On two wheels for peace

23 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

In Foggia, a commercial city in southern Italy an amazing flow of bikes crossing the city’s roads aroused the curiosity of passersby. Many citizens, also due to the sunny day, were on the road on their traditional Sunday outing, while the ladies catering to the feast day lunch watched from the balconies. Family bikes equipped with children’s chairs, tandems with blind people onboard as second paddlers, two wheels equipped with mikes, loudspeakers and banners, bikes of all shapes and sizes, a long trail of hard hats and helmets and a joyful bell: this was the ecumenical biking event organised by the Ecumenical Council of Foggia together with the Franciscans of the parish of Gesù e Maria, and the Group of Lay Associations joined by the Focolare Movement, the Fanny Bike Association and the Bike-lovers’ Association, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Spirit of Assisi and the Day for the Protection of Creation. The initiative which took place some months ago was the occasion for the city of the Puglia region, together with men of good will and the faithful of various religious confessions, to reflect on the importance of protecting creation, the gift of God entrusted to mankind for the good of all, and raise the awareness of citizens in assuming more ecological lifestyles starting from their own daily lives, and make the municipal administration commit to undertake political decisions that would allow the healing of the city, making it more beautiful, liveable and less polluted. The bike itinerary started symbolically from the Square where the Archbishop’s Curia is situated, with the delivery to the Mayor of a pact made between citizens and the administration, containing the mutual commitment. According to the competences of each, inspiring motifs were created for the event, with the route that made stopovers at the places of worship of all the Christian confessions existing on the territory, which adhered to the initiative: the Church of San Domenico for the Greek Orthodox community, the Church of Gesù e Maria for the Romanian Orthodox community, the ADI Evangelical Church, and the Waldensian Church. The event ended up with a brief moment of ecumenical prayer at the San Felice Park, the green lung and meeting place of the city..    

The Great Attraction of Today’s Times

22 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

Thank you, Gis!

20 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

With gratitude for “her example of heroic faithfulness to God’s plan for her,” Focolare president Maria Voce, informed Focolare members around the world of her death following a long life spent in its entirety for unity. “Even in the pain of this huge loss,” said Maria Voce, “we are forever one heart and one soul with her.” Gisella Calliari had been born in Lavis, Trent, Italy on April 18, 1920. She was simply known as Gis, one of the first young women, along with her sister, to follow Chiara Lubich in the “adventure of unity,” which led to the starting of the Focolare Movement and its expansion around the world. She was the youngest of three sisters and met Chiara in 1944 in that tiny apartment that lodged the first hearth in Piazza Cappuccini,Trent. The next day, she decided to follow Chiara along the same path. The first hostile reaction from her family was softened when her mother met Igino Giordani who hired Gisella to be his secretary in Rome. During her long life, Gis spent more than 40 years living with Chiara. After living in several focolares in Italy – in Trent, Rome, Milan and Florence, she took charge of the women’s section of the focolarinas. Then, she worked alongside the foundress and Oreste Basso in following the development of the Work of Mary worldwide. This provided her with the opportunity to visit Focoare communities around the world. Her whole life was very profoundly linkded to the charism of unity, to which she was faithful until the last. Focolare.org will soon publish a more extensive biography.

Hemmerle: The Word and the Spirit

20 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

“There’s only one way to be able to have the most unity and communion possible among us right here and now, and I for one can see no other. This way coincides with […] us, you and me, all of you and me and all of us together, day by day, in all the situations of our life and in every situation that comes between us, staying anchored in His Word.” (266) “The Word of God goes beyond the barriers between us and creates communion. […] Nobody can take this away from us. Nobody can prohibit us from doing it. We can never turn back now. This is the essential point where the road opens for us to move on. […] If we live the Word to the extreme and in a spirit of reciprocity so that what you live and what I live are the same Word, both of them His Word, then the unity between us grows […] We can ask ourselves: But how are we to live in the one Spirit which is the deepest and most intimate reality of God, and the deepest and most intimate reality of me? It’s because of the Spirit whom I seek in you with patient endurance, the gifts of the Spirit that lie in you, a believer and a Christian like me. I question you at great length until I find the Spirit in you. I’m never content myself with compromises saying: ‘Deep down you’re not bad, nor am I. I’m able to find a halfway point where we can meet!’ I don’t even say: ‘I take something of yours and something of mine to come up with a formula that we can both agree on without having to change any fundamentals.’ Rather, I ask myself: ‘Where is the Spirit in you?’ The insistence in my questioning never constrains you, limits you, but it frees you, so that you can offer me the gifts of the Spirit in you. I’m prepared to let myself be interrogated by you to extreme, so that, trusting in the Spirit, I can also offer and give to you my gifts as gifts from God. Giving our gifts to one another, discovering in reciprocity the gifts of the Spirit in one another – this is the only path for the one Spirit.” (265, 266) (June 15, 1979, From a dialogue with Evangelical Lutheran pastor Lukas Vischer) Anyone who has been living the spirituality of unity for a long time can never stop and say: Is what the other saying to me appropriate? What isn’t appropriate? In what way is what they are saying compatible with my thinking? And with regard to what isn’t compatible? I try to make myself one with the other person, I try to have the other person as my starting point, not as a way to deny what I affirm with certainty based on Christ, but in the sense that in front of the person, I ask: What light are they trying to convey to me? So, I look at myself from the perspective of that other person. I make myself one with the other, trying to re-read my truth through the light of the other.” (268) (Extracts from dialogue session during the Ecumenical School in Ottmaring, Germany) Winfried Hagemann: KLAUS HEMMERLE, innamorato della Parola di Dio (Città Nuova 2013).

