The client I manage a banking agency. One evening, leaving the office, I was weighed down by a big, unresolved problem: it regarded a client who had misused his savings account. I could see only two solutions, which made me suffer: seriously damage the client, starting the legal processes, or risk shirking my duties. I had an appointment to meet my wife, to return home together. Usually I try to free myself from all my worries, but that evening I couldn’t. She immediately understood and said to me, “Difficult day today, right?” I began to confide in her. Mary did not know all the problems of the bank, but she listened attentively, in silence. After telling her everything, I felt relieved and more confident. The problem remained, but it was no longer only mine. The next day I was able to imagine a third solution that permitted me, in respect to my duties, to not harm the client. (G. K. – England) Hearing problems I had serious hearing problems, and urged by my parishioners, I went to a specialist. After asking me to which religious order I belonged, he began to list his resentments against the Church for all the inconsistencies and contradictions which had made him lose the faith. I listened to him with love, realizing that I found myself in front of a person who wasn’t satisfied with superficial Christianity. In turn, I responded that there are no arguments for defending the Church except a coherent life. I added, “God loves us as we are.” He asked for my address and phone number. That same evening he came to visit me, and he told me that he had been in the seminary until the age of 18 when it seemed to him that Marxism responded better to what he was seeking; now however these certainties had broken down. After a few days he confided to me that, entering a church, it seemed to him that God was telling him, “I have never abandoned you.” Now both he and his wife have returned to the sacraments. (P. G. – Italy) Layoff At the factory they recently distributed letters of termination of employment, one of which was addressed to Giorgio. Knowing his precarious economic conditions, I went to him and invited him to return with me to the personnel office. “I’m better off than he is,” I stated. “My wife has a job. Fire me instead.” Our boss promised he would have a second look at the case. When we exited, Giorgio embraced me; he was visibly moved. This event naturally spread by word of mouth, and two other employees, more or less in the same conditions as I am, offered their places to two other terminated employees. Management was forced to rethink its methods of choosing layoffs. Our parish priest, who came to know about the episode, told the story during his Sunday homily, without saying names. The next day he told me that two students brought him all their savings for the workers in difficulty, saying, “We too want to imitate the gesture of that worker.” (B. S. – Brazil)
“… One way of applying this faith in God is when we are worried about something that makes us anxious. Sometimes it is fear for the future, or concerns about our health, we are frightened about suspected dangers, we are worried about our relatives, apprehensive about a job we have to do, we are uncertain about how to behave, there is the shock of bad news. There are fears of various kinds. Well then, at times like these, precisely in times when everything is uncertain, God wants us to believe in his love and asks of us an act of trust. If we are really Christians, he wants us to make good use of these painful situations to prove to him that we do believe in his love. This means believing that he is a Father to us and he thinks of us, and casting upon him every anxiety we have, burdening him with them. Scripture says: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Pt 5:7). … The fact is that God is our Father and he wants his children’s happiness. This is why they unload every burden onto him. Besides, God is love and he wants his children to be love. All these worries, anxieties, and fears block our soul, shutting it up in itself, and get in the way of our opening up towards God by doing his will and towards our neighbours by making ourselves one with them so as to love them in the right way. In the early times of the Focolare, when the Holy Spirit was teaching us our first steps on the path of love, “casting all our anxiety on the Father” was something we did every day, and often several times a day. In fact we were leaving behind a purely human way of living, even though we were Christians, so as to move into a supernatural, divine way of living. That is, we were beginning to love. Worries are stumbling blocks to love. So the Holy Spirit had to teach us how to get rid of them. And he did. I remember we used to say that just as you cannot hold a hot coal in your hand, but you would drop it at once so as not to get burned, so too with the same speed we had to cast every worry onto the Father. I can’t remember any worry cast into the Father’s heart which he did not take care of. … So let’s cast every anxiety on him. We will then be free to love. We’ll run faster on the path of love which, as we know, leads to holiness.” C.Lubich, Cercando le cose di lassù, Roma 19924, p. 26-29. Read the whole text: Chiara Lubich Center
“Casa Emmaus,” located in the international town of Loppiano – Incisa Valdarno (FI), wishes to be a “school of communion” and a “school of life” for all the religious worldwide. The course will offer some tools to help participants acquire a deeper knowledge of the spirituality of communion the Church has proposed for the Third Millennium, in the light of unity and life of the Gospel. All are advised to bring along their own Constitutions, to be able to compare their own charisms and share with the others the innate treasures within, in a spiritual climate of reciprocity. See:Brochure
In the face of immense challenges which also the European society has to tackle – particularly this year, after the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen – one can feel the growing distrust within and between communities. Already at the start of the 1990s, on the initiative of Jacques Delors, the EC President at that time, dialogue with the Churches and the non-religious organisations had been an occasion for an exchange of views on European politics between institutions and the main players of civil society. How can we live together and build a society in which every person and community can feel at home and safe? How can we find ways of accepting the differences when substantially there is no agreement? These are some of the open questions the religious leaders will confront together.. Also the President of the Movement, Maria Voce has accepted the invitation to participate, underlining how the priority of the Focolare is to “build bridges through respectful dialogue at various levels, and to contribute to the peaceful coexistence and fraternity between people of diverse faiths and the most varied ethnic and social origins.”
