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4 Oct 2012 | Non categorizzato
Klaus Hemmerle Klaus Hemmerle (1929-1994), Bishop of Aachen, was an outstanding theologian and philosopher who gave his unique contribution to the doctrinal understanding of the charism of unity and introduced the charism to many other bishops
Bishop Hemmerle wrote with reference to Jesus’ words: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40):
- ‘This Word tells us definitely what the human person is and what the human reality is … This interpretation of what it is to be human is certainly scandalous, and no less than Jesus who scandalized people by declaring himself the Son of God. In the name of their own freedom, in the name of their own identity and specialness, people feel they must protest against being identified with Jesus Christ. People wish to be loved for themselves, for what they are, and don’t want to be degraded to a kind of mask for Jesus. They fear instead that the ‘something more’ of love that they receive for love of Jesus will be something that takes no account of them, something that puts them to one side, something that robs them of the love they desire for themselves and which they need. But any whose love is such that by loving Jesus in the other person they neglect the other as a person, in this act neglect Jesus as well. And any whose consideration of the presence of Jesus in people leads them to diminish the reality of the human being, in reality have not understood in the slightest the presence of Jesus in their neighbour.
- Jesus makes himself one with me, that is, he does not leave me alone. He is on my side in a radical fashion, he accepts me just as I am, and anything that concerns me concerns him too. I remain myself, I become fully myself, precisely because I do not remain alone.
- The mystery of Christ is the mystery of every human being. What does this mean for the person I meet and what does it meet for me and my life? With reference to the other it means I am never involved with someone who is just a link in a chain or a cog in a machine or merely a cypher amidst the huge mass of human material. Every time I meet a human face, I meet God in the unconditional reality of the divine, I meet the voice that over this human face utters what was said of Jesus on the mountain of Transfiguration: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved!’ (Mk 9:7). There are no exceptions.
- We meet Christ especially in the least, in those who seem the furthest from him, in persons where the face of Christ seems blanked out. How can this be? On the cross, living his forsakenness by God, making himself even sin (2 Cor. 5:21), Jesus identified himself with all that was most distant from God, from all that most seems opposed to God. Only by discovering Christ in our neighbours, in those furthest from the mystery of their own personhood and from the mystery of Christ, giving to the person that human love which is offered undividedly to the person and to Christ himself, can our neighbours discover their own identity with Jesus, their closeness to him, their being fully assumed by him.
Extracts from Offene Weltformel
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3 Oct 2012 | Non categorizzato
(C) Maria Cristina Criscola
“For me art means reaching out to the mystery,”said Maria Cristina Criscola in a recent interview. She continued: “I’ve never chosen a model for my style. . . I try to be rigorous about the technique. But at the same time, I try to explore ‘stripping away’ so as to reach the deepest core of each. . .” With these words this Argentine artist tries to describe her years of work in the field of art which has not been only human-artistic, but spiritual. Her works are the accompaniament to this journey in search of the light.
This is affirmed also by Dr. Claudio Villareal, curator of an exhibit that brings together pieces of Criscola’s work from 1978 to 2012 and is entitled “Encountering the eternal in the tides of futility”. “It’s presence and stripping away at the same time. It’s the spirit of the material.” In front of her work “silence is quite apt” as Rothko would say. The grand dimensions of her canvases place one in contact with this ALL that lives in all that is. With this spirit that prevails, which is the quality of the material to which it gives form, by setting it free in the light. The colours are more than a means, more than symbols.”
Maria Cristina Criscola was born in Buenos Aires in 1943. In the 1970’s she attended several art academies (Manuel Belgrano, Prilidiano Pueyrredón, Ernesto de la Cárcova) and finished as a professor of Painting with a specialization in mural painting. Since 2007 she has been a professor and, for ten of those years, director of the Manuel Belgrano Fine Arts Academy. In 1989 she completed a PhD thesis entitled Colore, Forma e Contenuto.
