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15 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
In the summer of 1949, the deputy in government Igino Giordani, who had met the spiritaulity of unity just a few months before, joined Chiara Lubich who had gone for a rest in the Valley of Primiero in Tonadico, in the mountains of Trent, in northern Italy. Together with the small community of Trent, which was now swarming in several other cities of Italy, he had lived with intensity the phrase from the Gospel of Matthew concerning the abandonment of Jesus on the cross. Chiara would later write about that special summer: “While 1943 marked the beginning of the Movement, 1949 was a giant leap forward. Some unexpected circumstances – but foreseen by Providence – meant that the first little group of us who had begun the Movement should spend some time away from the “world” in the mountains. We had to spend some time away from people, but we couldn’t distance ourselves from our new way of living, which gave meaning to our existence. A tiny and rustic little mountain hut welcomed us into its poverty. We were alone, alone among ourselves, with our great ideal that we lived moment by moment with the Eucharistic Jesus, the Bond of Unity upon whom we drew each day. We were alone to rest, in prayer and meditation.
And that is when a moment of particular graces began. We had the impression that the Lord threw open the Kingdom of God that was among us, to the eyes of our soul. It was like the Trinity living in one cell of the Mystical Body: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name (. . .) so that they may be one as we are one” (Jn 17:12). And we were given to understand that the Movement which was being born would be nothing less than a mystical presence of Mary in the Church. Naturally, we would never have left those mountains, little Tabor of our soul, if the will of God had not been otherwise. And it was only because of our love for Jesus Crucified and Forsaken living in humanity, which is so immersed in darkness, who gave us the courage to come down from the mountains.” (1) On another occasion Chiara said: “A particularly luminous period began in which, among other things, it seemed that God wanted to make understand something about his plan for our Movement.” In the years that remained, Chiara never did anything but try to realize what had been given to her during that summer of light. (1) Chiara Lubich, in Scritti Spirituali/3, Rome 1996, pp 41-42.
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14 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
Lucia Abignente is part of the Chiara Lubich Centre: A documentation Centre, also a study centre, a centre of scientific research and promotion of the historical figure of the foundress of the Focolare Movement. Saints are witnesses of the faith who are recommended as examples by the Catholic Church: what is the example that Chiara Lubich gives? Abignente: […] her life has always stood out due to the passing on to others of the purest joy of faith. In the beginning of the ‘40s, a priest told her: “God loves you immensely”. This certainty, that became the foundation of her life, was immediately shared by Chiara: not only “I” am loved by God, but he loves all of “us” immensely. Hers was never an individual journey but it has always had the character of universality. This is also what happened in her journey towards sanctity. “To become saints together” she repeated to us. Because of this she has always made us participate in whatever God made her understand, so as to walk together towards Him. “That all may be one”: this was the desire and the goal of the life of Chiara up to the end […] The President Maria Voce explained that from all over – even from representatives of other churches and religions – the hope was expressed that this process could be initiated … Abignente: The ecumenical dialogue, that of interreligious dialogue and the one with persons of other convictions were born quite naturally in the Focolare Movement, determined by circumstances rather than by a theoretical intention. The first to enter into dialogue were the German Evangelicals in 1961. They were touched by the experience of Chiara, of how she lived the Gospel, eversince 1944, during the war, in the bomb shelters, when she would read the Gospel with her companions and together they tried to put it into practice. Chiara was especially close to Athenagoras, the Patriarch of Constantinople […] The persons of other confessions or religions and also those with no religious convictions felt the humanity of Chiara which attracted them and rooted them in her life of the Word. For this reason, we too look at the starting of this journey as something that does not divide, even with its external signs, respect for brothers of other faiths or other experiences because the sanctity based on the Bible must invite others to a more profound joining in the journey towards God or towards the non-religious moral values that we share with persons of other convictions. How will you accompany the journey that starts today? Abignente: We have undertaken a great task beforehand, of gathering all the published writings of Chiara that will be examined in the beatification process. We are dealing with thousands of pages. We must also include the research documents, also documents that have never published before, that come from the different sources of the archives of the Movement. In these years after her passing, the memory of Chiara has always remained alive and on the anniversary of her death, March 14, there have been many Eucharistic celebrations often presided by Bishops and meetings and initiatives of all kinds. There is a “reputation of sanctity” that surrounds her person all over the world which are accompanied by signs of graces received that have been communicated to us. We don’t know how things will evolve but what seems clear to us is that this journey (…) can help each one to deepen his or her relationship with God. Source: Chiara Santomiero, Aleteia, December 9, 2013
