own. 
A very touching scene was the washing of the feet by three leaders of different Churches. It was a powerful way of expressing their decision to work together at the service of the new generations: a sign of a renewed ecumenism. “There is still much work to be done, but beginning from this event we Christians in Holland will now look at each other with new eyes,” one participant commented. Now the “We choose unity” project will be merged in the Holland Christian Forum that will begin in 2013. It is meant to be an open forum in which representatives of all Christian Churches and Communities in Holland can express themselves. It will be a place for sharing the faith, exchange expriences and create a platform for communion and collaboration, which is a necessary basis for progressing together along the road toward full visible communion among Christians. Hanneke Steetskamp – Holland
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29 Nov 2012 | Non categorizzato
Paolo Frizzi, a history graduate from the University of Padua, has now become the first candidate to receive a doctorate degree at Sophia University Institute of Loppiano, in “Foundations and perspectives of a culture of unity”.
The topic is a demanding one: “Christianity and religions in the 1900’s: The intuitions and the matter of Chiara Lubich. History, Theology, Society”. The doctorate delves into the interreligious experience of the Focolare founder, offering an initial reading of what was brought about thanks to her charism of communion.
The young academic institute of the Focolare Movement has not only offered a novel topic, but also a novel way of working which, faithful to the spirit of IUS, takes an interdisciplinary approach, linking theology, history and dialogue among the religions.
These are the keys to understanding what the doctoral student who, like Chiara Lubich is from Trent, has used to examine a century of history and socio-political events, along with philosophical-theological reflection, tracking their internal relationships that Chiara and the Focolare with her, have established on the various continents with people of different faiths.
Within these processes of transformation, the figure of Chiara Lubich emerges precisely as that of a prophet who is able to join spirituality, dialogue and thought. It is a proposal that is still to be discovered that the work of Frizzi has opened to further studies.
And so IUS has its first doctor in “foundations and prospectives of a culture of unity”. It is a milestone. Last 7 November is a day that will be remembered as a step forward for IUS, foward in an academic and intellectual challenge that was desired by Chiara Lubich before she left this earth.
Source: Roberto Catalano on Città Nuova online
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28 Nov 2012 | Non categorizzato
Ewa is young and tall, her hair and eyes are black. These are the colours that distinguish the inhabitants of her native land with its long-standing Catholic presence, and which gave birth to the Solidarity Movement that greatly contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. We speak of Poland. This is where Eva grew up and one day encountered the Focolare Movement and in its Spirituality found her path in life. She certainly had never dreamt that her life could one day tell a different story for her. Where Ewa now lives in Germany, there are a variety of Christian Churches. In her own focolare she lives with focolarine from three different Churches; the majority are Roman Catholic, then there is Doina from the Romanian Orthodox Church, and Anke from the Evangelical Lutheran Church. An interesting experience, when you consider that unity – according to the prayer of Jesus ‘that all be one’ (Jn. 17) is the specific aim of the Focolare. We ask Ewa to tell us how it is possible to live unity, indeed, to build unity even though they have such different doctrinal backgrounds. “For me, this experience of an ecumenical focolare is quite powerful. It widens my heart, my thinking because we really try to live one for the other even though we see that there are so many things that could divide us. But the greatest challenge is that of not allowing Anke and Doina feel as if they are a minority. Oftentimes this was not the case, but we always begin again! We are always trying to learn about one another’s Church. We try to understand what is important to their Church, and so when it is possible we attend some of the services of each other’s Church. For example, Good Friday is an important solemnity that is part of the Easter Triduum. For the Evangelical Church is the major feast of the year. And in our focolare we tried to give it true honour, going to the Morning Service with Anke and then to the Catholic Service in the afternoon. The feastdays of the Orthodox Church are often on different days than ours. So we try to remember them even when they occur on weekends when we are often very busy. Just the same, we try to find a way to share them together. Then we observe the weekly fast of the Romanian Orthodox Church, which is very important to Doina. On Wednesdays we take our meals without meat, eggs, or milk. . . Regarding fasting, at first I used to think that loving my neighbour when it is difficult was a form of “fasting.” But now I’ve come to realize that what matters is to “be” the other, in the other, even if you don’t understand everything, but slowly, slowly coming to appreciate all the richness that there is in the other’s Church. Thus I see that even taking these small daily steps you begin to build a relationship in God from which a dialogue in daily life is born, one that is based on the spirituality of unity that helps to advance the journey towards full communion among the Churches.”
