“I was 17 years old,” says Lebanese focolarina Nadine, “when the war broke out in Lebanon: schools closed, roads mined, bombings day and night, snipers, the dead and wounded. . . In the midst of the tragedies that had begun to enrage our country, me and some other young people that had been fascinated by the spirituality of Chiara Lubich heard those words from the early days of the Focolare echoing again: “Everything crumbles, only God remains.” Like Chiara and the first focolarine, we could have been dead from one moment to the next, and like them we wanted to present ourselves before God ‘having loved to the end’. We had learned that loving means being attentive to the needs of the people around us. It wasn’t so easy under such circumstances, but when we were able to do it our hearts were cleared of fear and we hardly noticed the storm of hatred and violence that surrounded us. Therefore we were able to help many people carry on. We often wrote to Chiara, to tell her how we were living and every time she wrote back personally” “I still remember the acts of violence and kidnappings when the religious discrimination began. My own father was kidnapped twice. Chiara spoke to us of the first Christians and their courage in giving witness to the faith even in the face of Roman persecution. One of our friends, Fouad, was able to attend a Gen convention Italy. During his return trip to Lebanon, while he was travelling on the road from the airport, Fouad was stopped by some armed men. It was a Muslim region and his documents showed that he was a Maronite Christian. “Yes, I’m Christian,” Fouad admitted. “I’m on my way home.” “You’re coming with us,” they told him. A long interrogation followed and the final sentence: “Do you understand what awaits you?” The boy understood that it was all over for him. One of the militiamen took him and led him towards a bridge where many other Christians had been killed. While they walked, he tried to calm himself and wondered what God might want of him in that moment. ‘Love this neighbour,’ came to his mind. So he tried to make that militiaman feel all his love: ‘It must be hard,’ Fouad said to him, ‘it must be hard to do this job, to make war.’ When they came within eyeshot of the bridge the militiaman stopped, looked at him and exclaimed: ‘Let’s go back’. I recall how moved Chiara was by the witness of this young man, so moved that she wanted this episode to be shared for the edification of the whole Movement.” “At every ceasefire we’d gather together to visit the focolare. . . Our parents were fearful for us, but we couldn’t stop ourselves. Forging unity with one another was the life force that sent us forth  to love everyone. It was precisely during those years of war that many of us felt the call to consecrate our lives to God. Chiara supported us with her example, with her words. With love, she kept track of the families that were being sorely tried by the restricitons and tiredness. . . Several had lost their jobs, their houses. Others had been living in air-raid shelters for years and wanted to leave the country so that their children could have a future, several of whom were wounded. . . For each one of these families, Chiara opened the homes of the Movement to provide them a place to go and recover or to settle down permanently. She also launched a fundraising campaign to cover the costs of the journey. Since the airport of Beirut had been closed for years, she sent us focolarine to open a focolare in Cyprus – the only way out by sea – to assist those who were leaving the country.” “Chiara’s concrete love was always accompanied by her powerful spiritual encouragements. After years of living life to the extreme we often felt weak, tired and helpless. So Chiara reminded us of that ‘little cloud’ a new sign with which God had made himself present to the Jewish people in the desert when they were suffering through an absurd war, and she suggested that we go ahead in living the Word in a totally new way. And from that ‘little cloud’,” she went on to tell us, “not only will you draw many others into living the Gospel, but you’ll draw out the strength you need to continue loving. . .all the way to the end.”