© CSC – Maria Cristina Criscola
This was followed by many exhibits in Argentina and in other countries. For a long time she worked at Centro Ave Arte (Ave Art Center) in Loppiano, Italy, where she worked on several window and door projects for churches. But it was above all an opportunity to work with other artists for an art inspired by the light of the spirituality of unity. The crowning of this experience was the completion of the main door of the diocesan shrine to Maria Theotokos (Mother of God) in Loppiano. Criscola also has her studio in Mariapolis Liain O’Higgins, Buenos Aires where she says one can experience creating “from a quiet place, from that absolute place where everything dwells.” She understands art as a form of knowledge and of communication, even more a form of communion.
The exhibit of her complete works is open until 7 October 2012 at Berazafegui (Buenos Aires, Argentina).
30 Sep 2012 | Non categorizzato, Word of
‘If you say so, I will let down the nets.’
After an unsuccessful night, Peter, who was an expert at fishing, could have just smiled and refused Jesus’ invitation to let down the nets during the day, which was the worst time to do it. Instead he went beyond his own reasoning and trusted Jesus.
This is a typical situation that every believer is called to go through today, too, precisely because of being a believer. Faith is put to the test in a thousand ways.
Following Christ means decision, commitment and perseverance, whereas everything in the world we live in seems to invite us to take things easy, to mediocrity, to just letting things be. The task seems too big, impossible to achieve, a failure before it’s started.
So we need the strength to keep going, to resist the world around us, social pressure, friends, the media.
It’s a hard trial to face day by day, or better still, hour by hour.
But if we face up to it and welcome it, it will serve to mature us as Christians, to bring us to experience that the extraordinary words of Jesus are true, that his promises are fulfilled, that life can be a divine adventure a thousand times more attractive than anything else we could imagine, where we can witness, for instance, that while life in the world is often tough, flat and fruitless, God fills those who follow him with every good thing: he gives the hundredfold in this life as well as eternal life. This is the miraculous catch of fish repeated.
‘If you say so, I will let down the nets.’
How can we put this Word of life into practice?
By making the same choice as Peter: ‘If you say so…’ By having faith in his Word; by not questioning what he asks. On the contrary: basing our behaviour, our way of acting, our life on his Word.
By doing this we will base our existence on something solid and secure, and to our amazement we’ll see that, precisely where all human resources are lacking, he intervenes, and that where humanly it is impossible, life is born.
Chiara Lubich
Read more on this topic:
– Chiara Lubich, God’s Word to Us: Short Reflections on Living the Word, New City Press, 2012.
– Tom and Mary Hartmann, Gifts from Heaven, New City Press, 2012.
– Leahy, Brendan, “Movements and Evangelization,”
Ecclesial Movements and Communities, New City Press, 2011, pp109–118.
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29 Sep 2012 | Non categorizzato
From Rio+20 to LoppianoLab, from a project in Bolivia to the Day of Literacy. These are just some of the areas in which the Focolare’s AMU (Associazione per un mondo unito – the Action for a United World) is currently engaged. When the Focolare Movement spread from Europe to other lands, it often met situations of extreme poverty. Love for the poor and “becoming one” with the local environment was then translated into concrete social projects such as schools, clinics and social centres. As these projects began to develop the need became obvious for a way of providing ongoing economic support, for finding solutions that were not welfare support but based on development and reciprocity. Thus, in 1986, “the Action for a United World” (AMU) was begun, which is a non-governmental association of the United Nations and recognized by the Italian Ministry of External Affairs, operating in the field of cooperation, development training and education. 
Today AMU has produced 350 successful projects in 56 countires: from instruction to professional training, from support for basic needs (food, shelter, health) to building infrastructure, from post-emergency health care to micro credit and micro entrepreneurship. But this is not sufficient unless it is accompanied by a cultural change that depends on everyone, both in the Northern and Southern regions of the world. This is why, along with these development projects, AMU also works for the promotion of human rights. Through conferences and training courses it places attention on the goods we are all meant to share, the practice of sober and supportive lifestyles, the responsible use of the earth’s resources, active citizenship on both a local and a global level. 
