Sep 25, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Jesus freely announces his message to men and women of different nationalities and cultures who are willing to listen to him; it is a universal message, addressed to all and which everyone can welcome to be fulfilled as people, created by God Love in his image. A shared tragedy Several years ago we moved with our four daughters from war-torn Lebanon to Tasmania where we struggled to integrate into a world that was so different to ours: the people here are very reserved and the “nuclear” family is in stark contrast to the “extended” family of our country. Not long after our arrival, one of my husband’s colleagues lost his two-year-old son in a fire. Thereafter, he and his wife refused to receive visitors and meet people, and remained almost segregated at home. We could not understand this attitude because in our culture tragedies are shared. We wondered how to love them, taking that pain on us too. So, for a few weeks, I cooked for them every day, leaving the food outside the door with a note, without disturbing them. One day the door finally opened and since then a friendly relationship has been born between us and them. Over time we have made other friends who enrich us with their culture. And now in our house there is always someone who comes to visit us, a bit like in Lebanon. (Carole – Australia) Inculturation They say that to get under someone else’s skin you need to speak their language but this is not always necessary. I have witnessed this with the many people I have treated (I am a doctor) and with whom I have built a relationship, a message has passed. Once, in Cameroon, I asked a local elder for advice about how to identify with his people. He said: “If you love with your heart, others will understand. It’s enough to love.” He brought me back to the essentials of the Gospel which was confirmation that sharing others’ sufferings and joys comes before everything else. If I also manage to go into depth with the local language and customs, all the better… Wherever we find ourselves, love is the most eloquent word to express God’s paternity. (Ciro – Italy) The support not to let go After our divorce I continued to meet with my children. But over time, my ex-wife’s blackmail, demands and accusations increased… I was afraid she had advisors who were not really helping her. The most painful ordeal was when even the children, especially the oldest, began to accuse me of having ruined their lives. I did not know what to do anymore. Every time we met, it became hell. A priest friend helped me greatly when he suggested I should love without expecting anything. I decided to try and follow his words for a few months. When my mother-in-law fell ill and became bedridden, I took care not only to visit her frequently but also to make things as light as possible for her. One day, as I was keeping her company my daughter arrived. She found her grandmother serene and amused as we were arranging old photo albums. Something must have changed in her because that same evening she called me to ask my forgiveness. It’s a difficult mountain to climb but every time I try to love I find the support I need not to give up. (V.J. – Switzerland) Coloured My husband Baldwyn and I are coloured, a mestizo race that often suffers from serious marginalisation. My mother was African, my father Indian. He died after I was born so my mother and I went to live with her black relatives whose traditions I was familiar with. But as the years went by, I realised that I was different and was often laughed at. When Baldwyn and I decided to get married, it came as a real blow to discover that I was not registered anywhere and so did not exist in the eyes of the state: once again I felt rejected! During that difficult period, circumstances led us to meet different Christian families, black and white: they belonged to the New Families Movement and treated everyone equally. In that environment I felt at ease for the first time, welcomed for what I was. The attention I received from those people made me discover that God loved me. I was able to accept myself with my differences and others as well. I became free. (Gloria – South Africa)
edited by Stefania Tanesini
(taken from Il Vangelo del Giorno, Città Nuova, year VI, no.5, September-October 2020)
Sep 24, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Speaking to a group of Focolarini on 19 September, Maria Voce shared what is closest to her heart at this time. Some highlights of this spontaneous reflection: Defining it as “a new step”, Maria Voce is reaching out to Focolare communities worldwide. What is closest to President of the Focolare Movement, Maria Voce’s heart can be summed up in one word: “relationships”. This new invitation seems to complete a trajectory launched 12 years ago, in the early days of her appointment as Focolare President, when she invited everyone to take on a “culture of trust”, building relationships capable of generating peaceful social co-existence respecting diversity. As her second term draws to a close, with the Movement’s General Assembly just a few months away, the world is deeply affected by this long pandemic and economic crisis. In this context, Maria Voce returns to one of the key themes of her presidency: the centrality of relationships, as seen from the perspective of Chiara Lubich’s charism. It is an invitation once more to act as part of a network and in fraternal communion with all those individuals, communities and organizations who are pointing in the same direction, towards fraternity. “I was deeply struck by the thought that Chiara, in 1943, found herself in a devastated world, where everything around her was collapsing. And God said to her heart, ‘It’s not true that everything is collapsing. There’s something that does not collapse. It’s God and God alone!’ And what did Chiara do? She went out with the message: God is, God loves us, this God exists beyond the war. This is what was needed at that time. Jesus came on earth, and He certainly didn’t come alone, because where Jesus – the Son of God – is, the whole Trinity is present. So God the Trinity came on earth to show us the way, to teach us how to live according to the Trinity. To do what? To transform the world. But what does it mean? It means relationships, it means connections, it means equality, it means listening to one another, it means being for one another, in a certain sense knowing how to ‘lose’ oneself in another. This morning I was thinking about this and I asked myself, Jesus came on earth and what did He do? He walked along the roads of Galilea, and what did He find? An official, most probably involved in corrupt tax-collecting practices; a young man fascinated by the words He spoke; a small businessman, Peter, who owned a boat. And He called them. He had the courage to transform them into His apostles, which means into people sent out to continue carrying His message to the furthest corners of the earth. What else did He find? He found people of all types. He found sinners, the dead, those who were hungry. And what did He do? He multiplied the bread, He raised the dead … He got involved in meeting the needs of others, staying among them. He even managed to draw the crowd following Him. What does it mean? He created community. He formed a community capable of listening to one another, to recognize that someone spoke a different language and to listen to them in their own language. What does it mean? It means they were capable of really accepting one another, of understanding each other even when someone speaks differently, they were really capable of accepting each other. He transformed these people into His fraternity, His community. And He got them living solidarity between themselves. You see, when they were hungry, he said, ‘Give them something to eat’; when he cured the woman with a fever, she then got up and started to serve them; He gave the child whom He raised up back to her family so that they could look after her. You see, He did not destroy anything that was already there, but rather He transformed it! So what should we do? We must transform the world by ‘being’ this Jesus. We must bring these Trinitarian relationships. And there’s no other way except by choosing Jesus Forsaken, which means knowing how to lose oneself in the other, knowing how to let the other emerge. Then God the Father will continue to create new things, and the Holy Spirit will continue to illuminate us”.
edited by Stefania Tanesini
Sep 23, 2020 | Non categorizzato
An international formation school entirely online because of Covid with new methodologies and the participation of 115 Gen 2, the young people of the Focolare, from 18 nations. A workshop replicated in various parts of the world. Can the Covid emergency stop our commitment to building a more united world and the possibility to achieve it together? This has been a constant question, in recent months, for many Gen 2, the youth of the Focolare Movement, together with their formators. And so, if the pandemic has prevented them from travelling from one country to another or even from leaving their home, new technologies have allowed the young people to continue to work for peace and unity in the world, indeed, thanks to technology, there have been new and original initiatives, all strictly via the web. And so, looking at the international appointments established some time ago, the young people of the Focolare decided not to cancel even the annual international formation school for youth group leaders scheduled for August 2020 in Italy, but to do so online. Of course, a little more work was needed to transform the 10-day programme for the school, adapting it to a web-based training method and looking for platforms and apps that would allow moments of listening and going deeper, but also allowing for moments of communion, all together and in small groups. This is how the “International School 2020” was born with a completely new format. 82 young people and 33 adult formators participated from 38 countries and in 16 languages. “Learning to work online is a positive thing as a result of Covid “ – said one of the participants from Argentina – “because it facilitates the participation of those who, for financial or time constraints, had never done and would not have been able to make an international experience if it involved travelling”. The school entitled “On earth as it is in heaven” focused on spiritual and current issues, such as peace, social commitment and active citizenship, which were examined in depth in the light of Chiara Lubich’s charism. One of the focuses was: “Dare to Care”, the central theme of Pathways that the young people, with the entire Focolare Movement, have committed themselves to putting into practice. Each year the Pathway is associated with a colour: this year it is the ‘black’, which Chiara Lubich had linked to political, civil and social commitment for the common good. And, as black is the background to all the other colours, this commitment is the background against which the various areas of everyday life stand out: family, society, school. Beginning with Chiara Lubich’s writings, experiences of committed witnesses in the political and social spheres followed; experts such as the theologian Father Fabio Ciardi, a member of the Abbà School, the study centre of the Focolare Movement; Alberto Lo Presti, director of the Igino Giordani Centre; Daniela Ropelato and Antonio Maria Baggio, lecturers at the Sophia University Institute in Loppiano (Italy). The concluding words of Maria Voce, President of the Focolare Movement and Co-President Jesús Morán: “You are people who have decided to give your lives and, in this school, you have tested it in your workshop. Today, the workshop is over, now you are going out to live it”. This school, together with the life commitment it entails, is spreading and multiplying: the 100 participants have made themselves promoters of similar schools in ten different places around the globe.
