31 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato, Word of
What a full day Jesus had that Saturday in the city of Capernaum! He spoke in the synagogue and he astonished everyone with his teaching. He freed a man from an unclean spirit. After leaving the synagogue he went to Simon and Andrew’s house where he healed Simon’s mother-in-law. Then in the evening after sunset, all the sick and the possessed were brought to him and he healed many of those afflicted with various illnesses and expelled many demons (see Mk 1:21-24).
After having spent a whole day and night in such intense activities, Jesus got up while it was still dark and left the house before daybreak.
«…he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed»
He yearned for the life of heaven. He had come from there to reveal the love of God to us, to open up the way to heaven for us, to share in every aspect of our lives. He had journeyed along the roads of Palestine to teach the crowds, to cure diseases and illnesses of every kind, and to form his disciples.
But the life-giving power that flowed like “rivers of living water from within him” (Jn 7:37-38), came from his constant relationship with the Father. He and the Father know each other and love each other; they are in each other, for they are one (see Jn 10:15,30,38).
The Father is “Abba,” which means “daddy,” the dad he could turn to with infinite trust and boundless love.
«…he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed»
Since the Son of God came on earth for us, he was not content to be the only one to enjoy this privileged relationship in prayer. By dying for us and redeeming us, he made us sons and daughters of God, his brothers and sisters.
Therefore we too can use his divine invocation, “Abba, Father,” with all that comes with it: certainty of his protection, security, blind trust in his love, divine consolation, strength and ardor – the ardor that is born in a heart that is sure that it is loved.
Once we have entered into the silence of the “inner room” (Mt 6:6), the inner space of our soul, we can then converse with him, adore him, declare our love for him, thank him, ask him to forgive us, entrust to him all our needs and humanity’s too, as well as our dreams and hopes. What can’t we say to someone we know loves us immensely and who can do anything?
We can also speak with the Word, with Jesus. Above all, we can heed his voice and allow him to repeat his words to us: “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!” (Mk 6:50), “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20). He also invites us with words such as: “Come, follow me” (Mt 19:21), “I say to you, [forgive] not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:22), “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12).
These conversations can be extended, or they can be brief and frequent moments throughout the day, almost like a glance of love in his direction, whispering to him for example: “You are my only good” (see Ps 16:2), “This act of mine is for you.”
We cannot do without prayer. We cannot live without breathing, and praying is the breathing of the soul, the expressing of our love for God.
After such moments of recollection with him, moments of communion and love, we will come away refreshed and ready to face our daily lives with new strength and confidence. It will also help us build a more authentic relationship with others and with the world.
«…he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed»
“If we do not close the shutters of our soul by recollecting ourselves, you, Lord, would not be able to keep company with us as your love sometimes would want to. But once we have set everything else aside in order to recollect ourselves in you, we would never want to turn back, for so sweet to the soul is union with You and so fleeting all the rest.
“Those who sincerely love you often feel you, Lord, in the silence of their rooms, in the depths of their hearts, and this sensation moves their souls each time as if they were touched to the core. And they thank you for being so close to them, for being everything for them, for being the one who gives meaning to their living and their dying.
“They thank you, but often they do not know how, or what to say. They only know that you love them and that they love you, and that there is no sweeter thing on this earth that comes even close to this feeling. What they feel in their soul when you appear is Heaven, and they say: ‘If Heaven is like this, oh, how beautiful it will be!’
“They thank you, Lord, for their entire lives, for having brought them up to this point. And even if shadows still exist on the outside that could darken their paradise here on earth, when you manifest yourself all these other things seem remote and distant: they no longer exist.
“You exist.
“That is how it is.”
Chiara Lubich
30 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato
The theme: “The city as the place for accepting the challenge of brotherhood,” led politicians, administrators, public officials and citizens of the city and province of 
Verona to pose the question: what is the meaning of their political experience. This reflection on the significance and consequences of brotherhood in city life was offered during a meeting with a public belonging to different parties, of the most varied political tendencies.
The subject was addressed also through a video-taped address given by Chiara Lubich in June, 2001 in the city of Trent, Italy. “Brotherhood – Chiara said – is not an external adjunct to political reflection and practice; rather, it can be considered as the soul with which we should face today’s problems.” After the video presentation, two experiences on how brotherhood can be practiced even in politics were shared.
