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I was at Genfest 1980

I was at Genfest 1980

Jan 15, 2018 | Non categorizzato

Genfest1980_bI was born and grew up in Macau, a former Portuguese colony is now part of Continental China, where I got to know the Ideal of unity at a Mariapolis. Macau is a small city that can be visited in few hours, so the invitation to take part in a Genfest in Rome, with thousands of young people from around the world – really appealed to me, even though I didn’t have least idea of what it was. We had just begun to live this ideal of unity, with other young people and a few women focolarini who often came to visit us and bring us the news and the concrete life of the Gospel that is lived in the Movement around the world. That world that I had known only through my geography lessons, but that now, with the Ideal of unity, had become smaller and nearer. Just arrived in Rome, several days earlier, we found ourselves in a house with lots of young people from Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia, Latin America…. How could I live with all of them? We Asians were a bit shy and, not knowing the language, we didn’t know how to communicate. Instead, there was no need to talk in order to understand one another, because we had same joy in common and from the very first, there as a very strong mutual understanding among all of us. After only a couple days, we already felt like we were one family. Then we learned that the title of the Genfest was: For A United World. The Genfest was going to be held at an open stadium, so I remember us praying a lot that it wouldn’t rain. Hundreds of buses from Europe were awaiting us. We learned that Chiara Lubich (whom I had not yet met in person) wanted the Genfest to be a moment of God. More than to the fest, Chiara brought us to the essential.

Chiara Lubich

Even though I didn’t know much Italian back then, I had the task of translating for the Chinese, Philippine and Brazilian Gen. It wasn’t easy; on the contrary, when the Genfest began, I was so overcome with emotion and the difficulty to hear, that I didn’t manage to translate. When Chiara stepped on stage,, the 40,000 young people seemed to have become a single heart and a single soul. We completely taken by her presence and I understood who Chiara was. Even in the midst of that huge stadium, every one of us felt her near to us. I didn’t understand everything she said, but I did feel that we were already on the road to a united world, and such a huge ideal would require the effort of every one of us. At one point the rain came… It was striking to watch the ones who had umbrellas reach out and hold them over the heads of the people in front of them. And despite the fact that we couldn’t catch Chiara’s message because of technical difficulties, we were all so happy. The presence of Jesus among us, through the mutual love among all of us, dragged us along and filled us with intense joy. That moment of God had come true! At the end of the Genfest all 40,000 of us left convinced that we were beginning a road that Chiara Lubich had shown to us, so that we could contribute to a more united world. And it began immediately: loving every person we would meet, and living in mutual love among ourselves 24 hours a day.

Chiara Lubich: love is practical

Chiara Lubich: love is practical

Jan 13, 2018 | Non categorizzato

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Foto: Pixabay

If we want to keep love burning, the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into our hearts, it has to be expressed in practical action. In the next two weeks, we should examine ourselves precisely on this aspect of love, on its concreteness, and work at making it authentic. How? We know how easy it is, living in the world, to gradually accumulate objects that are more or less useful, or are superfluous to our needs, and keep them in our houses. It could be an extra pen, a book, some clothing, a tool, a picture, or a carpet. It could be linen or furniture, big things or little things, a sum of money perhaps. […] Why not collect all these goods and make them available to people in our community who don’t have these things, or to the poor, or to help the “daily Jesus forsaken” as we call the disasters whereby people suddenly find themselves in pain or anguish, in the cold or in danger? When we get up in the morning, we always wash our face. Don’t you think it might be necessary, at the start of every year, to check out what is surplus to our needs and give it away as an obligation of charity? Every now and then, in the Focolare, we do what we call “making the bundle”, which means putting together all the things that are extra to our needs and distributing them. Couldn’t all of us do this? […] By collecting our surplus and giving it away, our charity towards our neighbour will be real; that way, we shall preserve the living presence in us of the Risen Lord. My experience has been that to put this into practice one needs a little time. You have to think carefully about each object. Of course, we can only consider the things we can call our own, and define this one as superfluous and that one as not. Moreover, be generous, realizing that it is better to do without something useful than to have more than you need. […] In addition, let’s flee from any attachments and from the greater or lesser influence of consumerism that, perhaps involuntarily, have become part of our lives. We will feel freer and lighter, better suited to making this year a very fruitful one.  

