Sep 5, 2016 | Non categorizzato
Elisa with the entire family – a twin brother, an elder brother, daddy, and the grandmothers – just a few weeks earlier, had been to the Mariapolis – the Focolare’s summer gathering – with about a hundred other people. It had been an occasion to know each other, share life experiences, and take a step ahead together. Everyone remembers Elisa who before leaving, with her gay and contagious ways had shot a video of the impressions of her group with the help of her twin brother. “The Mariapolis is an experience that leaves its mark in one’s heart forever. I hope to go to the Mariapolis always,” she had texted her mother upon returning home. Instead, Gabriele, her little 8-year-old cousin, in mid-June had participated for the second consecutive year in the little “Gen4 congress.” It was an enchanting three-day event with the little kids who understand “the things of God” better than anyone else. A photo shows him in the role of an angel playing a trumpet upon the passage through the Door of Mercy, together with all the other boys. In the morning of 24 August the news of the earthquake arrived, and also the anguish: Elisa, Gabriele and their grandmothers were under the ruins and all feared the outcome for those who were missing. A chain of prayers immediately started like a tam-tam, but in the evening it was confirmed: they didn’t make it. 
Their families immediately gave an unwavering testimony: “Their faith in God’s love was such that even in this immense suffering, they enlightened us with renewed determination to live for that which does not pass”, wrote Maria Voce, President of the Focolare, to the stricken communities and families, the day after the earthquake. Meanwhile the Focolare communities throughout the world and Italy had launched the rescue system.
Elisa with her two brothers
Gabriele at the Mariapolis
Sep 4, 2016 | Non categorizzato
“Mother Teresa is … a great teacher of the art of loving. She truly loved everyone. She didn’t ask her neighbour if he or she was Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, etc. … Undoubtedly, Mother Teresa was the first to love. She went out looking for those entrusted to her by God. Mother Teresa saw Jesus in every person, perhaps in a way no others did. Her motto was: “You did it for me.” Mother Teresa made herself one with everyone. She made herself poor with the poor and especially in the same way as the poor. … She didn’t accept anything that the poor couldn’t have as well. We know, for example, that she and her sisters do without having even a simple washing machine, something that many people do not understand. They say: “Nowadays!” But she did not want one because the poor don’t have them. She took upon herself and identified herself with the wretchedness of the poor, their grief, their sickness and death. Mother Teresa loved everyone as herself, to the point of offering others her own ideal. For example, she invited the volunteers who spent a period of time serving in her Work to seek out their own “Calcutta” when they went home to their countries. She said: it is because there are poor people everywhere. Mother Teresa certainly loved her enemies. She never stopped to dispute the absurd accusations they made against her, but she prayed for her enemies. Yes, in her we can see “the art of loving” lived to perfection. She was … a queen of charity.” Chiara Lubich Message during a Conference Call on 25th September 1997.
Reead more: The magnificat of Mother Theresa of Calcutta as received by Chiara Lubich – Press releases SIF– 1° Settembre 2016
Sep 1, 2016 | Non categorizzato
The diocese of Mamfe, the Focolare family and the Alumni Association of the school, “Our Lady Seat of Wisdom,” are extending an invitation to all for the 50th anniversary celebration (1966-2016) of the arrival of the Focolare Movement in Fontem (Camerun) and the opening of the school. The celebrations will be held at the “Mariapolis Mafua Ndem Chiara Lubich” (Fontem) from 14 to 17 December 2016. For information: info@focolare-fontem.org Web site: www.focolare-fontem.org
Sep 1, 2016 | Non categorizzato
Just as Jesus had immediately inserted himself into the sub-layer of society by being born in a stable amongst the homeless, the refugees, the banished; so too, by allowing himself to be crucified and abandoned, he stood in the midst of the massive crowd of all those who suffer: the oppressed, the discouraged, the hungry and the defeated of every age. His focus on all those in misery gives humankind the measure of his love, and was nothing but the logical consequence of having completely fit himself into humanity’s brokenness. It was his way to make himself the last, the vilest of creatures, the most degraded – the way for to be at the root of all misery, a root that raises to Heaven. Infinity empties itself out of love. He had created the universe, developed and ruled it. The universe represents the production of something of boundless grandeur, somehow proportionate