In all of its interventions, AMU strives to place at the centre the human person together with his or her rights and needs. This is done through a methodology of communion, working with the people, solving problems together and producing useful and sustainable change over time. Once a relationship has been established in which it possible for everyone to give and to receive – when there is reciprocity – then the project has fulfilled its objective. Those who give feel that they have received, and those who receive desire to give in return; and you move from solidarity to fraternity. Many people around the world are linked up with AMU through its website and its magazine “AMU Notizie” (AMU News). Donators and beneficiaries, both participate and collaborates according to their feeling, needs and possibilites. Everyone, without distinction, can belong to this network that become AMU’s biggest wealth.
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27 Sep 2012 | Non categorizzato
«… Although surrounded , like everyone else, by the evils of our times, you, young people often have hearts and minds with antennas capable of detecting special wavelengths which others are not able to perceive. Your age makes you free to entertain noble aspirations such as peace, justice, freedom, and unity, to dream of achievements which would appear utopian to others, to foresee in the third millennium the dawning of a new world, a better, happier world, a world more worthy of the human person, more united.
We thank God that you’re here! But what can I tell you now? My words echo the words of Jesus which the Pope repeated to young people in 1995: “As the Father sent me, so I send you” (Jn. 20:21). It’s an invitation to you to bring the light of truth into today’s society; to meet the challenge of what the Pope called “new evangelization.”
“New evangelization!!” But why “new”? And what is the meaning of “new”? This “new” can have a number of meanings. I will tell you one.
You know that words are no longer enough today. Young people, especially, do not listen so much to teachers as to witnesses; they want facts. Well then, evangelization will be “new” if those who announce the Gospel are first of all genuine, authentic Christians, who are the first to live what the Gospel teaches, so that people can say of them what they said of the early Christians: “Look how they love one another and how they are ready to die for one another.”
Furthermore, evangelization will be “new” if they also love all other men and women, without distinction. Again, it will be “new” if these Christians will love in a concrete way by actively helping to give food, clothes, and shelter to those in need. And finally, it will be “new” – pay attention here – if they speak and announce the Gospel, but only after doing all these.
Such Christians, I assure you, fascinate the world with Jesus; they make people fall in love with him, so that the kingdom of God spreads beyond all expectations and the Church is strengthened and grows. It grows in such a way that these Christians can look far into the future, as Jesus did when he called everyone to universal brotherhood, praying to the Father: “May they all be one.” It might seem to be a wild dream, but it is possible because it is the dream of a God. And they believe in it. There are thousands, millions of young people from all nations who are walking towards this very goal.
It is to them that John Paul II said: “History is made by those who look toward the future: the others are dragged along….”[1]
My dear young people, the Pope also addresses these words to all of you today. Don’t disappoint him, don’t disappoint us. This is my wish for you with all my heart.»
Tor Vergata (Rome), 19 August 2000, talk by Chiara Lubich at the 25th World Youth Day
[1]John Paul II, Homily during Mass at the conclusion of the Genfest 1980, in L’Osservatore Romano May 19-20, p. 1.
27 Sep 2012 | Non categorizzato
Pope Benedict XVI appointed Maria Voce auditor at the forthcoming session of the Synod of Bishops on “ The New Evangelization for the transmission of the Christian faith”, scheduled for October 7 – 28 at the Vatican.
“The experience of the Synod, highlighted in an outstanding way by the collegiality of the Church, strikes us in a very particular way, even due to the charism of unity that characterizes us”. With these words Maria Voce expresses her adhesion and manifests her deep gratitude to the Holy Father for the trust shown to her and to all the Movement. She sees this occasion as an opportunity to serve the universal Church.
For the President of the Focolare Movement, the theme of the new evangelization has particular importance. Recently, when addressing the community of Argentina, she said: “The Gospel must be our dress. Let us help one another to live the Gospel so that we can proclaim that Christ is alive, and allow others to meet him present among us through the mutual love that binds us”
Two other members of the Focolare Movement have also been appointed auditors. One is Ernestine Sikujua Kinyabuuma, lecturer at the University Institute Maria Malkia of Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) and the other one is Gisèle Muchati, responsible for the New Families of the Focolare Movement in the Syria region .
Maria Voce has been a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization since December 2011.
Focolare Information Service
