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28 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
The introduced themselves with a short video showing the park near the Sydney Opera House, a room at Wellington, a beach on a Pacific island. Some of the Focolare’s local communities offered dances from their local traditions that exuded the natural radiance of the cultures found in Oceania.
January 26-27 2013: Different cultures, traditions, Churches and religions. Oceania is the most cosmopolitan culture in the world. “The Spot” Hall at the University of Melbourne is a spectacle in itself because of its unique architecture and shiny cubes of light, but also because of the variety of people found in the audience. Everyone was an imigrant here, except for the original natives of the Pacific Islands.
Australia Day. Today is the national holiday but the aboriginal population far more prefers the Sorry Day which is celebrated in May. This is the “day of excuses” that was instituted to recall and repair the wounds inflicted on the local populations by colonialism, especially Australia where the impact was most felt by the aborigines. But it also recalls the paths of reconciliation, like the New Zealand one that has led to the creation of effective organisations of ethnic and cultural harmony. Before Sunday Mass, an aboriginal ceremony is performed that recalls the wairua tapu (mother earth), since she is worthy of honour and respect.
The celebration consists in placing hands on a mound of earth placed in the hollow of a large and welcoming bank. The little children together with Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti are invited to place their hands. Then the president of the Focolare receives from the hand of the aboriginal celebrant a wooden blade on which is inscribed a picture of the Australian landscape, the nine territories into which it is divided, according to the cosmogony geography of the Aborigines.
There is the long intense history of the lands of Oceania and there is the history of the local Focolare Movement. And exciting film presented a few moments of this history with the arrival of Rita Muccio in 1967, then the arrival of Maddalena Cariolato, the first locals to welcome the “spirit of Chiara”, individuals and families, youths and the not so young, in Melbourne and Perth. Then there was the “landing” in New Zealand, Wallis and Futuna, New Chaldonia and the Fiji Islands. Some of those people are still living, and some have already “arrived”. Among these are Margaret Linard and New Zealander Terry Gunn. All of them bear witness to having met in the charism of Chiara Lubich the possibility of living the Gospel. With the simplicity and radicalism that characterises this “very new world” coupled with love for neighbour, their lives were changed.
And it was precisely love of neighbour that was the main theme of Maria Voce’s remarks: Just as the three Kings recognized the greatness of the Son of God in a tiny baby boy, so too must we come to recognise Jesus in every neighbour, also beyond appearances. The open discussion that followed immediately took on an existential tone, when a child asked how we can believe in a God we do not see! The youths asked how they were to resist the solicitations of modern society. The elderly discussed their role in the communion among the generations; some brought up questions on how to advance the ecumenical or interreligious dialogue. Serious issues were not avoided, such as the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church, the growing stress in the cities that impedes progress in holiness, the temptation of consumerism that snuffs out witness to the Gospel, the absence of God in people’s lives, and the courage it takes to bear witness to His love.
Maria Voce ended with a wish: “Australia is a big land, we need to bring her love and unity. Our big family cannot live on memories in a photo album, we need to move forward. Then we’ll be writing a new album.”
By Michele Zanzucchi, correspondent
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27 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
The priests of the Focolare share their experiences during a meeting in Castelgandolfo
“I’m Fr. Carlo, a priest for 22 years in the diocese of Milan. I’ve left this parish community and will soon move to the Focolare’s international school for priests in Loppiano, Italy where I’ll stay for three years or so. In Milan I was often in contact with people, especially children since I was in charge of groups that were preparing them for First Confession and First Holy Communion.
I realized that at the basis of every pastoral endeavour there should be a living love for neighbour, striving to see Jesus in everyone, from the pastor to the Muslim teenager who came to play football at the oratory. I could tell many small stories that demonstrate how these small attentions to each person helped to create a close network of very beautiful relationships, that helped to facilitate many in drawing near to the faith and made the community appealing even to those who were unbelievers. I will share just two episodes.
I got to know Emilio during a chess workshop. His temperament was reserved and he didn’t really fit in with his peer group. To my great surprise at the end of the workshop he asked to join us on a holiday excursion in the mountains. There he began to fit in better with the group of boys, to the point of proving his courage by walking across a rope that was attached to a safety cable at a height of six metres: the “Tibetan Bridge”. His peers encouraged him, chanting his name in chorus and, in the end, he managed to walk the length of the course amid the general applause that gave him much confidence. When he returned home from camp his parents wrote to me saying that they had watched a young boy go off to camp and a young man return.
Then there was Eleonora. She wasn’t baptized. Her parents had preferred to allow her to choose when she was older. She had been invited to catechism classes by the enthusiasm of Maria, a very enterprising classmate who was only ten years old at the time. So Eleonara arrived, accompanied by her mother, who asked the pastor if her daughter could attend catechism classes. About two years later the pastor, seeing her faithfulness to the journey of faith, he decided that the moment had arrived for her Baptism and First Holy Communion, and he entrusted me with preparing her for the Sacraments and with the task of discussing it with her parents, who opened their hearts to me with honesty and candor.
