The Healing Power of Love

Sep 26, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria

John: “At the beginning of the school year, our son came home after his first day in year 11 and said to my wife that he was not returning to school – he said that he couldn’t stand people! He disappeared silently into his room for over a year, coming out only when he thought we were asleep. He withdrew from me entirely and only talked to his mother sporadically. I felt completely abandoned and lost, but Claire’s love managed to help me accept the rejection. What helped me was the phrase of the Gospel: ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another’ (Jn 13:34). One night he made a desperate decision to commit suicide. As we called for an ambulance, he climbed out a window and ran away. The next hours were a blur: the ambulance arrived but he was gone; police support came too. He eventually came back and he was rushed to hospital for treatment. A week in hospital intensive care for someone stricken with panic and terror of people and spaces is a pretty scary thing. Night after night, and day after day, we slept in shifts so one of us would be there whenever he woke up. That ‘night shift’ was the only concrete love I could offer him; I could at least be a presence if needed – something I know that he later understood. When he came home, we thought that we could keep up that 24 hour suicide watch, but pretty soon had to accept that this was humanly impossible. We prayed together in a new way seeking God’s will. Together we offered and entrusted to God our son – His son – accepting completely that we could not prevent him trying to commit suicide again. I well remember the fear, pain, emptiness, anguish and hopelessness of this time, and then, in my acceptance of this terrible role, the feeling of real union with God and with Claire. In the year that followed, we managed to get him to reluctantly agree to enter a day therapy program. We hung in with our background support role and I think that God did the rest from the mundane of our ever-extending health insurance cover, to the miraculous – of an incredible group of fractured kids who supported and lived for each other.” Claire: “One of the girls in the group, with her multiple challenges, not the least of which was drug addiction, became part of our family life, and, as time went on, she and our son grew closer together. She hung in with him and helped draw him through his anxious times. And he stood by her rugged attempts at drug withdrawal. But it wasn’t easy.” John: “Their relationship suffered a setback due to our son’s stand on drugs, his personal abhorrence of them. But slowly, over the period after release from her months of involuntary hospitalisation, they tried again and worked at rebuilding their relationship on a firmer ‘no drugs’ foundation. Eventually they decided to marry.” Claire: “But, as everyone knows, wedding preparation is a pretty stressful experience, and our soon-to-be daughter-in-law was still working in an environment where drug taking was a common way to cope with life. So the inevitable happened. Our son rang me a month before the wedding and said bleakly, ‘Mum, she’s on ice again*. What should I do?’  My heart fell through the floor, and my brain went blank. Then I said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do – only the two of you have the grace for that. But I can tell you that, if you look into your heart and you see that you have loved wisely to the very end, then that tells you that it’s time for your part to finish. But if you look into your heart and you see that there is even the smallest bit more of loving wisely that you can give, then you keep trying.’ There was a long, long pause. Then a big, sad sigh. And he said, ‘I guess I can love a bit more’. Eventually they found a place that allowed her to  have an extended live-in rehabilitation program with its associated outpatient support systems. It’s now 14 hard months down the track, and she is still clean – a tribute to her continuing efforts in working with her counsellors, fuelled by her incredible love for her husband – our son – in his ‘no drugs’ stand, as well as to his extraordinary love for her through all their struggles. We’re so proud of both of them. It has been a long road for all of us. And I guess one that we’ll all travel or the rest of our lives. But what I have seen shining through all the tears is that God’s love for John and me gave us the wisdom and strength to love our son in the way he needed to the end, and that maybe our love showed our son the way to love his wife in just the way that was right for her.”

Experience shared at Health Symposium “Darkness to Light – Spirituality of Unity in Chronic Disease and Disability” Australia, July 2016

*Crystal methamphetamine

Syria. Are we to be the guardians of stones?

Sep 22, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria

It’s been six years since the beginning of the war in your country. What do you think have been the worst effects on society? Six years of war have shaken the very bulwark of Syrian society: the family, the basic cell that has absorbed the blows and the disgrace of this unending violence. The family was the safeguard of the country and of the Church up until 2014. But the insecurity, intolerance, violence and chaotic destruction have now completely uprooted more than two million families. Without houses and scattered all over the world, how could they have gone on under the weight of such a heavy Calvary? It was common at the beginning of the war – March 15, 2011 – to see the family gathered around a mother. The men go to war and often die. The saying now is: ‘An orphan without a father is not an orphan’. The family is left gathered around its mother who ensures the unity and the survival of the hearth. In the midst of this long and burdensome suffering these heroic mothers live in poverty and in tears. They have honoured their calling, living in tents and dying drowned. Is there any greater suffering? The destruction of the basic cell of society, and the youth? Can we count on them to look towards the future? The general mobilization that was decreed in October 2015 invited all men under the age of 45 to enter military service. It was a decision that also distressed other family members who couldn’t leave and had to stay where they were, waiting for a conclusion to this endless war. This age group that vanished had once comprised the backbone of economic activity that was still being carried out. Some reached the barracks and others chose to flee on the trail of illegal immigrants that is often irreversible. This destabilized the job market and the modest family life that found itself even more deprived of resources. What future is there for a community without young people? How has the war affected the Church? These things have weakened the Church. Families often decide to get up and go to their son who has left the country. Hence, you have the exodus of families resulting in the dizzying drop in the number of the faithful in parishes. There is the demographic imbalance: in the absence of young men, our young women who find themselves alone often marry Muslim polygamists. With fewer marriages, there are fewer baptisms. For the first time the Church finds itself facing another crucial problem as well: one in three priests in Damascus have decided to move to another more peaceful country. What can be done to keep priests in Damascus? What will come of the Church without priests? What do you think is the challenge and the hope of the Christians living in Syria today? The dead cities in the north of Syria are an unsettling photograph of what we could become. How are we to avoid becoming the guardians of brick and stone? It remains to the Christians of the East to reconsider their calling and to live along the lines of the small primitive Church that lived without protection or guarantee. Will we be capable of responding to this apostolic challenge? The Gospel encourages: ‘Fear not, little flock” (Lk 12:32).