We are breathing an air of peace,” Cardinal Puljic had exclaimed on the vigil of the Pope’s arrival. The city was expecting him with much joy and had begun preparing for his visit several months in advance. Rumuors that had put the security on guard were put to rest by the concerted preparatory efforts Church and State working in harmony. This effort and the willingness of the citizens in following the rules allowed everything to turn out quite well.” Sarajevo, the city that John Paull II called the European Jerusalem was festively awaiting sthe Pope.Peace be with you was the motto of the Pope’s visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina, “a land tested by conflicts, the latest of which is still very present in the memory of “Bosnians, Serbs and Croats,” as Novi Svijet Gina Perkov (Croatia) writes. “The war has indeed had tragic consequences: death, destruction and the exile of so many people. The number of Catholics (primarily Croation) has been reduced by half.” The population was grateful that, this time, the eyes of the world were fixed on them for a happy reason, and hopeful that this fact might help in resolving several political questions; one being that “several EU countries are culpable for having permitted and assisted the ethinic cleansing,” as attested to in a recent book by Bishop Franjo Komarica, Bishop of Banja Luka, Serb Republic. During the Eucharistic Celebration at the Olympic Stadium of Kosevo in the presence of 70 thousand people – 23 thousand of them, Croation – the Pope offered a strong message of peace. “Peace is the dream of God, the plan of God for humankind. . . Today, the cry once more arises from the people of God and from all people of good will: War never again! Making peace is an artisanal task: it requires passion, patience, experience, tenacity. Blessed are they who sow peace through their daily actions, with attitudes and gestures of service, fraternity, dialogue, forgiveness. . . Peace is the work of justice. . . practiced, lived out justice. True justice is doing to the other person, to the other people, what I would want to be done to me, to my people. Peace is a gift from God, because it is the fruit of his reconciliation with us. . . Today let us together ask the Lord for a simple heart, for the grace of patience,” he concluded. In the afternoon, Pope Francis met at the cathedral with priests, men and women Religious and consecrated people and, in the end, with young people. The Focolare Movement offered gifts to the Pope and attended all the moments of encounter. The spirituality of unity arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1975 through several young people who had attended the Mariapolis of Zagabria, Croatia. In 1992, war broke out: countless were lost, destruction, death and refugees. Many, many people fled to the different countries of Europe. There was a huge effort to continue to support those who had stayed behind, but since roads were closed only a few letters and foodstuffs were able to reach the people. Through the love of the people who lived the spirituality of unity, many Muslims and Christians found a point of encounter in the Ideal of unity. When the war ended and they returned to Bosnia, they themselves became the bearers and witnesses of this new spirit. “At the beginning of 1996 it finally possible to go to them, in spite of the war,” say some witnesses to the events. We were met by rubble everywhere, crumbling houses, armoured vehicles, constant police surveilance and, once in a while, an exploding grenade. . . The city of Sarajevo was treeless because they had all been burned by the people who tried to warm themselves during the freezing winters.” The first spark of the Ideal of unity that had been welcomed by several people many years earlier, and treasured in their hearts, burst into flames during the war among a people marked by suffering, in need of so many things, who were able to intuit what was essential, thirsty for something true. They were Catholics, but also Muslims and Orthodox, all of them grateful for the discovery of God-Love which had transformed their lives. The current situation Bosnia is still unresolved. The Catholics emigrate, especially the young, and their is fear of future conflict. The Focolare community draws its strength from unity, a small sign of that unity which was desired by John Paul II in 1997 when he visited and wished for Sarajevo that after the war, it would become the convincing model of the third millenium.
“To me, Chiara Lubich’s talks on the Eucharist were like a revelation that led me to a broader and more precise knowledge of the Eucharist’s deep impact not only on the individual but on society. I saw that the progress of Christian conscience in the individual and in society depends on the depth of the knowledge Christians have of the Eucharist. In other words: if we know what the Eucharist is, and we live its reality as such, we can draw forth from Christianity the deepest value our soul and society needs. In fact the Eucharist unites man with God and is the mystery of Christ’s love for humanity. It is communion with Christ and our brothers; it is unity with both. If we want to see the progress of society’s highest communitarian and universal aspirations that oppose egoism, racisms, tyrannies of sorts, etc., we have to make the Eucharistic conscience grow, and live it profoundly. We can say that the relationship with God and man himself is a Eucharistic mystery in which God makes himself man because man can be like God. It is nothing less than that. With her explanations, Chiara makes us consciously enter not only into the mentality of Christ, but into his humanity and divinity. She wants us to coexist, through the sacramental communion, with both the divinity and humanity of Jesus. It is a revolution that defies man and sets him in contrast with and above the process of moral degradation besetting society today. The revolt against death starts from the Eucharist. Chiara has thus stamped on our lives a mark of heroism and sanctity. There is no need for mediocrity to be able to live within human coexistence. What comes to mind is the question the angel asked the souls that entered Dante’s purgatory: “Oh you humans who have been born to fly – why have you fallen under the breeze?” Meaning to say, oh man, why do you, who are born to fly to God, let yourself fall into sin so easily and lose this chance to fly? Sanctity is heroism, but which is immensely facilitated by daily nutriment of the Eucharistic bread. It implies a daily, assiduous devotion, going one step higher each day, beyond the mediocrity in which a greater part of humanity lives in today. This mediocrity consists in lies, lust, thefts, and violence which is not a way of living but of stupidly organising our own agony. The Eucharist gives us wings to fly!” Igino Giordani,The Eucharist gives us wings to fly, «GEN» November 2004, pp.10-11
