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Chiara Lubich: love is practical

Chiara Lubich: love is practical

13 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

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Foto: Pixabay

If we want to keep love burning, the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts, it has to be expressed in practical action. In the next two weeks, we should examine ourselves precisely on this aspect of love, on its concreteness, and work at making it authentic. How? We know how easy it is, living in the world, to gradually accumulate objects that are more or less useful, or are superfluous to our needs, and keep them in our houses. It could be an extra pen, a book, some clothing, a tool, a picture, or a carpet. It could be linen or furniture, big things or little things, a sum of money perhaps. […] Why not collect all these goods and make them available to people in our community who don’t have these things, or to the poor, or to help the “daily Jesus forsaken” as we call the disasters whereby people suddenly find themselves in pain or anguish, in the cold or in danger? When we get up in the morning, we always wash our face. Don’t you think it might be necessary, at the start of every year, to check out what is surplus to our needs and give it away as an obligation of charity? Every now and then, in the Focolare, we do what we call “making the bundle”, which means putting together all the things that are extra to our needs and distributing them. Couldn’t all of us do this? […] By collecting our surplus and giving it away, our charity towards our neighbour will be real; that way, we shall preserve the living presence in us of the Risen Lord. My experience has been that to put this into practice one needs a little time. You have to think carefully about each object. Of course, we can only consider the things we can call our own, and define this one as superfluous and that one as not. Moreover, be generous, realizing that it is better to do without something useful than to have more than you need. […] In addition, let’s flee from any attachments and from the greater or lesser influence of consumerism that, perhaps involuntarily, have become part of our lives. We will feel freer and lighter, better suited to making this year a very fruitful one.  

Maria Voce: “Space, not payback”

Maria Voce: “Space, not payback”

12 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

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© Osservatore Romano

The special end-of-the-year article-interview of the magazine edited by San Paolo entitled, “Women, the future of the Church?” by Alberto Chiara is a two-page article with many photos. But during the interview the discussion broadens, ranging from the role of the woman in the Church to the challenges opened by the pontificate of Francis to go towards the poor and the marginalized, up to the commitment to dialogue with the new generations, which will be the focus of a dedicated Synod in October, to be preceded by important pre-Synod events. Will the women save the Church? “Jesus Christ has already saved the Church,” Maria Voce briefly replied. “What counts is what the men and women of the various communities do.” The journalist prodded on, recalling the recent appointment of Pope Francis, in two key Departments – that for the lay and the one for family and life – of two women, Linda Ghisoni and Gabriella Gambino, both married and with children, (the first, a university professor and magistrate of the Court for marriage annulment proceedings in Lazio, and the second, a professor of Bioethics and Jurisprudence at the Roman University of Tor Vergata and of Sciences of Marriage and the Family at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute).  “It seems that Pope Francis has the firm intention of affirming an authentic, real rapport of complementarity between woman and man,” Maria Voce replied. “Of course, this rapport has always existed. In the beginning God created man, male and female. He created two essentially different beings which, together, make up humanity.” After so much machismo is this the payback time of women? «Pope Francis wants the women, like men, to have the possibility to express themselves within the Church, also taking on roles of greater responsibility, but without crushing man, but rather, by bringing out their own talents, that particular capacity for regeneration and maternity. No payback, therefore, even if women up to now have not had enough room, in the Church as well as in society.” As to the Church’s state of health today, Maria Voce commented: “I am really happy to live in our time, with this Church. There couldn’t be a better moment.” And added: “The characteristic trait which is most convincing to me is the “basic serenity that marks the rapport between the Pope and the people of God. Francis is a Pope who is always generous in welcoming others, ready to open out to and attentive in understanding the difficulties of humanity. He doesn’t hide the difficulties of the moment, also within the Church, but every era has its difficulties, and our days are not exempted to this rule. Several times I have thought of how much Pope Bergoglio must suffer in feeling misunderstood, and criticized severely for his words interpreted out of context…” Having to choose, first one, then two words that define the current pope, the Focolare president indicated “charity” and “truth,” but specified: “One does not exclude the other. Bergoglio knows that some things he says or does may bother some people and may not be fully understood by all. But he goes on, driven by love, to improve and correct certain situations.” With regard to the sectors preferred by the Pope, Emmaus observed: “The insistent focus of the Pope on the poor, the sick, and the marginalized, and his capacity to bend down towards those who make mistakes, does not make him overlook other categories.” In the face of a Church that is always more open to dialogue on the same level with all, Maria Voce expressed a dream: “That the Pope promote a day of common prayer and invite the heads of the other Churches, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutheran, Methodists, Baptists… to pray together once a year, during the Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians, or at another time. I think that if the faithful see their heads pray together habitually, they would discover the possibility of unity in diversity.” The end of the interview was dedicated in a phrase to the youth, to whom the Church intends to dedicate itself this year with particular attention: “We adults should listen to them.”  