The great day arrived. Eleonora arrived accompanied by family and relatives. We did everything we could to make them feel welcomed. The celebration was simple and very intense. Alongside the godmother were the catechist and friends who had been so important in her journey of faith. When I left the parish a few months ago, her parents wrote me a letter recalling “that unforgettable Sunday in April, the radiant and joyful smile of Eleonora that had illuminated all of us believers and non-believers alike, all who had gathered to celebrate her entrance into the Catholic community. For us it is the indelible image of a faith that goes directly to the heart.”
Loving our neighbours is always a grand adventure, you know how it begins, but you never know where it will lead.
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26 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
Following the visit to the Focolare communities in Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, the visit of Maria Voce and Gicancarlo Faletti now continues in Oceania.
In the first phase of their journey that began on 22 January 2013 and ends on 31 January 2013, several appointments are planned in Melbourne with men and women focolarini for their annual retreat and with who are close to the Focolare in Australia and in the Islands. There there will also be a lively presence of young people with several acitivities just for them on(26-27 January. Thern there is an encounter with a group of Australian bishops and priests on 20 January.
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25 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
In December, Maria Voce, the Focolare Movement’s president , launched an international campaign to stop the Syrian conflict and to ask for peace talks be resumed for the good of millions of unarmed and defenceless citizens: Time out. A minute of silence and prayer for peace, all over the world at 12 noon (local time), now directed particularly for peace in Syria.
Some friends from the Focolare Movement’s community wrote to us from Damascus and Aleppo: “Twenty-two months studded with unspeakable and countless pain that has left its sign. This is how we find our Syria and our people. We crossed the Lebanese border after a smooth travel along mountain roads, which were only recently usable due to the abundant snowfall in the past few days. Notwithstanding a reassuring blue sky, one can sense in the air a feeling of great uneasiness.
The controls at checkpoints are precise; we encounter more than one of them between the border and the outskirts of the capital, before reaching the neighbourhood wherein lives a family that will host us for the next few days, until the small accommodation generously accorded to us by the local Church will be ready. Though we haven’t reached yet, our mobile phones are already ringing or receiving messages from our friends from Aleppo, Hama, and Damascus who wanted to “welcome us” back! The joy is deep, contained, and tinged with anxiety due to an uncertain future. From the outskirts, the sounds of mortar and cannon shots are rare.
The news on TV was not very encouraging. Speaking with one of our friends we understood the magnitude of the game being played at the people’s expense. A game being prepared since years, which intends to distort the structure of the Middle East and in front of which one feels small and powerless. The international and regional politics seem miles away from the people’s suffering, as if it were not considered. And the people were tired. From Aleppo they described in a few sentences via telephone (that miraculously worked! ), the continuing hardships, the biting cold, the lacking water and electricity, the bread that is rare or at an exorbitant price, the blackmails and kidnappings for money in a city that was the country’s industrial and commercial centre. They speak of death that is always at the doorstep and of God’s providential aid. They were exhausted”.
And again: “We’re back from mass and behold the terrible news of the massacre at the university of architecture in Aleppo, due to two missiles that hit it and adjoining places, where besides many refugees were residing. We immediately tried to get in touch with our friends living there: a teacher and two students. Their voices were deeply moved. They recounted of unspeakable scenes. One of them who threw herself behind a car, saw bodies flying in the air and heard the cries of mothers in search of their children. The teacher narrated: “Today was the first day of exams, the bell had already rung and we were collecting the answer sheets. A pupil begged us to give him a few more minutes. He had arrived late due to the blocked roads. My colleagues were reluctant, but in the end I managed to convince them. At least five minutes elapsed before the student handed in his exam answer sheet. We went down to the courtyard and headed towards the exit. I saw the two missiles passing one after the other above me. I would have been exactly in the place they hit. I found the car with a caved in roof and shattered windows. But we were saved thanks to an act of love towards a student.”
Source: Città Nuova – Diary from Syria/1 – Diary from Syria /2 – Diary from Syria /3
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21 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
“It takes around an hour to reach the Singapore Airport from the city of Johor, crossing a river at Woodlands that is actually a sea strait separating Singapore Island from Malaysia. I am in great and youthful company in the car carrying us. There’s Sophie who had just arrived from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. She’s 43 years old, with two children aged 11 and 14, and works with an Arabic airline. She narrated her decision to live as a Christian in a professional setup that is not always easy, not solely for religious reasons but also for the quality of work: “Often I was obliged not to accept gifts and bribes that someone would like to give me because unfortunately in Indonesia, there is rampant corruption.”
Heyliy’s beautiful smile stood out beside her. She’s from another world – from Mumbai in India. She’s been in Singapore since seven years and works as an air hostess with another airline. She’s part of a group of young people of the Focolare Movement. She’s Indian, another’s from Brazil, two are from Singapore, another’s from Mauritius, there’s a Malaysian, one from Macau, and finally, a Korean!
26-year-old Latando and Oktav 28, had just arrived by air from Yogyakarta, the cultural capital of Indonesia, where they are studying Italian with commitment, eager to spend a period of spiritual and professional formation in Italy. They have a great hope: that their Muslim friends from Bantul, with whom they had worked a lot after the deadly earthquake of 2009, find a suitable way of development.
