The Volunteers of God

“We have just been to Vienna where we met groups of refugees from Hungary.  The world has been deeply touched by the tragedy of that nation and rushed to its aid.  The refugees have been given many things: food, clothing, a friendly hand and above all the taste of freedom.

One of us spoke to a sixteen-year-old youth.  He still had his pistol on him.  He had been wounded in a fight and boasted of having killed sixteen opponents but when we showed a deeper interest in him tears came to his eyes and he said he wanted to go back and see his mother. We asked him if he knew God.  His answer was a clear and definite no.  He had heard his mother and father blaspheme God, he said.  That was how he had been brought up, so he had been surprised to hear his mother call on God when the trouble broke out in Hungary.  But all the same God meant nothing to him.  That’s the way it was with him and that’s the way it was with many, many others we met.

Seeing how the name of God had been annihilated in these people, we understood better why the Holy Father had cried out “God, God, God!”. “God will help you.  God will be your strength. God!  God!  God!  Let this glorious name, the source of all law, justice and freedom, ring out in our parliaments, in our streets and squares, in our homes and places of work …” (Radio message of Pope Pius XII on 10.11.1956).

So a society has succeeded in eradicating the name of God, the reality of God, His providence and His love from the hearts of men.  Then there must be another society able to put Him back in the place that is His.  For there is a God, there is!  Not just because we believe so but, I would say, because we can see Him.  Who made this beautiful earth?  Who placed the stars in the sky?  Who gave us a soul that senses and distinguishes between good and bad?  Who created us?

God wants to save Him in humanity and to save humanity for Him!

People are needed who will follow Jesus the way He wants to be followed, denying themselves and taking up their cross; people who believe that this weapon, the cross, is more powerful than the most powerful atomic bomb because the cross opens up a breach in souls; by it God enters the hearts of His children and makes them into His athletes.

We must build up a body of men and women of all ages, races, conditions, bound together by the strongest bond that exists: that mutual love bequeathed us as His testament by a God dying in His human nature, the highest ideal and an invincible force.  That mutual love that welds Christians into a divine unity which is invulnerable to the attacks of men or the devil and which alone is capable of opposing that other unity founded on personal and group interests, worldly motives and hate.

Mutual love, which means practical deeds, making our brothers the object of all our love out of our love for God. What are needed then are real disciples of Jesus in the world, not just in convents. Disciples who follow Him voluntarily, driven only by an enlightened love of Him. People who are ready for anything. An army of volunteers, because love is voluntary.

It means building a new society, one renovated by the Good News forever old and forever new, in which justice and truth shine forth with love. A society to surpass in beauty and structure every society conjured up in men’s dreams by other men, God’s gift to His children who recognise and adore Him as their Father!

A society that bears one name only: God! Freedom and bread were not enough for that young Hungarian refugee.  He needed his mother too (and this is the return to nature’s purest gift – the first step back to the Creator).  In the same way people all over the world, who believe in the triumph of ideas that seem good on the surface but are undermined by atheism beneath, need to be given God. Only God can fill the void hollowed out over so many years.”

Chiara Lubich

From an article published in Città Nuova