Letizia Spano
Sep 21, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Not having preferences and not expecting anything in return: this is Chiara Lubich’s straightforward but revolutionary formula for a love that can change the world – today too. “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor 5:17). [These words] speak … of the ‘new self’ that, through baptism and by adhering to the fruits of baptism, has been established in us and has a new way of seeing things, of behaving and of loving. … What is this love like? … Since it is a participation in the very love that is in God, which is God himself, it differs from human love in infinite ways. But there are two aspects, above all, in which it is different. Human love makes distinctions, it has preferences, it loves some brothers and sisters, for example blood relatives, people who are educated, rich, good looking, distinguished, healthy or young; it loves those who belong to a particular ethnicity or class, but it does not love others in the same way. Divine love, instead, loves everybody. It is universal. The second difference is the fact that, in human love, we love because we are loved. And even when love is beautiful, we love something of ourselves in the other person. There is always something selfish in human love, or that waits to love only when self-interest prompts us. So if we want to let our ‘new self’ live in us; if we want to let the flame of supernatural love burn in us, we too must love everybody and be the first to love. Basically, we must be like Jesus, other Jesuses. Jesus died on the cross for everybody: his love was universal. And with that death he was the first to love.
Chiara Lubich
Taken from a telephone conference call, Rocca di Papa, 8th January 1987
Sep 19, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Trento, Chiara Lubich’s birthplace, will soon host a conference dedicated to the value of the Focolare founder’s texts, both spoken and written, from a linguistic and literary point of view. The event, which takes place in the Centenary of Lubich’s birth, is coordinated by an international study and research group and can be followed via web.
© CSC Audiovisivi
edited by Anna Lisa Innocenti
Sep 17, 2020 | Non categorizzato
Jesus reveals that something new in the Gospel: the Father loves each of his children personally with an “overflowing” love and gives him/her the ability to enlarge their heart to their brothers and sisters. These are urgent and demanding words: to give what is ours; material goods, but also a welcome, mercy, forgiveness, and to give extensively in imitation of God. Powdered milk In a satellite city near Brasilia, there is a very poor neighbourhood where for years we have been bringing not only material aid, human promotion, but also trying to spread the good news of Jesus. It is always amazing to see how these people discover God’s love and begin to help each other, sharing what little they have with those who have even less. They even offer their own hut. Faithful to the “give and it will be given to you”, a lady to whom we had delivered powdered milk for her children told us that she shared it with her neighbour who had nothing to give her children. That same day, to her surprise and joy, she received more powdered milk. (H.I. – Brazil) The wound On certain festivals I give my four children some money to buy gifts for poor children. This year my youngest son asked me for more money: he had heard that his father was unemployed and could not give presents to his children with another woman. For me it was like a cold shower. My husband had abandoned us years earlier and the wound had remained. That night I cried a lot, I felt betrayed even by my boys. But maybe it was me who was wrong and the little one was teaching me a lesson. The next morning I increased his pocket money. Sometime later my children asked me to help their father find a job. It was the ultimate blow . They had never received a gift from him and now they were asking me to do this! Despite the painful memories, I understood that I had to put into practice Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies. It cost me but I did it. The joy I saw in the boys was indescribable. I thanked God for their generosity but also because they had given me the opportunity to remove from my heart a resentment that had tortured me for years. (C.C. – Colombia) Dismissal Some months ago, when the major computer company I work for announced the laying off of 40% of its employees, I got a real shock. Thanks to that job, we didn’t lack anything in the family, not even the extras. How were we going to meet the house payments? What about health insurance? And so on… With Jennifer and our daughters we felt more responsible about our family economy. We were ready to sell the most valuable objects and make other possible sacrifices, we assumed we would become self-employed, considering our personal skills… Above all, we entrusted ourselves to God the Father, continuing to hope. On the day of the layoffs, 6500 of my colleagues lost their jobs. I would have liked to disappear so as not to watch; but then I stayed to share that moment with those who left. I do not know how it will end for me, but one thing is certain: this trial has united us more in the family. It has created a deep bond with other couples and has opened our eyes to the problems of others. We now experience what it is that really matters in life. (Roger – USA) I forgave my son’s killer After my son was killed during a robbery, nothing made sense in my life anymore. Desperate for help, I attended a Gospel meeting. There I listened to a commentary on Jesus’ phrase: “Love your enemies”. Those words were like a rock for me. How could I forgive those who had killed my son? But in the meantime, a seed had been sown within me. As I attended that group, I felt the urge to forgive became more and more urgent. I wanted to find peace of heart. The Gospel still spoke of peace: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”. In the midst of my family’s tragedy, the decision to forgive finally prevailed. Now I can truly call myself a “daughter of God”. Recently I was invited to meet with my son’s killer, who had been arrested. I knew him. It was hard, but grace intervened. I did not feel hatred or resentment towards him. In my heart as a mother there was only great pity and the desire to entrust him to God’s mercy. (M.A. – Venezuela)
edited by Stefania Tanesini
(taken from Il Vangelo del Giorno, Citta Nuova, year VI, n.5, September-October 2020)
