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For this story, I have to introduce you to my friend Anthony.
He was living in New Jersey at the time.
He had chronic kidney failure. And so, three times a week he had to go on for dialysis, which, of course, made it kind of hard to go about his regular daily life.
At one point in time, I was thinking, “Hey, you know, maybe I could be a kidney donor to him.” But these were kind of like mere thoughts and nothing—you know, I didn’t follow up. I didn’t talk to anybody about it.
A couple months go by, and at one point in time I find myself doing an Easter retreat. On the first day of the retreat, in order also to prepare myself a little bit, I went in for a visit to the chapel. Out of the blue, this question came back to my mind: “Hey, J.P., are you still willing to donate a kidney?”
I was kind of surprised because I hadn’t thought about it for months. But at that very moment there, I prayed about it, I thought about it, and I thought, “Yes, I want to follow up with it. And I want to see if that could eventually be a possibility.”
Then, on the next day of the retreat, one of the young people sharing was Gidget, Anthony’s daughter. First, she shared that during her teenage years, her mom went through a lot of suffering. She had lupus. She had kidney failure. And now, many years later, her dad kind of went through the same situation with the kidney failure. She said, “Even though we suffered so much as a family, I wouldn’t exchange this experience.”
Because recognizing Jesus on the cross in that suffering, she felt that she had come closer to God. And also, it had brought the family a lot closer together as well.
She walks off the stage, she comes back, she grabs the mic again, and she says, “By the way, just in case anybody is interested in knowing, my dad is O-positive.”
That came to me as a shock because I’m also O-positive. So I felt that the only reason she was sharing that was for me to hear that.
Then I understood also that God had allowed me, the day before, to make that decision in all peace and freedom, just between He and I at that moment in the chapel. So there was a gift.
Then we went ahead. We talked about it with some others in the Focolare community. We did some tests for the blood and the tissue. Everything was matching.
A few months later, we actually had the kidney transplant.
Of course, you hear also the consequences are—you know, you can live your life with one kidney. But it was, of course, not on my mind at all. I felt it was not just me wanting to do that, but I also felt kind of like that trigger from God, like, “Hey, if you want, this could be a possibility.” So it was kind of like a subtle invitation on His part to make me make that step out of love for Him. So that was also in the background here.
Of course, Anthony and I stayed in the hospital for a few days. I really felt a tremendous joy in my heart, you know. And I felt there was not just—not a joy because of, “I did something.” But I felt that joy came from God. That was very powerful and very tangible. It was a gift, you know, a special moment.
Jean Pierre Slee (Whashington – USA) Photo: JP Slee’s personal archive
This video is part of the On Point series produced by Focolare Media. This web series explores the key aspects of the Focolare Movement’s spirituality through reflections and real-life experiences. Visit Focolare Media or the YouTube channel to access other resources of this kind, available with subtitles and dubbing in various languages.
In the first chapter of his Gospel, Luke presents us with the only passage in the New Testament in which the main characters are two women, Mary and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth lived in a village near Jerusalem, about 150 km from Nazareth. Immediately after receiving the angel’s announcement that she would become the mother of Jesus (Lk 1:26–38), Mary sets out on a long journey to visit Elizabeth. We do not know the details of the route; we only know that she hurried towards the hill country. But why did she go there?
Mary went to share her joy with someone who, like her, had received a grace from God and had conceived a child. She wanted to be close to Elizabeth and help her during the final months before the birth of her baby. This is the story of two women and two experiences of pregnancy when conception seemed impossible. Who better than Mary could understand Elizabeth and share this time with her? The song of the Magnificat springs from their encounter.
My soul magnifies the Lord.
In his commentary on the Magnificat, Martin Luther wrote, ‘Her words are an expression of great love and profound joy; this explains why her life and soul are raised up in the Spirit. Mary does not say: “I magnify God”, but “my soul” does so. It is as if she is saying my whole life and my senses are, as it were, upheld by God’s love […]’ [1]
The verb ‘to magnify’ or to make great, reveals a feeling of joy that emerges from the discovery that God is even greater than one might have expected. This joy is echoed by profound humility and a deep sense of gratitude and appreciation.
Ermes Ronchi points out, ‘The Magnificat is Mary’s gospel, it is her good news that reaches all generations’. [2] This young woman from Nazareth repeats ten times that it is “He who has done…”’. This seems like a new Decalogue, a new set of ten commandments that overturn the logic of the world.
It comes naturally to ask whether we have retained a sense of wonder and amazement in our daily lives and in our prayer regarding all that God has done and continues to do. Without openness and wonder as we encounter what is new and full of surprise, faith may become a weary prayer that gradually fades away and turns into nothing more than a social habit [3].