The participants expressed the difficulties encountered by one who practices such a value in the complex and conflictual political world, where a person easily loses the original spirit of service to the common good.
Nonetheless, the life experiences shared by those who, for some time now, have been gearing their efforts in this direction, as well as the comments contributed by other participants, strengthened the hope that a more peaceful climate of collaboration can actually be created in the city’s political sector.
The meeting offered a small sign that wherever there is room for the aspects of dialogue and listening, it is possible to create the conditions favorable to a political experience based on brotherhood.
(taken from Lino Cattabianchi’s article, published in L’Arena, February 6, 2006)
25 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato
19 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato
The award named after Bishop Klaus Hemmerle was conferred this year on Lutheran Bishop Christian Krause, during the ceremony held on January 20 at the imperial dome of Aquisgrana. For Christian Krause, it was particularly significant to receive the award since, as he commented, “This award touches my heart in a special way because it commemorates an exceptional person: Klaus Hemmerle.” This is the second time the award has been given to commemorate the deceased Bishop of Aquisgrana, a pioneer of ecumenical life in the German Church and at the same time, a great theologian linked to the Focolare Movement where, he said, he had found his “vital sap”. The first awardee was jewish Prof. Ernst-Ludwig Ehrlich. Bishop Krause, second awardee, is an eminent exponent of world Lutheranism and a dedicated ecumenist. A good friend of Hemmerle, Krause was a bridge-builder in different situations. In 1971 he was called to direct a large project of the Lutheran World Federation in favor of refugees in Tanzania. From 1972 to 1985, he was entrusted with the foreign relations of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Germany. While holding this office, and successively as secretary-general of the “Evangelical Church Day (1985-1994), he has dedicated his time and talents to ecumenism and solidarity on a world scale. He established profound ties of friendship with many Christians all over the world, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The trust he had garnered was proven by his election as president of the Lutheran World Federation during the world meeting held in Hong Kong in 1997, shortly after his consecration as Bishop of the regional church of Braunschweig. It was in such role that he later signed the Augsburg Joint Declaration on the doctrine of justification, together with Roman Catholic Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, in 1999. Today, Bishop Krause is the director of the Lutheran Center of Wittenburg, the city where Luther’s Reformation began in 1517. This center is inspired by the idea of giving to the ever-growing “Lutheran tourism” “a spiritual, ecumenical and world-wide dimension.” Krause’s wish for the future of the Lutheran Church is that a new relationship may develop between the hierarchy and spiritual and charismatic movements. “This could give rise to a totally new comprehension of the Church,” he said. His ecumenical inspiration is that of Klaus Hemmerle: “We must learn, at all levels, to become friends and treat one another as such.” (by Joachim Schwind – Città Nuova – no. 1/06)
9 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato
They have been married for almost 35 years now, with three grown-up daughters and a grandson. The wife is Catholic, and the husband Evangelical Lutheran. Thirty-five years ago, it certainly was not easy to live as a couple belonging to two different Churches.
E. : I grew up in a small Catholic village. When I was pursuing my studies as an elementary school teacher, my eyes were suddenly opened to the division among the different confessions. I was then living in Nuremburg where there was an Evangelical university specializing in education. At that time, there was a rigid division between Catholic and Evanglical schools. To avoid the risk of not finding a job, I had to look for a Catholic university and transfer to Eichstätt, another city.
P. : I spent my childhood at Ochsenfurt along the Main River (Germany). We Evangelicals were living in the diaspora, and we had no contacts at all with the Catholic parish. At the end of the 60s, I took a specialization course in Munich on differentiated schools.
E. : I was there taking the same course, and that was how we met and started seeing each other. At the beginning, we avoided the idea of forming a family. Our respective Churches then kept us on guard against “mixed” marriages.
By coincidence, I received an invitation from a friend to travel to Rome. I read the invitation hastily thinking it was for tourism, and I decided to go. I found myself in an ecumenical meeting of “Centro Uno,” the ecumenical center of the Focolare Movement. I did not know anything about what was going on, and in the beginning I was not enthusiastic at all. But then Chiara Lubich’s explanation of Jesus’ words in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18,20) struck me. It did not say, “Where two or three Catholics…,” nor “Where two or three Evangelicals…,” but “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” I invited my friend to come with me to the next meeting.
