Maria Voce: “newness” is the word that challenges us

21 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

>“It was beautiful to be able to assure Pope Francis that there is a vital force in the Church, even in spite of so many problems,” Maria Voce said to Vatican Radio microphones, as she described the confirmations and novelties she drew from that special encounter.

“It definitely confirmed the commitment to live our charism, as we felt how strongly communion is the essential mark of the Church today. And then our charism of communion, it seems to me, was highlighted for us as a necessary service to the Church. This was also confirmed by considering the feast under which we were meeting. We asked about each other, we assured each other of prayers …” .

“Renewed perhaps in the courage to face the world, because every movement surely has this inner drive that Pope Francis is strongly stressing, to reach out to others, to be available to the Church, to place ourselves at the disposal of the Church. Hearing it stated so forcefully by the Pope, it was like giving us the courage to say: we’re small, we’re weak, but in spite of this it is Jesus who leads us. Jesus is with us. The Pope sends us, so we can go …”.

As he looked ahead at the road before the different charisms and movements, the Pope put everyone on guard against both particularism and homologation, and he presented them with three words: harmony, newness, mission. What does this mean for you concretely?

“I was deeply impressed by the word “newness” because we would all be tempted to continue leaning on what is already familiar to us from the road we’ve already travelled, based on past experiences. But the Pope has challenged us to welcome surprises from the Holy Spirit, to listen well to what He asks of us and to follow Him on the streets of the world.”

Source: Vatican Radio – News Radio May 21, 2013 19:30 edition

The invitation of Pope Francis to “Go out!”

19 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

Four questions and answers off the cuff. The Pope’s words were the most touching moment of the Pentecost Vigil at which 200,000 faithful from many ecclesial groups gathered on May 18, 2013. “I know your questions. . . it’s the truth!” Yet his answers were spontaneous, and they engaged those present in profound silence. He was first questioned on how he reached the certainty of faith and how we are to overcome our fragility. He responded with a story: “I had the grace to grow up in a family where the faith was lived out in a very simple and concrete way. It was especially my grandmother who taught me the path of faith.” “She spoke to us about Jesus and taught us the catechism. On Good Friday she brought us to the candle procession. At the end of the procession came the dying Jesus, and our grandmother would make us kneel. She would tell us: he is dead, but tomorrow he will rise! I first received the Christian message from my grandmother!”  Then came the Pope’s invitation to abandon all fear: “We’re fragile, we know that, but He is stronger. With the Lord we are certain, the faith grows with the help of the Lord. . .”  . What is the most important thing on which we should fix our sights? “The most important thing? Jesus. If we move forward with an organization, but without Jesus, we go nowhere.” And he invited all to live in “synergy with the Holy Spirit”. Not so much to talk but to give testimony by the way we live.   How should we live so that the Church may be a poor Church and for the poor? What can our contribution be to the Church and to society in this time of crisis that involves public ethics? “Living the Gospel is the main contribution we can give. The Church is not a political movement, nor a well-organized structure. We aren’t an NGO, and when the Church becomes an NGO it loses its salt and has no taste, it’s only an empty organization made up of many structures.” Among the greatest dangers mentioned by the Pope were those of efficiency and of closing in on itself. Such closing in on oneself leads to illness: “The Church needs to come out of itself and start moving toward the peripheries of society. Obviously, when you go out, there will be accidents: “But I prefer a thousand times more a Church that is damaged than a Church that is sick from closing in on itself. Go out, go out!” This was the path the Pope was inviting all to follow in order to move away from a culture of confrontation and fragmentation and a “culture of waste”, and toward living a culture of encountering others, encountering Jesus and all our brothers and sisters, beginning from the poor, looking in their eyes and touching them with our hands in order to “touch the flesh of Christ and to take upon ourselves the sufferings of the poor.” How are we to confess the faith? “To confess the faith two virtues are needed: courage and patience, as we were reminded by the testimony of Brother Shabhaz Bhatti, Pakistan Minister who was murdered in 2011. We’re all on the path of martyrdom. Some give testimony to Christ by giving up their physical lives, some by living small martyrdoms throughout the day.” “A Christian should always respond to evil with good.” “Let us make these brothers and sisters feel that we are deeply united with this situation.” “Do you pray for these brothers and sisters in your daily prayers?”