My soul magnifies the Lord.
Mary’s canticle is not merely a prayer of personal praise but a prophetic statement, characterised by a constant reference to passages from Scripture, which indicate God’s deepest desires for the future of humanity [4] To praise him means to stand alongside the least in society and to believe that the world can and must change.
The words of this hymn invite us to understand God’s saving intervention in our personal and communal history because they refer not only to our individual lives but to the entire universe. They extend from the present moment to the new heavens and the new earth that the social revolution of the Gospel inaugurates.
My soul magnifies the Lord.
The Magnificat invites us to transform our lives into a living form of praise by recognising the “great things” that are happening every day. It invites us to join with Mary in proclaiming that God is faithful, that his mercy extends from generation to generation and that his kingdom of justice and love is already being fulfilled among us.
Chiara Lubich had grasped this revolutionary dimension of Mary’s canticle when she wrote to a group of young people: “Read the Magnificat and you will find there the first and most powerful page of Christian social teaching. Who and when will make these words into reality?” [5].
The question remains open and challenges us. God’s intervention should not remain confined to the intimacy of the heart but must be manifested in our relationships, in life together and in the fabric of society for generations to come.
Edited by Patricia Mazzola & the Word of Life Team
[1] Martin Luther, commentary on the Magnificat 1520
Something happened to me that reminded me why years ago we chose to be “new people” for a United World.
I was in a hospital. I caught sight of a young man who was crying alone, away from his group. He was studying to become an operating theatre and was in his final year, just three months from graduation.
I approached him. He told me that his father had lost his job. He used to go to college on his brother’s old bicycle, which had finally broken down. So he had to take four buses a day and no longer had the money for the fares.“I’m going to give up. I can’t go on any longer ,” he told me.
I wanted to give him money to top up his bus pass and get home. He didn’t want to accept. He agreed on one condition: that I give him my number so he could pay me back. He kept to his promise. Three days later he gave me that money back, but at the same time he confirmed the worst: he would interrupt his studies until circumstances allowed him to resume them.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. His face was constantly in my thoughts. I thought about how many young people like him were just one step away from giving up, ready to abandon everything.
Two days later, I was offered some unexpected extra work. The exact amount I needed. And a clear thought occurred to me, the kind that you don’t question: “What if God has sent this opportunity to me exactly for him?”
I didn’t hesitate. I gave him what he needed for three months of bus tickets and to finish his studies. That day, I heard nothing from him.
He called me 48 hours later. He could not speak. He was crying. Crying in the way you cry when hope is given back to you.
Then two years passed without any further news from him. Until one day I received a message from an unknown number. It was a photograph: his graduation as an operating-room nurse.
It was accompanied by a sentence: “I partly owe this diploma to a stranger who helped me without even knowing who I was”.
I was deeply moved. I cried with joy. I cried because I understood one thing:
A United World is not built with speeches. It is built with a bus ticket, with a repaired bicycle, with a hand held out outstretched without asking for a surname.
In fact, that young man never knew mine.
What matters is that, for 90 days, he was able to continue his studies. And that today there is one more operating-room nurse in the hospitals, saving human lives, because someone believed in him when he could no longer believe in himself.
Sometimes we think that changing the world requires doing something extraordinary,
when in fact the world changes because someone is able to take four buses.
I am sharing this not for my own sake, but because we need to remind ourselves that what we do may not be visible to us—and may perhaps only blossom two years later in the form of a qualification, a life, or hope.
Let us continue to be those “strangers” who lend a helping hand.
“Here is a summary of the event (of the 16th of July) that Chiara offers us, restoring its enchanting Gospel-based inspiration. When Igino Giordani (Foco) suggested (to Chiara Lubich) that they ‘bind themselves closely’ to each other in order to follow Jesus more closely – as Saint Catherine did with her followers – Chiara felt prompted to respond by inviting him to make a ‘pact’, in faithfulness to the Gospel principles to which she had learned to conform her life [1]:
“You know my life: I am nothing. I want to live, indeed, like Jesus Forsaken, who annihilated himself completely. You too are nothing because you live in the same way. So then, we will go to church tomorrow and I will say to Jesus-Eucharist who will come into my heart, as into an empty chalice: ‘On the nothingness of me may you seal a pact of unity with Jesus-Eucharist in Foco’s heart. And, Jesus, bring about between us the bond which is known to you.’ … ‘And you, Foco, do the same.’” (Translation of the Italian – verses 24 and 25 of the text of Chiara Lubich published in “Paradise ‘49”, Città Nuova, Rome 2026).