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11 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
Cordoba is a city of 1.2 million inhabitants in the heart of Argentina. Provincial police began protesting for higher wages, leading to strikes that left the streets without police protection. Two people died and more than a thousand commercial centres, private homes and a Caritas warehouse were assaulted by groups of organized criminal delinquents on December 13th and 14th. A curfew was enforced on the citizens who remain locked in their homes, public offices, schools and universities. Public transportation was no longer in service. The mediation carried out by Comipaz (interreligious committee), through the intervention of Auxiliary Bishop Pedro Javier Torres, Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff and religious leaders from several other confessional groups helped to re-establish calm. 
By noontime on December 4th they reached an agreement between the parties, following which the police slowly regained control of the city. Once this agreement was announced the Young for Unity stepped into action, as Anna Maria Martinez recounts: “We were watching all the violence and sacking with a sense of fear, keeping hidden in our homes. But we didn’t want to remain passive in front of what was happening in our city. We felt a strong desire to show the people that something good could emerge from all this anger, madness and institutionalized corruption.” “Through the social networks we agreed to meet in one of the city’s squares. At 16:00 the first young people began to arrive and there were already thirty of us. Some journalists and television channels were also on hand. As time went by other groups of young people began arriving, who had also been advised of the meeting. In the end there were a hundred of us, plus many others who joined us in cleaning up the square, their buildings and the surrounding streets.”
The previous night had been awful: gunshots, sirens, alarms, sacking of shops and homes, many shop-owners left to fend for themselves. There was much work to be done to clean up after the burnings and remove the ruined barricades . . . “But beyond the physical work, the basic idea was to talk with the people, to offer them a moment for dialogue and listening. The response was immediate: some brought food for the Caritas warehouse; others brought water to us workers, along with gloves, brooms and mops. So many joined in the work with us, so touched to see us who didn’t even live in the area arriving to help in the cleaning of their quarter.” We never foresaw the repercussions this would have in the news where they reported on the actions of us young people. “We feel that we’ve done more than just clean streets; we’ve realized that it depends on each one of us if we want to do something out of the ordinary. Just yesterday there was a spreading of delinquency and opportunism; today there is a spreading of good will, strength and working together to begin a change.”
The situation in Argentina is not yet resolved. Protests and clashes continue to spread in other provinces, but the desire remains of not being overcome by violence, but finding peaceful paths. Video
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10 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
Eversince she was little, Lucia was a child who radiated an uncontrollable and contagious joy. The youngest after eight brothers, she grew up in a very poor family in Terlano (Bolzano-Italy). Inspite of the economic difficulties, the Degasperi couple always maintained a strong faith. As the years passed, nevertheless, Lucia was convinced that love does not exist on earth and the thought of loving without being loved in return frightened her. When Lucia was twenty years old, her brother Carlo suddenly changed his way of acting at home: he started to make the beds, shine the shoes. She became curious and asked him to explain why he was acting that way and so she found herself invited to go to the Mariapolis, a meeting of several days of the Focolare. Lucia is profoundly touched by the many concrete experiences based on the certainty that God is love and that He loves everyone personally, so much so that, frightened, she leaves the meeting early. But a sentence remains imprinted within her: “Whatsoever you do to the least, you did it to me” (Mt 25, 40). She started to live it seriously. And consequently she felt that God was calling her to follow him in the focolare. From 1964, when the spirituality of unity started to spread in Germany, Lucia was in West Berlin and afterwards in the early ‘80s she was in the GDR, a land where the situation of the regime forced many adherents of the spirituality of the Focolare to meet in a semi-clandestine way and with much difficulty. Lucia also had to spend a month in a Military Camp, before moving to Leipzig. The other inmates were soon touched by her love: she rearranged the common room and offered them the coffee that she was planning to bring to Leipzig. Gradually many others started to follow her example and on her last day there one of the guards confided to Lucia: “I have never had a group as beautiful as this…”. With the telephone being monitored and with the hidden microphone in the car, Lucia uses her creativity, inventing a thousand strategies to meet the people that have been entrusted to her: She invited children to lunch, organized parties for the youth, made many visits to families. 