Family life: The challenge of Rosy and Leo

Family life: The challenge of Rosy and Leo

11 Jan 2018 | Focolare Worldwide

2017-12-21-PHOTO-00000351Rosy and Leo Prisco are from Naples, Italy. He’s a railroad worker and she’s an accountant. They’re retired. Their story began 40 years ago at a time when couples who opted for a civil ceremonies were very few. They were agnostics and went to city hall for their wedding. They were so different from each other that no one was betting on their staying together. At the birth of their first child they had a doubt: Should they baptize him or not? They spoke with the parish priest. “For us, adamant Marxists and agnostics, it was unthinkable that a priest should welcome us in such a warm, friendly and open way. Father Salvatore didn’t express a single judgement towards us regarding our situation as a couple, but he became a friend to the point that we were even able to tell him about our constant fighting. Yes, because it was easy to be a revolutionary when we were outside the house, inside the house I was the one doing all the cooking and cleaning. I remember how – to get Leo to listen to me (I was a bit crazy, but at least it worked   sometimes!) – I’d do what we did when we held protests on the town square: I’d hang signs on the kitchen walls that said: ‘You’re a tyrant,’ ‘You’re treading on the equality of women,’ and so on. Father Salvatore introduced us to other couples. They were also having problems but had learned to dialogue, and they also had a secret: apologizing and beginning again. We began doing the same, which helped to improve our relationship one day at a time. Meanwhile, Father Salvatore agreed to celebrate Francesco’s baptism and, six years later, the baptism of Nunzio.” “Thanks to Father Salvatore and the other families,” Leo explains, “we had an encounter with God and with God’s love and, little by little, the desire grew in us to be children in accordance with God’s heart.” We came to realize that even though we had turned our backs on him, He never stopped speaking to us, because He is Love. Just as He had in 1993, inside a mortuary room at a hospital. There, by chance, we had come across the pain of two parents whose little angel, a boy of three years, had died. That was a powerful message to us. What if that happened to us? They were the same parents that we met again at a Focolare meeting, invited by Father Salvatore. Yet, from that pain of theirs three family homes were opened for children in difficulty.” 2017-12-21-PHOTO-00000353For Rosy and Leo, who in 1995 said their yes in the Sacrament of Marriage, finding Gino and Elisa within the context of the Focolare appeared to be no small coincidence. “Right away a bond was established,” Rosy recounts, “which led us to offer our full-time help as foster parents in a home for families who came to stay at Casa Sorriso for longer or shorter time periods, depending on their family situations.” “This experience,” Leo confides, “gave us an awareness of being merely instruments in God’s hands, and being able to be of help wasn’t a matter of having any special gifts. Today, as then, we’re not the perfect family. We just want to place ourselves at the service of Jesus in the people we meet. Like those little Russian children that we took into our home: a relationship that continues until today now that they’re adults.” In the beginning of 2017, already retired, they wanted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the New Families Movement by being actively involved in some of the celebratory events. They also took part in a meal for young people. The year came to an end, but not their determination to give more. Last October they moved to Loppiano, planning to stay until July and be able to follow things more closely: practical things like transportation for the families that go there from around the world.