Maria Voce: “Space, not payback”

Maria Voce: “Space, not payback”

Jan 12, 2018 | Non categorizzato

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© Osservatore Romano

The special end-of-the-year article-interview of the magazine edited by San Paolo entitled, “Women, the future of the Church?” by Alberto Chiara is a two-page article with many photos. But during the interview the discussion broadens, ranging from the role of the woman in the Church to the challenges opened by the pontificate of Francis to go towards the poor and the marginalized, up to the commitment to dialogue with the new generations, which will be the focus of a dedicated Synod in October, to be preceded by important pre-Synod events. Will the women save the Church? “Jesus Christ has already saved the Church,” Maria Voce briefly replied. “What counts is what the men and women of the various communities do.” The journalist prodded on, recalling the recent appointment of Pope Francis, in two key Departments – that for the lay and the one for family and life – of two women, Linda Ghisoni and Gabriella Gambino, both married and with children, (the first, a university professor and magistrate of the Court for marriage annulment proceedings in Lazio, and the second, a professor of Bioethics and Jurisprudence at the Roman University of Tor Vergata and of Sciences of Marriage and the Family at the John Paul II Pontifical Institute).  “It seems that Pope Francis has the firm intention of affirming an authentic, real rapport of complementarity between woman and man,” Maria Voce replied. “Of course, this rapport has always existed. In the beginning God created man, male and female. He created two essentially different beings which, together, make up humanity.” After so much machismo is this the payback time of women? «Pope Francis wants the women, like men, to have the possibility to express themselves within the Church, also taking on roles of greater responsibility, but without crushing man, but rather, by bringing out their own talents, that particular capacity for regeneration and maternity. No payback, therefore, even if women up to now have not had enough room, in the Church as well as in society.” As to the Church’s state of health today, Maria Voce commented: “I am really happy to live in our time, with this Church. There couldn’t be a better moment.” And added: “The characteristic trait which is most convincing to me is the “basic serenity that marks the rapport between the Pope and the people of God. Francis is a Pope who is always generous in welcoming others, ready to open out to and attentive in understanding the difficulties of humanity. He doesn’t hide the difficulties of the moment, also within the Church, but every era has its difficulties, and our days are not exempted to this rule. Several times I have thought of how much Pope Bergoglio must suffer in feeling misunderstood, and criticized severely for his words interpreted out of context…” Having to choose, first one, then two words that define the current pope, the Focolare president indicated “charity” and “truth,” but specified: “One does not exclude the other. Bergoglio knows that some things he says or does may bother some people and may not be fully understood by all. But he goes on, driven by love, to improve and correct certain situations.” With regard to the sectors preferred by the Pope, Emmaus observed: “The insistent focus of the Pope on the poor, the sick, and the marginalized, and his capacity to bend down towards those who make mistakes, does not make him overlook other categories.” In the face of a Church that is always more open to dialogue on the same level with all, Maria Voce expressed a dream: “That the Pope promote a day of common prayer and invite the heads of the other Churches, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutheran, Methodists, Baptists… to pray together once a year, during the Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians, or at another time. I think that if the faithful see their heads pray together habitually, they would discover the possibility of unity in diversity.” The end of the interview was dedicated in a phrase to the youth, to whom the Church intends to dedicate itself this year with particular attention: “We adults should listen to them.”  

Turn it up!

Jan 9, 2018 | Non categorizzato

On its 50th birth anniversary, the international Gen Verde band has recorded “TURN IT UP!” “It is an invitation,” they said, “to raise the volume of unity.” And this calls for a concrete, universal love that is able to take the initiative. This idea has toured the globe with the group, echoing in squares, schools and homes throughout the world. It has contaminated many and has become a life commitment. “As the year is about to end,”he artists added, “the idea has returned ’in a million hues’, sung by numberless voices, and danced with the fantasy of different peoples. And these 465 boys and girls from 31 cities of 21 countries in 5 continents are the protagonists of the video clip, ‘TURN IT UP!’ with their passion, enthusiasm and joy.”   https://youtu.be/DKoodP6IYqg?t=40

A long trek, and it happened at night

Jan 6, 2018 | Non categorizzato

These three wise men from the East, the Magi who hurried across the desert in search of a small boy, prefigure the march of Christianity to rediscover its innocence. That small boy was a king, albeit a king without lodgings. But they went anyway, walking in by starlight, guided by a star. That is the miracle of the Christ, who forces people out from their fixed spots, peels away from their hearts the interests that turn them to stone, pushes them beyond the perceived boundaries of the sacred so as to have them recommence their search for unity among all people, in every circumstance. And so to his crib they come from every plague of prophet, Hebrew and Greek philosophes, art and literature, speculation and custom, stripping from themselves along the way whatever is particularly idolatrous and wrong, unreasonable and inhumane. And everything gathers around Christ, who is the reason for everything. The Magi brought perfume and treasure from the far reaches of Arabia and Mesopotamia: affects and effects. Love drew them out from far away to bring them close to Christ, who was the poor person par excellence and is forever to be found in the poor. That trek of the Magi represents the effort to draw near from every distance, to rise from the rubbish and with an offering of hearts and material goods, through the deserts of egoism, to arrive at unity with God, because “God became what we are so that we could become what God is,” as St Augustine would say: the one who descended so that others might ascend. But it’s a long trek, and it happens at night, amid trials and tribulations: Truth is never achieved without effort. God is a prize for those who put the effort into finding him: but whoever seeks finds. Igino Giordani, I Re magi, La Via n.97, January 6, 1951, p.4.

