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Nov 3, 2012 | Cultura
The New York Times called Chiara Lubich “one of the most influential women in the Catholic Church.” This biography transports readers inside the story of a young woman, born to a poor family in Trent, who felt called to dedicate her life to God. Against the backdrop of WWII’s devastation, Lubich shared her passion first with a group of young women her age. Torno presents a forthright account of Chiara Lubich and her friends’ collective mystical experience and their resulting life, both profoundly spiritual and deeply human, which always aimed at fulfilling Jesus’ prayer “that all may be one.” By the 1960’s, her inspiration had reached every corner of Italy and spread throughout Europe, behind the Iron Curtain, and around the world. Wherever she went – from the jungles of the Cameroon, to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to the skyscrapers of New York, to the Buddhist monasteries of Chiang Mai, Thailand – she shared her choice of God and the lifestyle it generated. This biography brings to life those people Chiara met along the way – from everyday folk to political leaders to popes – and describes how her charism affected each one. He reveals the challenges that arose as a vast movement grew up around Lubich as well as her joy at seeing authentic gospel life spread around the world. Together, they achieved what Chiara defined as “…the great attraction of modern times: to penetrate to the highest contemplation while mingling with everyone.”
Chiara Lubich was an extraordinary woman, but she was more than that; she inspired and led an extraordinary religious movement, but she was more than that as well. Chiara Lubich was the embodiment of the values of Love and Unity that she espoused; which live on after her not only in the remarkable Focolare movement itself, but in the hearts and souls of people of faiths and cultures worldwide, touched by her spirit.
Rabbi David Rosen, CBE, KSG International Director of Interreligious Affairs, AJC
Publisher: New City Press (NY)
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Nov 3, 2012 | Cultura
Writings by Chiara Lubich
The wisdom of this collection is remarkable. It is mystical and practical at the same time. Lubich says, “We can’t go to God alone, but we must go to him with our brothers and sisters, since he is the Father of us all.” The neighbor is a necessity if we are to have mutual love, the profound love that is receptive to the grace of unity. The book sends you forth with a heart eager to love as Jesus loved.
Publisher: New City Press (NY)
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Nov 3, 2012 | Cultura
Author: Elizabeth Ruth Obbard
Synopsis
Celebrating the 2012 declaration of Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) as a saint and a Doctor of the Church, Elizabeth Obbard, OCD interprets selections from Hildegard’s first and major work, Scivias. Hildegard writes on creation, the Trinity, baptism and confirmation, lay people, the Eucharist, the history of salvation, virtues, angels, and more. Obbard’s lucid rendering of the English text is an excellent way to access Hildegard’s wisdom.
Publisher: New City Press (NY)
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Nov 3, 2012 | Cultura
Author: Chiara Lubich (Michel Vandeleene Ed.) Synopsis This book presents the most important writings of Chiara Lubich, founder of the world wide Focolare Movement, whose spirituality of unity is a great gift to the Church and to the world of today. Introduction By Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop Of Canterbury Publisher: New City (London) (more…)
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Aug 5, 2012 | Cultura, Focolari nel Mondo, Non categorizzato
In the first four months of this year focolare.org had 477,687 hits, with 1,422,450 pages visited for an average of 1.54 minutes per page. The typical visitor to focolare.org was between 35 and 54 years of age and tended to visit it on week days, especially Mondays, and do so from the workplace. Younger people, however, were reached by means of social networks (Facebook, Twitter and Google+), with a weekly average of more than 30,000 persons.
This is what is shown by the data collected by three students from the Faculty of Institutional Social Communication of the Santa Croce University, Rome, who chose the official site of the Focolare Movement for their research. Their names are Oleksii Fedorovych, Fr Rastislav Hamráček and Fr Tiago José Síbula da Silva. Introducing their research they say that www.focolare.org was set up in 1998, updated in 2006 and had a complete overhaul in 2011. It then received the WeCa Prize 2011 * in the Institutional Websites category. They say, ‘The general mission of www.focolare.org is to be a place of welcome for everyone and, at the same time, it has the task of giving expression, in dialogue with the world, to the unity and the diversity of those who make up the Focolare family and to typical Focolare events.’
Our visitors. The vast majority of visitors, 44%, are Italian speakers. On average on each visit they looked at 2.98 pages, spending 3.45 minutes. Navigations to the site were more by men than women. But this larger amount of men is a reflection of the fact that in general many more men use the internet. If the fact that people navigate to the site from work rather than from home is linked to GoogleAnalytics’s data on loyalty, it indicates that the site is visited especially during weekdays. Indeed, in the period from the 1 January to 30 March, according to GoogleAnalytics, the day with the largest amount of hits is generally, as we have said, a Monday.
Internet traffic. About half the visitors (48.5% in the period between 1 January and 30 March) came to it via search engines. Of these visits 44.2% came from Google with search terms such as focolare.org, Focolare Movement, www.focolare.org and Focolare. 4 % of the visits originated from media such as mobile phones, iPads or iPhones. A large amount (37.4%) came via Facebook.
Who is behind the site? The study analysed the composition of the editors of focolare.org and spoke of a real workforce with a broad range of editors made up of representatives from various Focolare centres, correspondents in every nation, technical experts, news editors, translators and a fixed team of four people together with a part-time worker for social networking.
Contents and the site’s best page. Looking at the site’s contents and observing its ‘informative and formative character’, the researchers emphasize the site’s ‘consistency’ with ‘the values of the Movement’. Appreciation was expressed because it publishes not only news about the Roman Catholic Church but about all of the Churches, world religions, people of convictions not based on religion and about issues of a social nature that offer insights into life in various parts of the world. In conclusion the page of the ‘Word of Life’ is said to be done well, with its Bible quotation and commentary. ‘This page,’ write the researches, ‘has great formative value and is among the best of the site’s contents, gaining many hits and comments from users.’
* Italian Association of Catholic Webmasters
![Chiara Lubich – A Biography]()
Aug 3, 2012 | Cultura
Chiara Lubich is now being called a great Catholic mystic of our times. In these letters we encounter this mystical side of Chiara who is also the bearer of a charism, a gift from the Holy Spirit in response to the special needs of the Church and of the world. Chiara’s charism is unity, the unity that Jesus asked for us from his Father: “May they all be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity” (Jn 17: 22-23). Chiara saw God’s love in everyone and everything. The light of this discovery enveloped her, and she felt like she was at the center of the Father’s love. This discovery is at the foundation of Chiara’s spirituality which emerges from these early letters. They were written to the young women and others who were drawn by the way she presented the Christian life as a response to God’s love, which was shown to her in Jesus, most especially in his abandonment and death on the Cross. In these letters, the God that Chiara invites us to believe in is Love. The conversion she asks of us is a conversion to Love. Often using the language and style of the saints and mystics of other ages (like Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Francis of Assisi), Chiara communicates her burning desire that “Love be loved,” that “all the world be set ablaze by the fire of Love.” Her words are full of fervor, but also simplicity and practical common sense. For additional information and orders: (New York) www.newcitypress.com ¦ (London) newcity.co.uk (more…)