In 1989 the focolarinas and the gen girls (the youth of the focolare) of the GDR celebrated the fall of the Berlin wall by taking a long trip to Trent and to Rome, where many of them, meet Chiara Lubich for the first time. What followed were years of a great launching, but unexpectedly in 1994, Lucia was diagnosed with cancer. It was a very painful suffering for her as she would share years later: “It was a death sentence”. It took time for her to understand that “the moment had come to re-entrust my life to God”. Living the present moment was a great help for her and she became a source of light for many. The years passed, and as her physical strength diminished, her spiritual strength increased. “I won’t tell you ‘take courage Lucia’ – Chiara Lubich wrote to her on the 3rd of December, 2003 – you have all the graces that you need and even more. Just be happy”. On the 10th of December, Lucia leaves for Heaven in great serenity. “Thank you for the concrete love that you have always had”; “Thank you for your smile that always created the family”; “Thank you for your strength”, these were just some of the many, many messages that rained down from all over in the days that followed her passing.
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8 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
Continuation of the : The Adventure of Unity: The beginnings /2
“The young women who lived in the first focolare and the people around them who came and went noticed a qualitative leap in their life during those early months. They had the impression that Jesus was fulfilling his promise in their very midst: “Where two or more are united in my name, I am there with them” (Mt 18:20). They didn’t want to lose his presence and did everything to ensure that he would never vanish from their midst. “Later, much later,” Chiara Lubich specifies, “we would realize: ‘Look! Why, it’s a small reproduction of the house of Nazareth: a small community of virgins (and very soon of married people) with Jesus among them.” It’s the “hearth”, the “focolare” where the fire of love warms hearts and satisfies the mind.” “But to have him among us” Chiara explained to her first companions, “we need to be disposed to give our lives for each other. Jesus is spiritually and fully present among us when we are united like that. He had said: ‘may they also be one in us, so that the world may believe’ (see Jn 17:21).”
Those who gathered around Chiara and the other young women in that first focolare began to share their project of unity which seemed so new. There were all kinds of conversions. Vocations were salvaged and new ones born. Quite soon, young men also followed in their footsteps. They crowded into Massaia Hall for Saturday afternoon meetings. There Chiara would share experiences of a living Gospel and her first discoveries concerning what would later become the “spirituality of unity.”Their fervor spread and by 1945 there were some 500 people of all ages – men, women, children, people of every calling and social background – all wanting to share the ideal of those young women of the focolare. They held everything in common just as the first Christian communities had done.
They read the Gospel’s words: “give and it will be given to you” (Lk 6:38), and those words came to life daily. They gave and received. There was only one egg left in the house. They gave it away to a poor person who came to their door. On the same morning, someone left an entire package of eggs at their door. The Gospel also says: “Ask, and it will be given to you” (Mt 7:7). They prayed for their neighbours’ every need and, in the midst of a war, witnessed the arrival of sacks of flour, boxes of milk, jars of jam, bundles of wood, articles of clothing. It was common in that first focolare to find the table set with the best table cloth, and sitting around that table a focolarina and a poor person, a focolarina and a poor person . . .