During the final words to Pope Francis by leaders of the communities and ecclesial movements, Maria Voce also expressed her gratitude to the Holy Father and the Focolare’s commitment to “give a courageous and joyful testimony to the Christian life.” She shared some of her impressions with us: “his words touched our hearts” especially his continued insistence on the encounter with Jesus and prayer, which he came back to in all his answers, underscoring “the spiritual dimension of the Christian person: prayer and the encounter with Jesus that happens through people on the peripheries of society, on the outside. He rejected excuses and table strategies, while never denying the challenges. We need to look to Jesus and the rest will come as a consequence.” The president of the Focolare underscored the atmosphere of friendship and joy among the representatives of communities and movements. “I believe that the Pope, when he arrived, felt this joyful heart of the Church.” Giancarlo Faletti, co-president of the Focolare, stressed that the Pope emphasized the love of Jesus and of neighbour as the dynamic of life of those who look outwards: “He did not look at the movements just as a particular part of the Church, but he addressed all Christianity.” See the CTV transmission replay

You Sanctify

17 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

O Holy Spirit, how much we ought to be grateful to you yet how little we are!

That you are totally one with Jesus and the Father, to whom we more often turn, consoles us, but it is no excuse.

We want to be with you who are “of comforters the best; … the soul’s most welcome guest; sweet refreshment here below.”

You are light, joy, beauty.

You seize and captivate souls, you inflame hearts, you inspire deep and decisive thoughts of sanctity with unexpected personal commitments.

You work what many sermons cannot teach.

You sanctify.

Especially, O Holy Spirit, you who are so discreet, though impetuous and overwhelming, yet blow like a soft wind that few know how to hear and perceive, look upon our rough-edged coarseness, and make us your faithful followers. May no day pass without our invoking you, thanking you, adoring you, loving you, without our living as your diligent disciples.

We ask of you this grace. Envelop us in your great light of love, above all in our darkest hour, when the present vision of life comes to a close, dissolving into the one that is eternal.

Chiara Lubich

(From Essential Writings, New City Press, New York and New City, London (English translation), p. 102.) 1. Sequence

Ecclesial Movements gather with the Pope

17 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

More than 120,000 people are expected to arrive from 150 ecclesial realities, from many countries in all the continents. It is a meeting for ecclesial movements, new communities, associations and lay organizations that will take place in St. Peter’s Square on May 18-19. The event is one of many initiatives taking place during the Year of Faith. It was presented by Archbishop Rino Ficishella, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, during a press conference in the press room of the Holy See. The slogan chosen for the event is significant: “I believe! Increase the faith in us.” “The personal pronouns used in this phrase,” the prelate explained, “attest to the underlying meaning. Each member of the Church is called to personally pronounce his adherence to Christ and to the Church.” It is a free and personal choice. But he also says that faith is communitarian, it’s an “us” imbued with community values, principally those of the Church. “So many men, women and youths,” he went on “have rediscovered in these movements not only the faith that they had lost,” but “they have undergone a real and true conversion of life.” “These ecclesial realities,” he stated, “are one of the most evident fruits of the Second Vatican Council.” These words powerfully echoed the expression used by Benedict XVI who, on Pentecost 2006, defined the new ecclesial realities “one of the most important novelties brought about by the Holy Spirit in the Church for the implementation of the Second Vatican Council.”    Archbishop Fisichella continued by saying that the choice of Pentecost is meant to make it understood that “in the Church today these new ecclesial realities are a sign of the Risen Lord who guides His Church in the work of evangelization.” The start of the meeting in Saint Peter’s Square is set to begin at 15:00, and continue with testimonies and musical and artistic performances. The international Gen Verde band and 150 members of various members of different movements will also perform at different moments. Pope Francis will join them at around 18:00 and, after having heard the testimonies from Ireland Pakistan, will participate in an open discussion, answering some questions. On Sunday, May 19th, the Pope will celebrate the Mass at 10:30 in Saint Peter’s Square, followed by the Regina coeli. During these days of preparation some words of John Paul II have been returning to mind, from the first grand meeting on Pentecost 1998:: “What a great need there is these days for mature Christians, aware of their baptismal dignity, of their own vocation and mission in the Church and in the world! What a great need for living communities! And so we have the movements and new ecclesial communities: these are the answer from the Holy Spirit to this dramatic challenge at the end of the millennium. You are this providential  answer.”

Pentecost: love circulating among brothers and sisters

17 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

The Holy Spirit who unites created beings to their Creator generates a common life between the human and the divine. But Pentecost, by making ‘many believers one heart and one soul’ brought about, as a spontaneous effect of unity, the community of life. In this way common life, in the midst of daily distractions and noise, has become divine common life, where other persons serve as the means of ascent to God. Indeed, each brother or sister we meet resupplies us with divine life, because, loving the other for Christ, we are given access to God. And so life’s march is no longer, is it has been called, a death march, but growth towards eternal youth.

Living the Spirit of God is to let the Holy spirit live in us. And then to the extent we love God, we love also other human beings who are God’s representatives … And to the extent the goods of the Holy Spirit are communicated, they also increase. To develop and to blaze with life, charity must expand; it is blood and longs to circulate; it is fire and longs to burst all bounds. As natural life is a circulation of heat, communicated from cell to another, so also from the first cell set alight for the Creator there has been a continuous passage and an unwavering increase of heat in time and space. Likewise the supernatural life is an unwavering communication of heat – grace, charity – from the sun which is God to the souls who share in God. Other people are channels of the transmission of grace; in a sense they are sacraments of God. If others are excluded the Holy Spirit passes on no longer, life is stopped. And it is understandable: the love that passes on from me to the other person and from the other person to me is God who circulates.

