2 Jun 2004 | Non categorizzato
“We felt changed, strengthened. This meeting is the sign of a great hope. In these times, when the message we get from Europe is consumerism, fashion and material values, I now see we can hear about spiritual values, too.” This fax message arrived from Vilnius, in Lithuania. With 9 other countries, it celebrated its entry into the European Union on May 1st, not without some trepidation on the part of many. Vilnius is one of the 163 European cities linked up via satellite to the Palasport of Stuttgart last May 8, which hosted close to 10,000 people from all over the continent who came to attend the gathering entitled “Together for Europe”. Numerous comments defined the meeting as “historic” also because it was the first meeting, on a European scale, of more than 150 Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox and Anglican movements. A soul for Europe “We are here to give Europe a soul that could generate a strong spiritual unity” – said Chiara Lubich, foundress of the Focolare Movement, in her opening remarks – “like many networks of fraternal relationships which bring nations together, like an experiment to prepare the full unity of Europe” in the wealth of its diversities. These words pronounced at Stuttgart became an experience of life. “The impression one gets from Stuttgart is the kind that lasts,” President of the European Commission Romano Prodi affirmed in an interview with Città Nuova. “Today Europe revealed itself capable of closing a chapter in history with no more sufferings nor divisions.” The experience was just as intense in those gatherings which were linked up to Stuttgart, as revealed by numerous fax and e-mail. This is what they wrote from Trent: “We couldn’t tell if we were on or off the screen.”
A milestone “We need a Europe of the heart, hearts that are full not of the Euro, but of values, of God,” stated Cardinal Kasper when he spoke onstage. “We need the spiritual dimension of Europe, the spiritual movements which can render such a Europe tangible. We need communities that overcome the boundaries of peoples and nations: today’s meeting is a milestone in this journey.” Among the leading personalities present at the Geneva link-up in the headquarters of the World Council of Churches, was Marie-Francois Charrin, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who affirmed: “This united Europe with a soul, a heart and two lungs, will heal the major wounds of countries in conflict.”
A united Europe was born out of the ruins of World War II The process of reconciliation and the dream of a united Europe was born right from the ruins of a conflict: World War II. This fact was recalled by Evangelical Pastor Aschoff of the German Charismatic Renewal Movement, as well as by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the St. Egidio Community. The President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi brought to light the vision of Schuman, De Gasperi and Adenauer and the initial steps marked by the Coal and Steel Agreement of 1951, then the adoption of the Euro and the Constitution in the making. He recalled that the great Fathers of Europe had built it, drawing from their faith. He added that today, too, Christians are called “to contribute through their creativity… so that Europe may develop, not like a fortress but as a political subject with a soul, which makes of peace and justice its identity and its vocation…You are an essential component of this soul,” he added. Europe viewed in the light of the different charisms The theme that ran through the meeting was: Europe, illuminated by the charisms brought to life by the Spirit through the centuries. Aschoff recalled that it is not by chance that a large number of new spiritual movements and communities were born right “in the difficult days of the war”. “Behind these faces, there is a heart regenerated by the Gospel,” said Riccardi. In the face of a “listless Europe” the movements supply “gusto for the future.”
It is a Europe “in need of new bonds among human beings,” affirmed Ulrich Parzany, a Lutheran Evangelical pastor, secretary-general of the YMCA in Germany and promoter of a broad evangelization initiative called “Pro Christ”. He also observed that “democracy itself is founded on presuppositions that it is incapable of creating.” And the keyword launched in Stuttgart was “universal brotherhood”. Speaking about it, Chiara Lubich said that it is the most widely felt aspiration, a brotherhood made possible by Jesus, who “has torn down the walls separating those who are the same from those who are different, friends from enemies, thereby setting in motion an existential, cultural and political revolution.”
