Everything passes, even life. Only the Gospel will remain forever, since it is not subject to the passage of time. Today, 14 March 2022, 14 years after Chiara Lubich’s death, we publish this text in which she hands over the Gospel to those who follow her on the path of unity. It is an invitation to live the Word in all our daily activities.    A thought constantly comes to mind: “Leave only the Gospel to those who follow you. If you do so, the Ideal of unity will remain. It is obvious that in the time in which you and the others are living, there have been useful concepts, phrases, and slogans that have made the Gospel relevant and applicable in modern times, but these thoughts, these sayings, these almost ‘words of life’, will pass away. When unity among Christians is almost achieved, ecumenism will no longer be a distant goal. When a certain degree of unity has been reached in the world, there will no longer be talk of a global person as an ideal to be pursued. When the predominantly atheistic world is permeated by the reality of God, atheism will no longer be so prominent. The spirituality of unity itself, which is now a medicine for our times, once having achieved its purpose, it will be placed alongside all the others arising from the various charisms given by God to the Church down the centuries. What remains and will always remain is the Gospel, which does not suffer the passage of time: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt 24, 35). This means all of Jesus’ words. I feel that we must certainly adapt ourselves with all our might to the times in which we live, following the particular inspirations that God gives us to bring about and cultivate the kingdom of God in ourselves and in those entrusted to us. But we must do all this knowing that life is transitory, knowing that there is eternal Life announced by Jesus in his Gospel. We must put in second place in our hearts all ideas and ways of doing things that are useful but not purely evangelical, and constantly renew our faith in the Gospel, which does not pass away.

Chiara Lubich

(Chiara Lubich, in La Parola di Dio, [The Word of God] Città Nuova 2011, pp. 112-113)