Anna, 22 years, is our driver. She lives together with his family in Johor. She’s studying Health management. She’s positive and optimistic by nature as well as by choice: “I believe that the crime affecting my city must be overcome by good police measures, but even more by works of social and political justice”. Finally, 22-year-old Nicolas, Singaporean with her smart phone always ready to go and ringing. She’s an accounts auditor: “But I always try to see faces and people beyond the money. It’s not always easy. Out here it seems that one should live for the money. I don’t agree”.
It’s these people, along with 300 others from Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, who gathered today, 20th January, at the Sacred Heart Cathedral hall in the heart of the city of Johor, to meet Maria Voce and Giancarlo Faletti who are visiting the region. Many of them don’t know each other due to the vast distances between them. It’s easier for them to meet as Indonesians, Singaporeans, Malaysians… The youth and children made up an overwhelming majority, but there’s no dearth of the “workers of the first hour”, i.e. those from the eighties, when news of the lady teacher from Trent reached out here. A burst of colours, numerous thoughts, so much expectation. Palpable emotions. People who are really diverse but all the same brought together by gospel love and that of Chiara Lubich.
Characteristics of diverse peoples expressed colourfully, emotionally and artistically through dance, music, theatre, scenic representations… A festival of peoples, an exposition of this part of the world that is so varied and rich. Maria Voce observed: “I was struck by the richness of this people who have such an immense potential both expressive as well as spiritual”. A youth from Penang, Malaysia remarked: “I didn’t know that the Focolare Movement communities from neighbouring countries were so diverse, I’d say complementary. I realized that we Malaysians alone wouldn’t know how to be so rich”.
A personal contact is being established between the guests from Rome and the many people who are present. There are intimate questions and in some way, just as intimate answers. It’s a constant call to God’s love and the individual conscience. With an invitation to a kind of “Jubilee year”, in which space is given to forgiveness, to “begin anew”, to look out for God’s grace that arrives… Questions somewhat universal, globalised, which would be valid even if asked in Cologne or Buenos Aires. But with a touch of the local social, religious, and political situation: the difficulty to commit oneself due to the stress of daily life wherein work is the most important value; the interfaith context, particularly Islam; the difficulty of a true altruism; inter-generational relationships; laws that not always favourable to a suitable civil coexistence…
Maria Voce concluded saying: “Only God remains… God needs witnesses and not defenders”. And this is what the life of the Movement means in these lands: to constantly renew oneself in the gospel love and to bear witness to it with one’s own life. To thus reach, little by little, the unity Jesus wanted.
Selamat Datang is written on the meeting hall’s backdrop. It means “welcome.” A few hours together and it’s already a certainty”.
By Michele Zanzucchi, correspondent
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19 Jan 2013 | Focolare Worldwide
Mirta Zanella, a native of Argentina, from Mendoza, is married and has three children. She has known the spirituality of unity for quite some time now and has experienced that living the Word of God transforms us and also changes the reality around us.
One day her house keys disappeared, along with her husband’s salary and other valuable items. Who could it have been? The theft had to be necessarily carried out by someone close to the family. This caused Mirta great suffering, so much so that she was unable even to pray. Then, remembering that Jesus invites us to forgive, she does so, even for the person who stole from her.
A few days later she learnt that a lady in difficulty who begged for alms in the neighbourhood, and with whom she’d had a friendly relationship, had stolen from a neighbour’s house. While she threatened this neighbour with a gun, her husband stole the goods. Subsequently, even Mirta received serious threats from her and so she called the police to defend herself. The woman was arrested. After the trial that found her guilty of various crimes, she was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
In the following months Mirta’s husband suggested that she go visit her in prison, but this was not part of her plans. “No way,” she answered, also overtaken by fear. Sometime later there was a new request. This time it was the parish priest who invited her to accompany a group of ladies to the women’s prison where, for that matter, the woman who robbed her was also imprisoned. Somewhat confused, Mirta accepted the invitation, remembering the Word of Life: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’” (Mt. 9,13).
Thus she went with the group to the prison and saw the woman at the end of Mass. In a flash she decided to greet her with a hug. “She started to cry and asked for forgiveness,” narrates Mirta. “I replied that the Lord had already forgiven her and me too. She asked me to pray for her children and I promised to do so”.
From that day onwards, Mirta continued to visit the prison with the priest and others, until she was asked to coordinate the Prison Ministry group. The prison inmates were touched by their concrete love and changed their attitude by making themselves available. They tidied up the chapel by restoring the crucifix and polishing the benches, so much so that Mass can now be regularly celebrated there. Some impressions of the prisoners confirm the changed atmosphere brought about: “I didn’t know how to dialogue with my children. Now I’m able to understand them”; “I was selfish. I only saw my pain, but I’m trying to be also sensitive to that of the other”; “The place doesn’t matter. Here I’ve discovered God”.
On Christmas Eve, Mirta and her friends organised a gala dinner in the prison and the Bishop went to celebrate Mass. On the one hand it meant forgoing to celebrate the feast with their families, while on the other it gave them a strong awareness of building an even larger family.