The witness offered by the movements and new communities A series of life experiences showed the seeds of spiritual and social renewal sown by the different charisms of Movements and new communities. The Orthodox Youth Movement (ONL) presented its “determinant contribution” to the survival of the Orthodox Church in Finland. A youth member of the FCJG evangelical community of Ludenscheid shared his experience of passing from the “abysmal darkness of the soul” which he had fallen into because of drugs, to his liberating encounter with Christ. Nicky Gumbel, Anglican who started the Alpha Courses spoke of the transformation operated by the Gospel in 124 prisons of the United Kingdom. Members of movements for the family, like the Family Life Mission of the Evangelical Church, and the Equipe Notre Dame of the Catholic Church spoke of the Christian renewal of families.
The youth’s vision and commitment for Europe The voice of the youth resounded loudly as they expressed through their experiences, songs and choreography their wish and their commitment to see a Europe capable of forgiving, of overcoming barriers and of aiming at a united world.
A pact of brotherhood This was the commitment taken in the final declaration: “Intensify universal brotherhood more and more; it is evangelical love put into life” in “the sharing of goods and resources,” “in openness to other cultures and religious traditions,” “in loving solidarity with the weak and the poor of our cities,” “in a profound sense of family and values of life.” It was the culminating point. The stage was filled with the representatives of movements and communities who had worked for over a year to prepare this historic moment. Their adherence was unanimous – and not only at Stuttgart. From Warsaw, Poland they wrote: “It was deeply moving, all of us on our feet just as in Stuttgart, at the moment of the final declaration. Today, we saw and touched the soul of Europe.” Then ecclesial dignitaries representing a wide array of Churches went up onstage to read the key passages of Jesus’ priestly prayer, “May they all be one.” Queen Fabiola of Belgium was also invited onstage to conclude with the “Our Father”. A united Europe for a united world The message of Stuttgart also reached other continents, where 35 cities were linked up. From Buenos Aires they wrote: “We were gathered in thousands, and standing, we too joined our hands in prayer to seal this pact.” We heard from Man (Ivory Coast) that they too rejoiced for a Europe that is open to all peoples of the world, especially Africa. The strong impulse that would have come from Stuttgart was further emphasized by the message of the Pope: “A common home for Europe cannot be built without concern for the good of all humanity, especially of Africa which is plagued by so many and such serious problems.” From Singapore: “Distances were erased. After Europe, let us aim at the unity of the whole world.” That was the vision proposed by Riccardi and Chiara Lubich: “a united Europe for a united world”.
The Pope, too, had underscored this perspective in his message: “The Christians of numerous spiritual movements gathered at Stuttgart show that the Gospel has made them overcome self-centered nationalism in order to look at Europe as a family of peoples, rich in cultural variety and history. Europe of tomorrow needs this awareness for it to take part in the great events to which it is called by history.”
A first step A wave of hope has ripped out from Stuttgart, “like the concentric circles of water that continue out to regions unknown,” as they wrote from Vilnius. But, as numerous comments say, this is just the first step.
31 May 2004 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Jesus has just decided to begin the long trip to Jerusalem where he will have to fulfil his mission (see Lk 9:51). Others want to follow him, but he warns them that to go with him involves a serious choice. It will be a difficult journey, one that demands his same courage and determination to carry out the Father’s will to the very end.
He knows that their initial enthusiasm might be followed by discouragement. He had just told them the parable of the sower: the seeds that fell “on rocky ground” represent those people “who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of trial” (Lk 8:13).
Jesus wants people to follow him in a complete and determined way and not just up to a certain point, sometimes saying “yes,” sometimes saying “no.” Once we have set out to live for God and his Kingdom, we cannot go back and take up where we left off, living as we did before, thinking only of our own narrow interests:
«No one who sets a hand to the plough and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God»
When Jesus calls us to follow him – and everyone, in different ways, is called – he opens up to us such a new world that it’s worth it to break with the past. At times, however, we are overcome by sentimental afterthoughts, or we are influenced and pressured by popular lifestyles that are often in conflict with the Gospel.
And this creates problems. On the one hand, we want to love Jesus; on the other, we feel like giving in to our weaknesses, to indulging ourselves, to taking up again our mediocre way of living. We would like to follow him, but we are often tempted to turn back, to retrace our steps, or else, to take one step forward and two steps back.