The life of the young women of the “little house” astounded everyone who met them. On the feast of Christ the King, 1945, Chiara and her friends were praying at an altar after Mass. They turned towards Jesus with the simplicity of those who know what it means to be God’s children. Then they addressed this prayer to him: “You know how unity can be realized, that ut omnes unum sint (that all may be one). Well, here we are. If you want, use us.” Some words of that day’s liturgy had fascinated them: “Ask of me, and i will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (Ps 2:8). And so in their Gospel simplicity they asked for nothing less than the “ends of the earth”. For them, God was omnipotent.
All of this could not go unnoticed in a city of only a few thousand people, nor by the Church of Trent. Archbishop Carlo De Ferrari understood Chiara and her new adventure, and he gave his blessing. His blessing and approval stayed with the Movement until his death. From that moment, almost imperceptibly, they began to cross boarders to other regions, and were invited to Sicily, Rome and Milan. Soon communities like the one in Trent began appearing everywhere.
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7 Dec 2013 | Non categorizzato
The Focolare Movement formally requests the opening of the cause for beatification for Chiara Lubich on 7 December 2013.
On December 7, symbolic date for the Focolare Movement, the president Maria Voce announced the imminent presentation of the request to open the cause of Chiara Lubich’s beatification to the Bishop of Frascati, Raffaello Martinelli.
7 December 1943: the date of the birth of the Focolare Movement. In fact, on that day, as she herself recounts, Chiara Lubich never thought of establishing something. Her only desire was to follow God.
7 December 2013: after 70 years, her consecration to God brought forth unexpected fruits and consequences in many ways. The birth of a Movement, the Focolare Movement; the acknowledgement of the person of Chiara as one who received a charism, for the good of many and her faithfulness to it. On the day of her funeral, March 18, 2008, thousands of people from all over the world paid her tribute, and the testimonies of those belonging to various Christian Churches, faithful of other religions, representatives of the world of culture, laity and politics underscored the impact of Chiara’s charism in their personal lives and on the world that each one represented.
Phramaha Thongratana Thavorn, a Thai Buddhist monk – March 18, 2008
«Chiara’s legacy is one of the greatest spiritual blessings of our time,» the Rabbi of Jerusalem David Rosen affirmed. And Samuel Kobia, ex-secretary general of the World Council of Churches said: «Focused on the spirituality of unity, she made a great impact on the ecumenical movement.» «Chiara is not only yours, she is also ours. Indeed, she belongs to the whole world,» these are the words of Phramaha Thongratana Thavorn, a Thai Buddhist monk. «Her experience of a Christianity devoid of every dogmatism and all enlightened by the mandatum novum [new commandment] is such a great lesson for believers and non-believers,» the philosopher Massimo Cacciari wrote.
In the Catholic Church it’s a custom to present, to the Catholic faithful, people who have been distinguished for a special witness of faith in and love for God, as a catalyst of Christian life. This happens after a canonical process of verification, that also looks at the patrimony of life, thought and action of the person. This can begin no sooner than five years after the person’s death.
In these years, thinking of Chiara and her legacy, ordinary persons and those of authority, Catholics and people belonging to other Churches, religions and cultures – even in the diversity of their respective visions – have expressed the wish that this could happen also for Chiara. They ask for a recognition that will remarkably encourage Christians and non-Christians to take a greater moral and spiritual commitment for the good of humanity. It will be an encouragement to assume Chiara’s desire that she expressed many times, the desire to become saints together, to propose to the Church not the holiness of an individual, but the holiness of the people.
© CSC Media
In an interview to Città Nuova of March 2013, the co-president of the Focolare Movement, Giancarlo Faletti, answered a question on the different views of non-Catholic Christians who also belong to the Movement on the proclamation of a person’s holiness: «I think that this new experience should not endow possible memorial greatness because of the beatification or canonization, but should rather highlight the presence of God in a person, understand God’s work in this person,» and – through this person’s witness – in many people.
For information and in-depth study:
press release – biography Chiara Lubich