The Birth of the Focolare: History and Sociology of a Charism

The Birth of the Focolare: History and Sociology of a Charism

Jan 5, 2018 | Non categorizzato

callebaut-focolari-copertinaFrom a small city in northern Italy to five continents: an ample sociological dossier outlines the history of the Focolare, from its birth up to the definitive approval of the Church in 1965. It is a detailed reconstruction, encouraged by the founder of the Focolare herself already in the 1980s, and published for the first time in 2010 in a French edition, and lately translated into Italian by Città Nuova. Piero Coda, Rector of Sophia University Institute, introduces Callebaut’s study in the preface, with these words: “Up to today, there has never been an overall scientific approach to the history of the Focolare […] this current research for the first time constructs and institutes a historical and interpretative dossier of the important phenomenon represented by the Focolare Movement.  […] The work is accurate, precise, and as thorough as can be […] exemplary and excellent under the historical profile.” Interviewed by Lorenzo Prezzi for settimananews.it, Bernhard Callebaut (Bruges, 1953) explained the sense of the book: ”I think that the purely testimonial narration, in which the person is strongly felt, is always valid. I think that a book like mine could cancel from my story the beneficial shock experienced in the reading of some pages of Lubich’s first (Meditations) pages that stimulated the actualisation of the messages they contained. On this premise, I think that at a second moment, we have to respect the need to understand, contextualize, link the phenomenon in itself to a previous story and gather some of the future prospects.” With studies in law, philosophy and sociology at the Catholic University of Lovanio, Bernhard Callebaut is currently a professor at Sophia University Institute in Florence, of which he is also Program Director of the Religions in a Global World research group. Foco_Chiara_DonForesiThe first 20 years of the history of the Focolare are fathomed starting from the “enlightenments” of Chiara Lubich, which later became the core of her spirituality. “The charism is always granted to someone in particular, also here,” Callebaut explains. “Only after a certain time, Lubich realised that actually that gift had been bestowed on her and nobody else, at least, not in such a strong, limpid and overwhelming manner. But with time, she realized that also her first companions, who were sent elsewhere – first to Italy, then  Europe and the continents – also became in some way, harbingers, multipliers of the charism, ’springs’ in turn. As of today – and in my book it is amply demonstrated – the core of Lubich’s charism is linked to having identified – as a gift – and later developed, and as never before in the two millenniums of Christian life, the meaning of that apex of the passion that constitutes the moment of that cry of abandonment of Man-God.” The history of the Focolare at the start of the story is made up also of a long and suffered wait for the formal recognition of the Church. “At the start of the 1950s the Holy Office examined the papers on the Focolare and initiated a series of meetings with the young founder. To put her and her followers to the test and measure their faithfulness to the Church, they asked her to take a step back, and no longer act as head of the Movement. Her followers would have never hidden who was really the soul of the Movement and there was no leadership crisis during those years, until Paul VI definitively resolved the issue. In 1965 Lubich signed her first letter as president of the Focolare. Today, after a certain time, we are beginning to see that behind her stature as a bearer of spirituality, there was also a rather unusual density of thought.” In more recent years, the charismatic intuition of the founder translates also into a series of concrete proposals as a contribution to the resolution of social and cultural issues. Some of these were Economy of Communion, “which actuates the preferential choice for the poor, and at the same time, values those who are able to contribute to economical life with the not common talent of entrepreneurship,” or the founding of the Sophia Institute, “as an interesting contribution to the debates and ordeals of contemporary thought.” Today, all the members of the Focolare, in some way bring ahead and multiply the charism of Chiara Lubich to fulfill the prayer of Jesus: ‘that all may be one’. And Callebaut concludes: “We need to continue working for some centuries more, it seems.”

  Bernhard CallebautCallebaut Bernhard, Tradition, charisme et prophétie dans le Mouvement international des Focolari. Analyse sociologique, Paris, Nouvelle Cité, 2010, LXXXIII + 537 p. Italian translation La nascita dei Focolari. Storia e sociologia di un carisma (1943-1965), New City – Sophia, Rome 2017, p. 640. Entire interview by Lorenzo Prezzi