Chiara Lubich: God alone is all!

In October 1946, Chiara Lubich wrote to Sister Josefina and Sister Fidente who were trying to put into practice the spirit of the emerging Movement. This excerpt from the letter captures the enthusiasm and ardour of the early days and spurs us, even today, to put God first in our lives.

“God of my soul, my Love, my All, You speak to these two little hearts.

Speak with Your Divine Voice.

Tell them that You alone are Everything and that

YOU LIVE IN THEM!

Tell them not to search for you outside of themselves, but to always

find you there, in their heart! You know already, Jesus, how much I love them and always want

to be with them. …

GOD ALONE IS EVERYTHING!

And this Truth must be lived out through a burning love for Poverty!

When is it that we love You, Lord?

When we find You

When is it that we can be sure of having found You?

When we trust only in You and madly turn our gaze on high and seek only

You: God–Our-Father!

And now that your Brides are stripped of everything and are convinced that you alone suffice: now speak to their hearts telling them that

you also accept (as I also gratefully and joyfully accept) the burning

love that I bear them and the heartfelt desire to make of them what my

heart would like to be for You!

…

My little sisters,

How much good your life could accomplish, similar as it is to the

life of Jesus when He lived and worked and loved in the little house

of Nazareth!

But don’t you realize that a soul who lives in this way, living life as a

couple (Jesus and the soul), does as much as if she were out preaching

to the entire universe?

Now that you are stripped of your misery, which you will daily give

over to God, you are free to love

LOVE!

He wants to live with you. And there’s nothing He desires more

than this life as a couple.

Chiara Lubich

(Chiara Lubich, in Early Letters: At the origins of a new spirituality New City Press, Hyde Park, New York 2012 pp. 69-70)