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Mary in the experience of the Focolare Movement

Dec 8, 2012

As the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December), we share what Chiara Lubich said in a talk to a group of bishops and cardinals gathered at Castel Gandolfo, Rome, on 16 February 1987.

VIDEO IN ITALIAN: Chiara Lubich’s talk on “Mary in the Experience of the Focolare Movement”.

«Your Eminences and Your Excellencies, the fundamental point of our spirituality that I have been invited to present this year is Mary.

I will, however, not set out to speak of Mary as perhaps one should when speaking of the world’s most exalted being, since only the Church itself is capable of doing such a vast and demanding task throughout the centuries. Instead, in the spirit of our Movement, I intend to briefly discuss what we have understood about her, all the richness to be found in her as it has emerged in our experience.

The subject of my talk, therefore, is “Mary in the Experience of the Focolare Movement”.

Mary has been a part of our lives ever since the beginnings of the Focolare Movement, even before it officially existed. My earliest awareness of what was about to be born reaches way back to 1939 in Loreto, Italy, there in the house of Our Lady. There I realized that the Lord was creating a new lifestyle—we called this the “fourth way”—for what would be a new spiritual family in the Church: the focolare community. I had the intuition that a company of virgins would follow this path.

So yes, Mary has been with us, ever since Loreto, silently waiting for all those who would follow her in her Movement.

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