23 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
A couple from Croatia and their experience with the Focolare Movement’s “Paths of Light” project “Like small children who start learning, we too learned to understand ourselves first, understand feelings, recognize them, understand each other, and learn that thinking differently doesn’t always have to end up in conflict. We understood that the couples around us enrich our relationships, and that we need to avoid isolating ourselves.” Melita and Slavko have been married for close to 20 years and are parents. They live in Croatia. They tell their experience as a couple candidly, without glossing anything over, or omitting those trying moments that made their path a challenge. Their marriage was a “house” to build every day, often without knowing what tools to use. It wasn’t a straight highway to drive with a powerful car, but a dirt road to be covered by bike with only one’s legs, lungs and heart as the engine, with tiring climbs and then descents to recover on. Theirs is a story that perhaps resembles many couples, yet it offers a key to understanding family that should not be overlooked. It came to light when they participated in the Percorsi di luce (“paths of light”) project in Italy, which the Focolare Movement has created for couples, especially those who are going through moments of division. In one of the darkest moments of their relationship, they explain, it was thanks to meetings like these that they found the tools to “use each day so that our family can be happy and our relationship can grow. The tools facilitate the climb that awaits us all in life as a couple, to realize God’s plans for our family.” Through their words, it becomes clear that the image of the “perfect” couple is a painful illusion. The expectation of a linear and sunny path, nourished by the enthusiasm that follows meeting the “right” person, clashes with the reality of a “game” that everyone must play. In this game the outcome is unknown, your teammate sometimes turns into your opponent and you win only if you both win. It is a game with no written rules, but one that has to be played with a clear goal, or at least, if it fades away, rediscovering that goal. It is a game where everyone is called to contribute and face adversity, without shortcuts. “Seen from today’s perspective,” they say, “we can testify that marriage is not a fixed and static thing, and that a course like this is not a magic wand that solves all our problems forever.” Rather, here “we have learned that our first child — our marriage — needs the greatest care and priority, because only when we are in peace and harmony can we be able to give love to the children and people around us. Only in this way can we become fulfilled as people.” In fact, their relationship went from feeling already fulfilled straight to the “starting blocks”. Melita tells about their beginnings: “It was a very beautiful time. I finally fulfilled my dream of having a man who could listen to me, console me, understand me. A person with whom to share similar views on life, faith, love. We soon realized that we wanted to crown our love with marriage.” Soon, however, the first test emerged: the loss of a pregnancy forced Melita and Slavko to review their plans and focus on the practical organization of life, work and home. It was a productive time, where they experienced a growing unity between them and with their respective families. They shared everything, says Slavko, finding “the strength, the will and the desire for common things”. “We idealized our lives,” Melita explains, “by completing the tiles in our mosaic and waiting for the family to expand.” After three years came the joy of their first child, but with it also the need to find a less demanding and more rewarding job. Employment for Slavko came, but the new situation produced tensions, misunderstandings, deep wounds in the couple. “The security we had built up and the trust in each other disappeared,” says Melita. “A period of dissatisfaction in our relationship began, with blame for the mistakes made. Slavko was not aware how dissatisfied I was, and I didn’t know how to make him understand the things that were bothering me.” “I was content with life, thinking, ‘What more do you want?’” he says. “We love each other, we are married, life goes straight ahead. Why do I continually need to show my fidelity and affection? She’s the one who doesn’t understand that I love her and stand by her. “I was deaf to her cries and I thought that she was the one who had to change and accept the new circumstances. In us there was a growing feeling of powerlessness and despair. We fell into an abyss from which we did not see a way out.” The thought of separating went through their minds. They had reached the bottom. But in that desert, life gradually began to flourish again. “At that moment the Lord sent our godparents and friends on our path, who, like others we had once erased from our lives, sent us directions to follow through them,” Slavko remembers. By comparing their situation with other couples participating in the project, they finally managed to glimpse a way out. “Facing each other, and before God, we began to understand and know each other again. We learned that having a different opinion does not mean that my partner does not love me; on the contrary, we have learned once again how diversity enriches us – it completes us as a couple.” Learning, discovering, growing and coming together as a person and as a couple: perhaps this is the unexpected result of an authentic and courageous journey, one that is unpredictable and full of tests, but also satisfying goals. Melita and Slavko have discovered that God’s plans for them as a couple and their family are not at all predictable, but it requires a determination to love each other. And they have learned that it is through this commitment that they each fulfil themselves as people.