This Word of Life highlights the need to be consistent, to persevere and be faithful. If we have experienced the freshness and beauty of living according to the Gospel, we will see that nothing is more contrary to it than indecision, spiritual laziness, compromise, half measures, and a lack of generosity. Let’s decide to follow Jesus and to enter into the wonderful world he opens up to us. He promised that “whoever endures to the end will be saved” (Mt 10:22).
«No one who sets a hand to the plough and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God»
What should we do, then, so that we don’t give in to the temptation to look back?
First of all, we shouldn’t give in to self-centeredness (let’s leave it in our past) when we do not want to work as we should, or study with commitment, or pray well, or accept a difficult and painful situation with love, or when we feel like making negative comments about someone, being impatient with someone else, or taking revenge. We must say “no” to these temptations, even up to ten or twenty times a day.
And still that’s not enough. We won’t go very far only saying, “No.” We need, above all, to say, “Yes”—yes to what God wants and to what our brothers and sisters expect from us. And great surprises will be in store for us.
I remember one experience I had during World War II. On May 13,1944, a bombardment had damaged my house so badly that we couldn’t live there any longer. My family and I had to take refuge in the woods nearby. That night I cried because I realized that I would not be able to move away from Trent with my family whom I loved deeply. By this time I had already met my first companions and I knew that the Movement was coming to life. I couldn’t abandon them.
Would the love of God be able to resolve even this situation? Would I have to leave my relatives on their own – I, who was their only financial support? I did it with the blessing of my father.
Many years later I learned that as the rest of my family left the city and headed off in the direction of the mountains, they experienced a sense of great peace, and before long they found a very suitable living arrangement.
I went looking for my friends among houses and streets reduced to rubble. They were, thank God, all alive. We were offered a small apartment. Was it to be the first focolare? We didn’t know it then, but in fact it was.
«No one who sets a hand to the plough and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God»
Let us always go forward towards the goal before us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus (see Heb 12:1-2). The more we are in love with him and experience the beauty of the new world he gave life to, the more we will lose interest in the things we left behind.
Let’s repeat every morning when we begin a new day: “Today I want to live better than yesterday!” Something else might also be helpful: let’s try counting our acts of love for God and for our brothers and sisters. Then in the evening we will find our hearts full of happiness.
Chiara Lubich
27 May 2004 | Non categorizzato
“When the Holy Year 2000 ended and the second Intifada began, the pilgrims disappeared. Christians here feel abandoned. Most of them make their living on the services provided to pilgrims. Pilgrimages not only give them material help, but spiritual support as well.” These are remarks from the Apostolic Nuncio in Jerusalem, Bishop Pietro Sambi.
“We were a mixed group of youth from Europe and Asia and right from the start, the unity among us ‘pilgrims’ and our local friends was natural and concrete. Our heart told us we had to go and visit them right in their own land to be able to understand how much they need to feel our support. But contact with these people is useful for us, most of all, who come from different parts of the world: we have a lot to learn from them and much to thank them for, for what they are living through and offering up for everyone.
“As we walked through the ancient city and looked around, we were filled with sensations we could hardly put into words. Faces, houses, colors and odors, words and silences, panoramas and stones. The very stones the God-made-man walked on and His presence is more than ever alive and resounding right here and now. It was deeply moving to see that there are still people who go on building peace, starting first of all from themselves. This was the greatest lesson we learned on this trip. “We were witnesses of touching experiences of life: of a woman who had lost husband, brothers or children; of people who live day by day with the fear of check-points; of one who saw her loved ones being dragged away, or another his house collapsing. Experiences of people who have lost all certainty except the certainty that ‘It is in giving Love to whoever comes our way that we get the strength to smile again.’ Which means ‘loving that soldier, smiling over a misunderstanding, going beyond injustice to offer something positive to someone one could rightly call ‘enemy’.’ The initiatives of solidarity are in the thousands; and just to cite an example, a typing office was set up in a village of the Palestinian Territories to offer new job opportunities. “During the days we spent in the Holy Land, such an unconditional love reached us, too. Our friends there really gave us so much of their life, their deeds, sweets, dinners, visits, celebrations – everything was part of a continuous act of Love for us.” P.B.