The narrative is concise and extremely simple. The event that then came as a gift, once the pact had been made and had borne witness, exceeds all human expectations. And in this form, it is also unprecedented in the history of Christian experience.
We could try to discern its meaning from what Chiara first of all tells Foco, in order to “explain to him” – as she wrote – what had happened. “Do you know where we are?” She begins with this question, inviting him to join her in opening the eyes of his soul to the scene that has unfolded through the pact. It is clear from this that the pact prepared the conditions for God’s grace to be made manifest: the mystical perception of the presence of Jesus in Chiara and Foco (and immediately afterwards in those to whom the pact is extended) becoming “one” – brought about in Jesus and by Jesus, through the lived Word and through the Eucharist. And it is so in each of them. Certainly, the lived and perceived identification of Chiara with Jesus, expresses the extraordinary grace common to all authentic mystical experiences attested to throughout the history of the Church. But what comes to light in the experience described here, is that this takes place for Chiara in the unity in and through Jesus, that she lived with Foco, and then gradually with the other people to whom the experience is communicated. To such an extent that they too are drawn into it.
[1] Here we have a specific description of the Christian experience brought about by the charism of unity: the “pact”. Whatever its origin in Chiara’s thought and practice, it is clear that the dynamic of “sealing a pact”, implies sharing with those involved in it, the fundamental focus of one’s existence in God and the decision to carry out his will together. In this way, the pact, among those who live it, becomes an expression of the pact with which God himself established a covenant with his people in the Old Testament, and as “once and for all” renewed it eschatologically in Jesus. Therefore, we see this as a “fundamental” aspect of the experience of Revelation. “Before then,” Chiara recalls in a footnote, “we had lived other pacts, such as the pact of mutual love. This had brought about a qualitative leap in our life, making us experience the presence of Jesus in our midst with the gifts of the Spirit he brings with him: peace, joy, light, strength. Then the pact of mercy (as we called the pact by which we focolarine took the commitment to see each other new every day, without remembering each other’s defects, as if we were meeting each other for the first time) helped us in perfecting our love for one another” (footnote 30). The pact of unity, inspired by Foco’s request and lived out according to the method described by Chiara, brings about a further and decisive “qualitative leap” – in keeping with the unfolding of the charism of unity as a gift from God – namely, that of the identification given and experienced with Jesus, and of finding oneself in the Bosom of the Father.
The year 2026 will mark the 60th anniversary of the arrival of the Focolare in Asia and Oceania. It was 22 February 1966 when Chiara Lubich – the founder of the Focolare Movement – assigned five focolarini and focolarine to Manila in response to a request from the then Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Rufino Santos. Giovanna Vernuccio, Silvio Daneo, Guido Mirti, Ednara Tabosa and Magdalena Brandao were the first pioneers of the Focolare Movement’s adventure in Asia, and beyond. From Manila, they went on to travel to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and finally Australia.
The Focolare Movement thus spread across the Asian continent, bringing to all those it encountered the spirit of unity that characterises it, despite the enormous diversity of cultures, religions and languages. This journey has paved the way for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue right up to the present day.
The programme focused on the origins of the Movement in Asia and its spread across the continent through personal testimonies; a workshop was held on the Movement’s engagement with the realities of the world; and a solemn prayer for peace took place. On the final day, during the celebration of Holy Mass at the Cittadella Pace, there were around 700 participants, some of them came all the way from other countries. A joyful and family-like atmosphere pervaded the entire event, accompanied by a profound gratitude for the pioneers. The current Metropolitan Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jose Fuerte Advincula; the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Charles John Brown; Bishops Roberto Mallari, Mel Rey Uy, Reynaldo Evangelista, Guillermo Afable and Gerardo Alminaza, the Italian Ambassador to the Philippines, Davide Giglio, and Bishop Joel Polares of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente (Independent National Christian Church), as well as around 30 priests, took part in the event, alongside various friends from other Churches and different faiths, and a strong presence of young people. The Italian Ambassador said he felt completely recharged by the celebration, suggesting celebrating it every year.
Among the impressions: “For me, the 60th anniversary was a celebration of every person who has made a clear choice for God,” says Suzette, “by following Chiara Lubich with their lives. Each one’s yes have generated countless Yeses where I find myself today. And Kreng adds: “With deep gratitude to God and to all of them I go forward more convinced, more ablaze with that passion to make “that all may be one be everyone’s reality!
“The celebration was like a drop of the divine in a world so full of itself, a wisp of fresh air at a time when lives are suffocated by isolation and division, it was the tender closeness of God. The 60th anniversary celebration was truly memorable, moving and meaningful. It also marked a new commitment and a new hope”.