Claudia Di Lorenzi
19 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
He passed away recently at the age of 53. His passions were building bridges between peoples and cultures, and forming the new generations. Young people were the primary focus of Fr Silio Naduva’s work as a priest in the Fiji islands, in the South Pacific. He died recently at the age of 53. He dedicated his profoundest energies to ensuring a human and spiritual formation and education for the youth of one of the most remote islands of the archipelago. He realised that globalisation which brings the world into their homes cannot equip these young people with the knowledge and instruments needed to continue their lives in an informed, free and fruitful way. He got to know the charism of unity of Chiara Lubich in the late 1990s. What fascinated him was “the capacity of the ideal to create a sense of family, forge union between people, and in particular with the flock the Lord entrusted to him,” so described Roberto Paolini, a volunteer member of the Focolare, who collaborated with Fr Silio in a series of formation weeks in his parish of St Anne, at Napuka last summer. “In the spirituality of unity,” Roberto continued, “he discovered an incredible driving force” which helped him face moments of great pain and suffering. Born on 28 February 1967 in Serua province, in the small village of Namuamua in the interior of Fiji’s main island, Silio was the seventh of nine brothers. From an early age he demonstrated great generosity, resilience, resoursefulness and a caring nature towards his family members and everyone else. He attended a Marist school and at the age of 17 was conscripted into the Fijian armed forces. Silio was posted on two missions which involved traumatic experiences, but he never lost his profound sense of humanity. Only after the death of his father in 1996 did Silio enter the regional Pacific seminary to start his formation. The very next year he met the Focolare Movement. Silio was ordained priest on 1 January 2005, at the age of 37, beginning his ministry in the parish of Vudibasoga, in Nabala. He was diagnosed with a serious illness in 2013, but this did not hold him back in serving and using all his energies for his parish. In 2018 Silio accompanied a group of young people to the Genfest at Manila in the Philippines. He returned with the ardent desire to encourage his young parishioners to follow this pathway. He guided and educated them, he encouraged them to join him in building bridges towards the youth of other communities, who despite having different cultures and languages, are part of our same family. One of the last things he did was to promote a meeting for youth from his own parish with young people from other parishes nearby, organized last August in collaboration with Focolare and with the local Caritas agency. In such a fragmented community, where the social network is lacerated by poverty and violence, Fr Silio worked to unfold a wider horizon to these youth. He offered them a vision and experience of how living alongside each other can nurture solidarity, and how peoples separated by large distances, by differences in traditions, cultures and language, can meet together in mutual respect and with a shared desire to build real relationships as brothers and sisters of the same family.
Claudia Di Lorenzi
16 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
To better understand what to do for others, Jesus invites us to put ourselves in their shoes; just as He did, when, out of love for us, he took on our human nature Are you doing it for yourself or for others? I found myself in a strange situation: I prayed every day, I attended Mass regularly, I was engaged in works of charity… and yet I didn’t have a living faith. It was as if a veil was preventing me from seeing clearly. One day, as I was accompanying my grandmother to the doctor, we got into a profound discussion; knowing how strong her faith was, I told her the state of my soul. She looked me in the eye and said: “Son, everything you do, do you do it for yourself or for others?” That simple question shocked me and called for a complete change of situation! I began to reflect, noting that even acts of charity were done out of a sense of duty. Now and then, I would visit an old man. When I visited him after that encounter with my grandmother, instead of talking about paperwork or medicine, I asked him what was in his heart. He told me about the war, the comrades that had died, his wife’s illness… At the end, he thanked me for the great gift he said he had received that day. (U.R. – Argentina) Loyalty Having fallen in love with a colleague, my wife left me with four children. I could not show them my despair as this would made their suffering worse but I could not help wondering where I had gone wrong. My own faith was being tested. Now the challenge was to minimise the impact of this drama on the children and make sure that she did not feel judged by them. Sometimes I would bring her our youngest child of four years old, sometimes I would make sure she attended parent meetings with the other children’s teachers. Slowly, a situation arose in which it seemed as if the mother, despite living away from home, somehow continued to be present in the family. But when she asked for a divorce, I felt like I was back at zero. I had to take a new step with the children. It was the oldest who, seeing me sad and thoughtful one day, gave me courage by saying: “Dad, don’t worry. We’re learning to take charge of life.” (B.d.P. – Croatia) The baby grow Used to having money, clothes, luxury ever since I was a child, I gradually had to drastically reduce my expenditure after the wedding. A few days ago I received an extra sum of money from work: I immediately thought about our baby that was about to be born and the baby grow I could buy him. But then, remembering how many poor people there are in the city, I told myself that the money could be used to help some of them. For the birth of our baby I received loads of second-hand clothes as a gift. Of course, I would have liked a brand new baby grow, but the things I received out of love were much more valuable and beautiful to me. (Anita – Venezuela)
Edited by Stefania Tanesini (taken from Il Vangelo del Giorno, Città Nuova, anno VI, n.2, march-april 2020)
14 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