Every time we love it’s Christmas

Every time we love it’s Christmas

10 Jan 2018 | Focolare Worldwide

IMG-20171213-WA0282A warm summer atmosphere of the Southern Hemisphere was the framework of an encounter with the sociology of Latin America, which some of the participants described as “dazzling”. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas, claims the book “Love in the Time of Globalization”, written by Social-One Secretary, Silvia Cataldi, researcher at La Sapienza University of Rome, along with Vera Araujo and Gennaro Iorio who wrote Toward a new conception of sociology (Città Nuova, 2015). Sociologists pondered that same agape dimension during study sessions and in workshops.

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Vera Araujo

“We held an international conference in Uruguay,” Cataldi explained, with 5 thousand sociologists, which was organized by the Latin American Association of Sociologists (ALAS). It included a presentation of the research and meta-analysis of cases of “agapic” behaviors in the world. There was a round-table discussion about the Convivial Manifesto, signed in 2013 by philosophers, sociologists, economists and anthropologists from around the world, as a contribution by the arts and human sciences towards living together. It was an opportunity to know the sociology of Latin America and to focus on what Latin America has to offer to the world: a very lively vision of the culture in which the study, presentation and social transformation are one and the same, at the service of humankind.” Afterwards, the Social-One group, which included 60 students and professors from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina and Italy, moved to Recife in Brazil where it took part in a seminar at the Federal University of the Pernambuco, in the Mariapolis of Santa Maria where a summer school was held on Agapic Behavior and civil society: Sociological Imagination for promoting development and building the future. “It was a course on mutual learning on putting agape into action in society, followed by a workshop in the nearby favelas. The feedback was was collected at the end, expressed profound personal, communitarian and spiritual transformations. We only talked about sociology for the entire time, but the love among us and the ideas of Chiara Lubich touched not only our minds, but also our hearts.”   IMG-20171218-WA0147One Brazilian student and social worker commented: “The summer school was a confirmation for me of the importance of interdisciplinary approaches. I’m a social worker in contact with suffering people who have had their human dignity taken away. A new understanding of what it means to be a human person generates new practices that can activate dormant aspects of human nature.” A professor from Recife: “Agape is not only a sociological concept, but crosses over into the fields of philosophy and metaphysics. I saw that love is at work in your group too. From this standpoint, a loving and generous dialogue has been started.” Giuseppe Pellegrini, from the University of Padua: “The encounter with the Latin American culture is always enriching. For me, it’s a way to know my own country better. The need of testing our categories and concepts, the ability to read the social reality and its changes were some of the most stimulating elements I found here. At a distance of thirty years from my first experience in Brazil, I felt the same vibrations, the same energy that animates this very diverse people in the ways of manifesting communitarian life. The effort put forth by so many people that live according to the ideal of Chiara Lubich has produced genuine and respectable fruits in Latin American life. Agapic behavior is one manifestation of mutual love, a generative and contagious element, both theoretical and practical, at a level that is capable of influencing social, cultural and political change.” The next step for Social-One will be a conference on the 7th and 8th of June at the Italian University of Salerno, Italy. The continuing dialogue with contemporary sociology, but also to host a “social” Expo of best practices of associations and institutes that work in the field of society.

Turn it up!

9 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

On its 50th birth anniversary, the international Gen Verde band has recorded “TURN IT UP!” “It is an invitation,” they said, “to raise the volume of unity.” And this calls for a concrete, universal love that is able to take the initiative. This idea has toured the globe with the group, echoing in squares, schools and homes throughout the world. It has contaminated many and has become a life commitment. “As the year is about to end,”he artists added, “the idea has returned ’in a million hues’, sung by numberless voices, and danced with the fantasy of different peoples. And these 465 boys and girls from 31 cities of 21 countries in 5 continents are the protagonists of the video clip, ‘TURN IT UP!’ with their passion, enthusiasm and joy.”   https://youtu.be/DKoodP6IYqg?t=40