P. : It was then that we found the courage to start a family together. I pledged to myself to love my wife’s Church as much as I love my own. Naturally, I too had my own difficulties in accepting typically Catholic forms of piety, such as when our daughters participated in the procession of “Corpus Domini,” proudly donning their white dresses. I joined them, but just out of sheer love for my family.
E. : For me it was something new and unusual to see him read from the Bible everyday, according to his Evangelical tradition. For a while I let him read alone, then – also for sheer love at the beginning – I kept him company. Now I can no longer do without it. Since the time we took Chiara Lubich’s meditation on Jesus in the midst as our own, we always finish the reading by promising each other to do everything to keep His presence among us. In spite of all our mistakes, limitations and weaknesses we try to maintain reciprocal love and start over and over again.
(E. and P. – Germany)
9 Jan 2006 | Non categorizzato
By January 16, 2006, the funds gathered by AMU for the Southeast Asian disaster has reached about € 1 million. The amount has been allotted mainly for projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India. Aside from the projects already under way, new projects are being studied for future implementation.
The funds were gathered from all over the world; in many cases, they came from the little that a large number of people could afford: for example, from children from Kenya, Colombia, Russia and many other countries where giving away just € 1 is already a great act of generosity.
Below is the report of Stephen Comazzi, AMU representative, who traveled to the site, a year after the Southeast Asian disaster:
I went to make an on-site visit to the different projects being carried out by our volunteers and collaborators in the area. I traveled with a group of European youth of the Focolare Movement who already had carried out AMU projects in favor of Indonesia.
They had started at Nias Island, south of Sumatra, where they had opened work camps to help rebuild a village and to animate a large number of activities for children. Then they proceeded to the province of Aceh, the hardest-stricken area, in the northern tip of Sumatra Island.
I was appalled by what I saw in Banda Aceh and in the nearby village of Lampuuk, where some Indonesian Focolare youth had lived for weeks with the local population to help out. Months after the disaster, a lot of things have changed, but remnants persist as a reminder of the extraordinary force of nature, such as a huge ship which the waves had carried from the sea up several kilometers inland, demolishing a whole neighborhood. Entire districts of Banda Aceh, like the village of Lampuuk, have turned into stagnant swamps, completely razed to the ground.
The entire population is Muslim, and our young collaborators have gained the people’s esteem and friendship, which expresses itself in small, caring gestures. A house offered to them free of charge – which has become a lodging for a large number of us – is an eloquent example. With AMU funds, a project to build fishing boats has been started at Lampuuk.
In Medan, the most spread out city of the island of Sumatra and one of the main cities of Indonesia, I got acquainted with AMU collaborators – Christian, Buddhist and Muslim youth who belong to the Focolare Movement. Their being together is already in itself an impressive living witness, not to mention the fact that not all of them are Indonesians; for example, there is J.P.W., a Malaysian student who has interrupted his university course for several months now in order to dedicate himself full-time to managing and organizing current activities as well as to helping his collaborators with visa procedures.
In the southern part of the province, just beyond the boundaries of Medan and Aceh, there are several fishing villages. Also the people here have become “friends” of our volunteers, and they welcomed us warmly at our arrival, with a banner from their newly-formed association called SILATURRAHMI (meaning, “everybody’s welcome”).
Our young Indonesian guides had already met them in their previous trips to this place, and had shared the few goods they had, and above all, listened to each person’s story, to the survivors’ accounts of suffering and bewilderment. Thanks to AMU funds, these young people returned subsequently, now equipped to organize the work of reconstruction and revival together with the villagers.
Still in Aceh province, in the villages of Blang Nibong and Padan Kasab, we personally saw how many fishing boats had been completed and how many are still under construction. The people of Blang Nibong were waiting for us to officially consign the first ten boats to beneficiaries chosen according to the number of members in the family (large families were given one boat while smaller families shared one boat) and according to the damages they had undergone. Our young guides attended the launching of one of the newly-built boats, after which we all went for an inaugural tour on the hot sea of Malacca.
I would say that this trip was indeed meaningful. It made us believe even more how important it is to work “with” the people, the grassroots, giving utmost value to listening and to sharing in their lives; one finds out soon that this listening and sharing becomes reciprocal.
(taken from the AMU NOTIZIE newsletter,no.4/2005)