26 May 2004 | Non categorizzato
Like St. Martin did
I am a young widow, with 3 children to raise and a shaky financial situation. My salary as a domestic helper was low. One day, as I was entering a church, I noticed a man who looked in distress. His trousers had patches. “Dear Lord, does this man need my help?” I prayed. As I raised my eyes, I noticed a painting of St. Martin, and I knew that I did not have to wait for further signs: St. Martin never used half-measures in putting the commandment of evangelical love into practice. I approached the man. “I’ve just come out of the hospital and I am no longer fit to work,” he told me. “I find myself here, but to tell you the truth, I’d rather step in front of a train and end it all.” I tried to encourage him, saying, “Of course you’ve come to the right place. And you must keep coming back here. God will surely help you.” I gave him what I had earned that day: 80 Swiss francs. The next day my uncle, whom I had not seen for 10 years, paid me an unexpected visit. It was a great joy for us to see each other again. When he was about to go, he handed me an envelope. It contained the sum of 8,000 Swiss francs!
(M.M. – Switzerland)
At the public laundry
Two days ago, I went to the public laundry with my washing. It was a sunny day and there were many women doing their laundry though the wash-house was quite small. We were chattering away when an elderly man who was half-blind arrived. He had a pair of bedsheets, a shirt and his turban to wash, and he asked us to move over a little to give him room. Nobody wanted to do it. Then I thought: “Jesus considers as done to him whatever we do or refuse to do for our brothers.” So I said to the man: “Baba (term of respect used to address the elderly), give me your laundry; I can do it for you!” The other women started to laugh. “Are you serious? With your big family and the mountain of washing you have?” I repeated my offer to the man and started to wash his bedsheet. He was very happy; he gave me a fatherly blessing and before going, he left me a piece of soap which he had held onto for himself. This time nobody laughed. In the silence, something new had happened at the public laundry. One woman lent her basin to another, while another offered a pail of water to someone else who was farther off. A chain of love had begun!
(F.V. – Pakistan)
20 May 2004 | Non categorizzato
20 May 2004 | Non categorizzato
– The golden thread
– Rome in the 1940s during the bombings
– The discovery
– No one came her way in vain
– The departure
The golden thread
“Only in Paradise shall we read our complete story. There we shall see in its entirety the golden thread which, hopefully, will bring us to where we should arrive.” With these words, Renata once began narrating her life story, which she discovered to be wholly interwoven with the love of God.
She was born on May 30, 1930 in Aurelia, a small city of the Latium region. Later, she and her family moved to Rome.
The members of her family were not churchgoers. They were upright people, sincere and rich in human values. “I shall never stop thanking God,” Renata used to say, “for letting me experience what a true family is, and this is due most of all to the love my parents had for each other.”
Renata was 10 years old when World War II broke out. A sensitive person by nature, she was far from indifferent to what was happening around her, and some incisive moments remained particularly imprinted in her memory.
Rome in the 1940s during the bombings
On July 13, 1943, as she saw the bombs falling, she decided to give her life another direction. She wrote: “I realized that death could come anytime, and as if in a flash, I understood the vanity of games, money, of the future. It was a moment of grace… When I went back home, I felt different. I had decided to become a better person.”
All of a sudden, one of her schoolmates, a very bright girl, disappeared. She was Jewish. “Why are they killing the Jews? Are they not just like us?” she asked herself, insistently demanding an explanation from her father.
On September 8, 1943, a decisive date in Italian history, from the balcony of her house she saw a German soldier closely clinging to the wall as he slowly tried slip away unseen, like someone who was cringing with fear. Renata was filled with compassion for him and his people…
Images buried by time, yet they already tell us that love without measure – for the human person, for all human beings – would later be a dominant factor in her life. As she grew up, her need for a challenging faith life also grew, and the “question” of God made itself felt. She began frequenting the church, she joined a Marian association, and her favorite teachers were those she considered morally upright.