to the greatness of his mind, a world made of worlds, one more wondrous than the next. And humankind – tiny creatures on one small planet – after centuries of studying has only a minuscule idea of all that the universe contains: with stars that in our galaxy alone are four light-years apart and from the edges of the galaxy to its centre span a distance of 30 light-years which they can cover back and forth only 1,500 times in a billion years. In this universe that is infinitely too great for the human mind to fathom, he had also taken note of the misery of the human organisms on planet earth, and emptied himself in order to become one of them. He helped them to the point of giving them the Gospel and his very Self in the form of Food. The Redemption re-establishes the design of Creation, which includes that the existence of the stars and the atoms of the universe and the creatures of earth be in constant harmony for the realization of unity. This is why the Creator breathed into it the breath of life that is love. Health, peace and welfare flower in accordance with this precept. (Igino Giordani, L’unico amore, (Rome: Città Nuova, 1974) p. 64 and 105
![Collegamento CH Worldwide linkup]()
Aug 30, 2016 | Non categorizzato
The news summary will be made available on the Collegamento CH website a few days before the Internet transmission. On the same website one can find all the previous linkups in various languages, as full editions as well as individual news video clips. Watch spot video
Aug 29, 2016 | Non categorizzato
That clock tower on Amatrice church indicating 3:36 am is a powerful image for what happened this night. That minute was the last minute for many victims, it will be a minute forever remembered because it is written in the flesh and hearts of their families. And it will be remembered by our country, whose recent history is also a series of clocks stopped forever by the violence of men and of the earth. I will also remember it forever, because this cry of the earth also reached the house of my parents in Roccafluvione, around twenty kilometres from Arquata del Tronto, where I am visiting them. It was a long night of fear, suffering and thoughts for Amatrice, Arquata, Accumuli, towns of my childhood, close to where my grandparents come from, villages where I would accompany my father as he went about his business selling chickens. And then there were thoughts, thoughts we never have, because you can only have them on these terrible nights. I thought about all the time that clock had measured right up until 3.36. It stopped there, dead, but it was only one dimension of time which the Greeks called ‘kronos’: the surface, the soil of time. In the world there is our managed time, domesticated, constructed, which live by. But beneath it there is a another time: the time of the earth. This non-human time, and at times inhuman, and commands the time of men, mothers and children. And I thought that we are not the masters of this other time, which is deeper, abysmal, primitive, which doesn’t follow our path, and at times is against the paths of those who walk above. On such momentous nights we become aware of this different time, on which we walk and build our homes, and that we are ‘grass of the field’, watered and nourished by the sky, but also swallowed up by the earth. The earth, the real one and not the romantic and naive one of ideologies, is both mother and stepmother. The hummus generates man but also turns him back into dust, sometimes in a good way at the right time, but other times it is bad, and too soon, with a so much suffering. Biblical humanism knows this very well, but for this has fought a lot with the pagan cults of local peoples who wanted to make a divinity of the earth and its nature: the power of the earth has always fascinated men who have tried to ‘buy’ it with magic and sacrifices. Whilst I tried in vain to go back to sleep, I thought about the tremendous books of Job and Qohelet, which you can understand on such nights. Those books tell us that no God, not even the real one, can control the earth, because He too, once he entered into human history, became a victim of the mysterious freedom of his creation. God cannot even explain to us why children die squashed beneath the ancient pillars of our towns. He can’t explain it to us because if he knew why he would be a monstrous idol. God, who today looks on the land of the three As – Arquata, Accumuli and Amatrice – can only ask himself the same questions as us: he can cry out, remain silent, cry together with us. He can perhaps remind us with the words of the Bible that all is vanity of vanities: everything is breath, wind, mist, waste, nothing, ephemeral. Vanity in Hebrew is written Habel, the same word as Abel, the brother killed by Kane. Everything is vanity, everything is an infinite Abel: the world is full of victims. This we know. We know it, we forget it too often. These terrible nights and days make us remember. * 1 Kings 19:11