The Focolare and the Unity of Christians

19 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

Along which lines and what perspective drives the Focolare’s ecumenical commitment? In his speech at a recent conference of bishops in Katowice, Jesús Morán Cepedano (Spanish, born close to Avila, Spain, in 1957), Co-President of the Focolare Movement since 2014, traces the premises and characteristics of a spirituality which the 2nd European Ecumenical Assembly had defined as ”ecumenical”. “With the term ’spirituality’ I mean a way of concretely living the Christian faith.” He mentions a personal feature: “I met Chiara Lubich and the Focolare Movement in 1974. As a Spanish I was reared in a Catholic environment, and the Gospel was meditated in Church. But these new friends proposed putting it into practice. I wanted to change society but the first surprise was that the Gospel changed me.” Those were the years of Chiara Lubich’s contact with the leaders of various Churches, among which was the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras I, and the Archbishop Robert Runcie, at that time the head of the Church of England. “This charism aroused great interest, and once again in those who were not Catholics.” Recalling the words of the founder of the Focolare addressing an audience of 7,000 priests and religious men and women in 1982 in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican, “The Work of Mary does not only belong to the Catholic world. We are a sole reality together, though with the limits which the divisions still existing imply”. Moran explained: “The charism God had gifted Chiara has its roots in an ecclesial dimension that can be shared by all the confessions, because it draws inspiration from the heart of the Gospel. And this can be related to the nature of the spirituality which arose from this charism: a spirituality that sets a ‘dialogue of life’ as the pre-condition to ecumenical dialogue. It is an ecumenism of ‘love,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘of the heart,’ terms which also recur today to underline a reciprocity of love that does not replace theological dialogue, but gives the opportunity to grow closer, in a profound ‘exchange of gifts’ that enrich one and the other.” Unity and reconciliation start in the heart, in the encounter between people in a warm reception, Morán underlined. But “the unity we live or seek,” he argued “is not uniformity, it is the Holy Spirit himself who generates diversity.” Therefore, it is not a theoretical approach, but a dynamic experience of evangelical love, an ecumenical laboratory which, in the experience of the Focolare, now binds Christians belonging to over 300 Churches, and which spread, at least as a self-awareness within numberless ecclesiastic settings. “Dialogue of life is fruitful” – he added – “also in and among the parishes of various Churches: a twinning that helps to mutually know one another and find new forms of collaboration for social and cultural projects. Also the youths belonging to various Churches are committed in the front line to support primary emergency actions or aid to the most needy.” What are the repercussions at theological level? “Some experts were called to take part in the official theological dialogues. Also at regional and especially diocesan levels, many have personally undertaken the commitment. An example, among many, are the theological symposiums established between the professors of the Rumanian-Orthodox Faculty of Cluj-Naponica (Romania) and the Sophia University Institute of Loppiano (Italy), where last 14 December an ecumenical chair was established, dedicated to Patriarch Athenagoras and Chiara Lubich. Silently but tenaciously, God is tracing an irreversible path to reach universal brotherhood, his design on humanity.” Morán ended his reflection with the words of the “Ottmaring Declaration” with which the Focolare Movement inaugurated the celebrations for the fifth centenary of the Reformation: “With all our hearts we want to support the Churches in the commitment to reach a full and visible communion. We shall do all that is possible to make our activities and initiatives be substantiated by this open and fraternal attitude among Christians.” Read the whole text

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

17 Jan 2018 | Non categorizzato

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been celebrated for 110 years. It was an ecumenical initiative held between the feasts of Saint Peter on January 18^th and the Conversion of Saint Paul on January 25^th. It was first promoted by Reverend Paul Wattson, founder of Graymoor in New York. In the Southern Hemisphere it is celebrated during the Season of Pentecost. The event has a precedent in Scotland, in 1740 with a Pentecostal Evangelical preacher who invited all to a day of prayer for unity. The same invitation was extended by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Joachim III in 1902. In 1894 Pope Leo XIII encouraged an Octave of Prayer for Unity. During the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church highlighted prayer as the soul of the Ecumenical Movement. In 1966, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and the Faith Constitution of the Ecumenical Council of the Church called for the joint preparation of the official texts for the Week of Prayer, a task that has been entrusted for over thirty years to different local ecumenical teams. For 2018, the Churches of the Caribbean were chosen, and the team was comprised of Roman Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans, and Methodists. The Focolare Movement is committed to promoting this important event, which is in accordance with Jesus’s prayer to the Father “that all may be one” (Jn 17:21).