At 14 years of age, she felt some kind of “a first calling”: an interior push to offer her life so that her family would find the faith.
From age 15 to 19, in her thirst for the truth, she threw herself into her studies, desirous of penetrating the deepest truths as she searched for God. She enrolled in the Faculty of Chemistry, because she hoped to discover Him by penetrating the secrets of the universe. “Mathematics became my passion because of its logic. I was thrilled each time I discovered something new. I hoped to gain a kind of knowledge that would somehow allow me to embrace the universal. I searched for God wherever his reflection could be found. I did not yet know that only in the Creator who is Love could I discover and love all created life.”
The discovery
On May 8, 1949, a day which Renata would later describe as “extraordinary”, while somewhat hesitant about taking time away from her studies, she attended a meeting where Graziella De Luca, one of the first companions of Chiara Lubich, spoke of the re-discovery of God as Love, of a new evangelical lifestyle which had started in Trent a few years back, while the war was raging.
“I do not remember exactly what she said. I do remember that when I came out of that meeting, I knew I had found it. (…) I had the intuition that God is Love. That experience penetrated the innermost depths of my being. I lost the image of God as a harsh judge who punishes the bad and rewards the good, and I saw him as a God who is close to us.”
Convinced that she had a calling from God, she gave another decisive turn to her life. Soon afterwards, she met Chiara personally and immediately sensed a strong bond with her, a vital link as that of a child with her mother. She also felt a clear confirmation that she was called to give her life to God in the Focolare Movement. She said her yes to God forever.
A long experience of faithfulness to this ’yes’ began on August 15, 1950. She had just turned 20. Her young age, her capacity to love, her selfless giving and her peace did not go unnoticed. Renata spent 40 years at the service of the Focolare Movement, first at different focolare centers in Italy, then in Grenoble, France.
In 1967, at 37 years of age, Renata was asked to assume the position of co-director of the little town of the Movement at Loppiano, in particular of the women’s school of formation, where she spent 23 years. Here, her self-giving blossomed in full force. From her, over a thousand young women received wisdom and the inner strength necessary for their spiritual growth.
No one came her way in vain
Her life was a wonderful interweaving of love and suffering, as she strove to die to herself to let Jesus live in her. And indeed what others found in her presence was Jesus.
Because of her measureless love, no one came her way in vain, as numerous persons of all ages and backgrounds testify. Anyone who came in contact with her experienced her love. A love which made them feel God’s personal love.
The root of her deep love for every person lay in her unconditional love for Jesus on the cross who cried out when he felt abandoned by the Father, and in her looking up to Mary as her model who, before her dying Son, continued to believe, hope and love. This was the impelling force of her continual ascent, lived in the guidance of the Gospel words which became her life program, almost like a sketch of her spiritual features: “Mary kept all these things, meditating on them, in her heart” (Lk 2,19). From her intelligent and constant self-denial blossomed her constant thrust towards holiness of life, her growth in virtue, her faithful adherence to her founder’s charism, “May they all be one” (Jn 17,21).
The departure
When she was 59, she was diagnosed with an illness which soon proved to be extremely serious. She had only a few months to live. From that moment on, her life took off in its flight to God. Meanwhile she remained always happy, just as she had promised Jesus many years before.
Her sickbed became a pulpit. In Christ, there is no death, there is life, she often said, and she kept repeating it up to her last moment: “I want to bear witness that death is life.”
Renata never complained about her sufferings, and refused pain-killers. She wanted her head to be clear, in order to be ever ready to say her full yes to the God who had fascinated her since her youth and was now asking her for the gift of her life. In her final days, even when in pain, she radiated fullness of joy. “I am in a sort of abyss of love. I am too happy,” she said. With paradise in her heart, she went to meet her Spouse on February 27, 1990.
(Renata Borlone’s complete biography is entitled “Un silenzio che si fa vita” by G. Marchesi and A. Zirondoli – Città Nuova Publications)