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16 Nov 2012 | Focolare Worldwide
Cesare’s dream has always been to give God to others as the ideal of life. When he realized that schools were a privileged place for doing this, he thought he would add his specialism to the curriculum: humour. He first tried his method in Cagliari, Sardinia, in a primary school in a run-down area where, out of a class of 25 children, 12 fathers were in prison. He said, ‘With the head teacher’s agreement I visited classes and offered to teach them a method: humour applied to school subjects, building dialogue, maintaining discipline, bodily care, social behaviour, world awareness, coping with difficulty, appreciating beauty and building peace.’ After that Cesare visited a large number of schools, offering his innovative teaching to many regions of Italy.
Following that he carried on his mission when he went to live in the focolare in Albania where in the space of ten years he met and inspired with his message about 25,000 people, in courses of catechists, groups of young people, professional schools, kindergartens and parents’ groups. His brilliance and the effectiveness of his applied humour were such that he even ran a course on street evangelization for the Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Cesare has a profound knowledge of the Bible, and he even offers a Master’s course in the Song of Songs which has been a great success among both seminarians and young married couples. Some of the feedback: ‘Behind your apparent improvisation there is tremendous research, tremendous work, tremendous passion, tremendous attention for each person,’ ‘You have a deep love for the Bible, (you quote it from memory) every artistic expression of yours is drawn from a relationship with the Word.’
Besides working with schools and running training courses, Cesare has created a theatrical show where his ‘applied humour for extreme evangelization’ aims at honouring inner beauty and the priceless value of each person. In the show he observes life with care and sympathy, picking up on educational points so as to learn how to face things, whether happy or sad, in a balanced way and with Gospel wisdom. Cesare likes to call himself an ‘Actor-Soul’ who, using the instruments of art, humour and culture, as well as a wide range of deeply human life-experiences, produces a two-hour show characterized by fun and contemplation.
Email: gattocex@yahoo.it
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10 Nov 2012 | Non categorizzato
Giordani told of a man in the ancient world who ‘having travelled far away for reasons of trade, wrote home to his wife about to give birth: “If it’s a boy, keep him; if it’s a girl, put her her out to die.” That person, Giordani said, ‘expressed, quite simply, how pagan idolatry saw woman: a mammal for exploitation and for pleasure, considered immensely inferior to the male and, in all cases, in all legal systems, kept in subjection to men: from girlhood under the care and control of her father, as a wife under the care and control of her husband, and as a widow under the care and control of her sons and relatives. Never free to choose for herself.
‘Christianity changed this state of affairs by establishing the spiritual equality women with men, giving them equal rights and duties and taking mothers away from the caprice of fathers through the indissoluability of marriage, with which they were assured a stable position in the home. In Christ, Paul the apostle taught, ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female’ (Gal. 3:28), but all are spirits, all children of God and so equally brothers and sisters.
‘Christian social vision brought about interdependence between men and women: ‘Neither women without dependency upon men, nor men without dependency upon women, in the Lord.’ A man belongs to his woman and a woman to her man: ‘Just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.’ (1 Cor.11:12) …
‘It is true, however, that in society the influence of women is less than a third: an influence absolutely inferior to their sacrifices and number. And this causes enormous social damage, because the lack of the action of feminine virtues, which are specifically devotion, grace, love of peace and order, means that there prevail in society the masculine virtues of strength, conquest, adventure, which, like all the virtues, if they are not tempered and harmonized by others, easily overflow into the vices closest to them.
‘But it is a fact: if women are degraded, men follow in degradation…. For the perverted woman passes her perversion on to her children, just as the upright, heroic woman passes on uprightness and heroism to her children. In the end, to undo a society, a sure way is the corruption of women. To substitute society with a hive, make human beings into cyphers, it is necessary also to undo its reverence for chaste and faithful women and disrupt their relationships into sexual licence so that the sacrament is replaced by an utterly different element.
‘Having degraded women, men are ready to give up everything. The dishumanization of humanity, necessary to reduce it to automatons, begins with woman: as in Eden. Hedonistic, materialistic philosophies, championed in the last generations and reaching our times with their first vast practical experiences, bring about the end of motherhood: and motherhood is the principle of life.’
La Società Cristiana (Città Nuova: Rome, 2010 (first pub. in 1942)), pp. 54-8.