The origin of this entire miracle is to be found in the incarnation and hence in charity. Humankind, therefore, being the image and likeness of God … is God who lives – incarnate so to speak – in human limitedness. If it is like this, I must see humankind like this and deal with humanity as if it were God in effigy. It is mutual; I must behave as God’s representative—from this come my vicarious dignity and my duties in action.

Humankind has been made by God and every cell of every human body and every fold of every spirit bears its maker’s trademark, the stamp of the Eternal. From such a maker humankind has received an unmistakable imprint, so that each human person on his or her own is like a masterpiece. Humans carry in their every molecule the proof of the existence of God who placed them in the world. The Holy Spirit is the One who acts in this divinization; he is the active principle of God’s incarnation. All individual humans are brought to share in some way in union with God, and the love that makes humans into God is the same that made God become human.

From Igino Giordani, La divina avventura [The Divine Adventure], Città Nuova, 1993

(first pub. Garzanti, 1953)

Oreste Basso’s Adventure

14 May 2013 | Non categorizzato

“I have been a very fortunate man. How I’d like to be able to express all the love that God has shown to me, though I think it would be impossible to put into words all that I’ve  received [from Him].” With these words Oreste Basso began to describe the golden thread that he saw woven through the story of his life. He was born in Florence, Italy, on January 1, 1922. His family instilled in him Christian principles and rectitude of mind. He loved the humanities and dreamt of a life and career that would be just right for him. The experience of the War was “a dreadful lesson because in the war you could see all human ideals collapsing.” “The only thing that remained standing after the war,” he recalled, “were the natural affections of the family.” After graduating in engineering in 1946 he found a job at a factory in Sesto San Giovanni (Italy), which was then considered the “Stalingrad of Italy”. He lived in Milan and in the evenings was often at a canteen where he met some friends – Piero Pasolini, Danilo Zanzucchi, Guglielmo Boselli and Alfredo Zirondoli – who were later among the very first people to follow in the adventure of the focolares. They would discuss Maritain, Neo-Scholasticism, music and art. One of them, Giorgio Battisti, one day invited Oreste to “get to know something beautiful, some young people who live the Gospel.”

One of these young people named Ginetta Calliari, who is among the first companions of Chiara Lubich, went to meet them and was bombarded with questions. Quietly she would listen to them until late in the night. Each month she would travel from Trent just to meet with them. “We began to realize,” Oreste said, “that the Gospel was something that was to be lived not by people who were far from us, but by us, by me, by him, by the others.” The fruits of this new life were evident in Oreste’s life. He earned the esteem of one of his subordinates who was very active in politics, and came to know of his evangelical ideal. He told Oreste: “If you believe in this God, then I can also believe in Him in the way you say.”

In 1959 Oreste left home and went to be part of the focolare in Milan together with the others who had followed this path after having heard it announced to them by Ginetta. Then he met Chiara: “Such a beautiful encounter!” he said. “She seemed such a stupendous person to me,  in her great humility and light.”

Meanwhile the number people began to grow in the cities of Italy, who were eager to know the nascent Movement. Oreste moved to the city of Parma with Lionello Bonfanti. His story has the flavour of the beginnings: “There was a couch for sleeping, and for eating we bought an alcohol stove. Usually we ate cheese, lots of milk – milk saved us! But we were truly happy.”

A few years passed and the Focolare Movement-Work of Mary – this was the name given by Chiara to this new eccesial phenomenon – continued to spread and take form in its mutiple aspects. Oreste was therefore asked to transfer to Florence and take on a role of responsibility. He immediately agreed in spite of his job where he had just been offered another promotion. The general director was himself saddened because of Oreste’s departure from the company. “It was the begining of another life,” Oreste said, “totally immersed in the charism of Chiara and  being one of its bearers.”

In the late 1950’s he was recalled to Rome where always at Chiara’s side, with his discreet and joyful style, he continued his work right on the forefront, assisting in drawing up the Statutes of the Work of Mary. In 1981 he was ordained a priest, a ministry which he considered to be a privilege and a call to greater love.

He was elected co-president of the Movement in 1996 and played a fundamental role at Chiara’s death (March 14, 2008), as well as during the General Assembly that followed, in which the successor of the founder was elected.

The messages that have arrived after the news of Oreste’s death from the Holy Father through Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone and from president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Rylko, testify to his radically evangelical lifestyle as well as to the simple and sincere relationships that Oreste Basso knew how to build each day until the end.

Numerous testimonies continue to arrive, all expressing gratitude and affection for Oreste.