Focolare Movement

Giordani: summer 1949

Jul 15, 2017

16 July 1949: a fundamental date for the Focolare. Chiara Lubich and Igino Giordani made a “pact of unity” that would be the basis of the movement’s birth. That day marked the start of Chiara’s mystical experience known as “Paradise 1949.” This is Giordani’s poetic description.

«con-Chiara-5aWhile playing games in the shade of the fir trees beneath the rocks, Chiara continued to speak to her companions about God, the Virgin, and supernatural life, the nature of which was supranature.  She co-inhabited always with the Lord, an effect of charity which was edified, atom upon atom.. And so when they would go to the countryside, those alpine forests were transformed into cathedrals,  treetops seemed like the heights of holy cities, and flowers and grass were coloured by the presence of angels and saints: all were enlivened in God. The material barriers were removed. This was also a form of reconciliation between the sacred and the profane, due to which, once the ugly, the evil, and the deformed were eliminated, everywhere the values of the life of nature  were recovered in all its aspects. Her words, like her works seemed to be an assiduous clearance of mortal debris to reestablish communication. In itself it was  simply a merging of nature and the supernatural, of matter with the spirit, and of the earth with heaven. It was a duplication of the values of life on earth, to open a gateway to Paradise. It was the summer of 1949. That enjoyable holiday was enhanced by the inheritance of a cottage in Tonadico di Primiero from Lia Brunet. In July, Chiara Lubich, Foco (Igino Giordani) and the focolarine had gone there to bask in the sunlight and take some personal rest, after the works achieved all year round for the poor. The cottage consisted of an upper barn which they entered through a winding ladder from the ground floor, and was composed of a room and small kitchen. They set up some cot beds and a cupboard that was hauled up by a winch, and the place acted as their dorm. Foco went to the Orsinger Hotel and had the chance to speak before the hall of Capuchins. In their Church he felt the desire to bind himself “tightly” with a vow of obedience, which Chiara felt, however, did not conform to Focolare customs. Instead she proposed  making a pact of untiy, in the sense that at the next Eucharistic communion, on the nothingness of their souls, Jesus in her would seal the pact with Jesus in him. That morning at mass, upon receiving communion the two of them made Jesus seal the pact with Jesus. It was then that she started to experience a series of enlightening insights».   Igino Giordani, History of the Focolare Movement, an unedited piece.

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to Newsletter

Thought of the day

Related post

Award presented to a “Relationship Engineer”

Award presented to a “Relationship Engineer”

On 16th July, the anniversary of the Pact of Unity between Chiara Lubich and Igino Giordani, Tonadico (Italy) awarded the international prize “Tonadico-City of the Pact” for the first time. The inaugural award went to, Gerhard Pross, one of the initiators of the ecumenical network “Together for Europe”.

One step from Giving Up

One step from Giving Up

A chance encounter in hospital rekindles the concrete sense of helping one another, restores hope to someone who was ready to give up and gives life to the memory of a desire: to be builders of a better world.

Ave Cerquetti: Beauty as a way to God

Ave Cerquetti: Beauty as a way to God

From shaping clay as a child to the desire to see sculpture and sacred art as a language capable of bringing God to the people of our time, Ave Cerquetti, a longstanding member of the Focolare family who died at the age of 95, left a legacy that combines art, spirituality and above all communion.