Jesús Morán, Co-president of the Focolare Movement, in his homily during the Mass celebrated behind closed doors and transmitted via streaming shared the following thoughts: (…) In these last few weeks, which have also been during Lent, a thought overwhelmed my soul: the vanity of all things, the insecurity of our ability to deeply understand reality, life and the course of history. In fact, it only took a virus, a non-cellular microorganism, to put in jeopardy all our great reasoning and our security, our economic plans, our political strategies; to trigger panic worldwide and highlight the woes of so-called globalization. As a newspaper headlined a few days ago, using football jargon: Coronavirus 1 – Globalization 0. That is the sad truth. When thinking about the things that have been written in recent years on the phenomenon of culture in our times, the countless analyses and counter-analyses about the evolution of history and so on, I felt dismay and an almost paralyzing sadness. But it was then that I made a formidable rediscovery: Revelation, the Word of God addressed to humanity in human words and intelligence; the thought of God expressed in human words about the depths of life and history; a breath of understanding. In fact, I think that only the Word of God can provide us with answers for the period we are living in, because it alone preserves an eternal wisdom that goes beyond the times without losing its meaning. In the light of Revelation we realize something as overwhelming as it is paradoxical: that we are living a time of grace. Wisdom! This is the right solution. This is indeed the time of wisdom, a time for wisdom; a vision of reality that moves on other tracks, which is extremely imperative and indispensable today. (…) Wisdom that leads to an understanding of reality enlightened by love and that, precisely for this reason, triggers a formidable movement of living as one family. Truly God can do prodigious things, even in the midst of evil. He defeats it with his plan of love. Chiara’s life spanned almost a century and she lived it like a river of wisdom that watered the earth. She was attentive to the events of history and did not stop at what was on the surface of things, but went into depth and looked above to draw on the thought and vision of God and from God. That is why she paid no attention to anything but His Word. Unity, in fact, is God’s plan for humanity; it is the testament of Jesus, the Incarnate Word. Now we can see how much this word, unity, because it is anchored in Revelation, goes beyond the passing events, times and eras of history. It represents a vision of meaning that involves the past, present and future. It is a prophetic perspective that can activate the best energies of men and women of all latitudes, cultures, ethnicities and social conditions. Strengthened in unity we can transform the “globalization of indifference” into the “globalization of fraternity”. The match is not over. Of one thing we are certain: God’s mercy will triumph.
13 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
A message from Maria Voce, Focolare President, to the Movement’s communities around the world, for 14th March, the anniversary of the death of Chiara Lubich. Text of the message
13 Mar 2020 | Non categorizzato
An event dedicated to one of the “founding fathers” of the Italian Constitution, a writer, journalist, politician and co-founder of the Focolare Movement, Igino Giordani. The event, promoted by the Movement’s General Archives and the Igino Giordani Centre, was the first in a series aimed at getting “to the roots” of fraternity as a political element. At a time when values such as respect, coherence, loyalty are engulfed in a misleading narrative often resulting from an artificial communication system, the aim of these talks which were the inspiration of the Focolare Movement’s General Archives and the Igino Giordani Centre is to extract certain “pearls” from the heritage safeguarded by the two centres that characterized the life of political figures who were guided by the values of fraternity typical of the charism of unity. “If everyone was like Giordani, there would be no wars, no discrimination, no hatred. This great man must be a reference point for humanity. It’s up to us now to promote his ideas”. These words spoken by Gaia, a seventh grade student, give us an idea of how relevant Giordani’s message is and what an inspiration he is for the new generations. More than 300 people met together on 15 February 2020 in the Auditorium of the International Focolare Centre in Rocca di Papa, including politicians, mayors and local administrators. The event, which was viewed via livestreaming by people all over Italy and Europe, forms part of the year marking the 100th anniversary of Chiara Lubich’s birth. During the evening Giordani’s charm clearly emerged from words spoken by those fortunate enough to have met him such as Argia Valeria Albanese who recalled: “From those meetings, even personal ones held in the garden of the Mariapolis Centre in Rocca di Papa, I was greatly inspired to make a long term commitment to a political party and its institutions. There was another phase in my life where I felt a strong relationship with Igino Giordani not so much as a teacher or someone to follow but as an older brother to whom I could open my heart in those moments of failure… The misunderstandings and often the resentment, the denigration and not managing to achieve the objectives I’d set myself, however noble and disinterested, electoral defeat, losing friends”. Pietro Rossellini who served the community of Montecatini as Councillor affirmed how he was guided by “the radical mutation of this man as he got older, considered to be the strongest defender of the Christian faith par excellence, who allowed himself be transformed by Chiara Lubich by changing his controversial verve into Fire of Love. His being was not distorted, but made more sublime, elevated.” For Patrizia Mazzola, who worked passionately as a teacher in the Ballarò and Brancaccio neighbourhoods of Palermo, “some of Giordani’s writings have changed my idea of political and social commitment and given me courage in some of my battles in favour of the least of the city”. Chiara Zanzucchi and Lucia Zurlo from the General Archives and Alberto Lo Presti from the Igino Giordani Centre observed that the desire to organise this series of events lies in a growing awareness that the Archives are alive and kicking. These meetings dedicated to “witnesses in politics” enable us to appreciate how much the charism of unity has influenced political commitment through their moral coherence and political passion, their contribution to fraternity and peace.
Gianna Sibelli
