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Muneeb Sohail

Muneeb Sohail

Apr 17, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

The young Pakistani who was hit by a stray bullet during clashes in Karachi. “Go ahead, with the firm decision to live our great Ideal radically, to offer the society around you the love that shines in your hearts, and that Muneeb too would have wanted to gift to many. Certainly he will continue from heaven to live and work with you and with the whole Movement, so as to give rise day after day to a new, united, peaceful and supportive people”. With these words, the president Maria Voce encouraged the gen (youth of the Focolare) in Pakistan to follow the path of Muneeb Sohail. He died after being hit by a bullet during the heavy and violent clashes last January in Karachi, while he was returning home with another gen after an English lesson. Unfortunately, such clashes frequently occur in this southern metropolis of the country. Muneeb would have turned 20 next May. Right from an early age, he had begun to live and appreciate within his family the spirituality of unity. He had lost his father as a child. When he grew up, he took it upon himself to pass on the lifestyle he had discovered to youth as well as to younger children. He used to say that in order to “deepen and understand it better”, he went to live together with other gen during the spring of 2012. He made an indelible impression on them. Speaking of him they said: “For me he was an angel. He taught me to live with God. He was a true friend for us children”; “When I first met him, he immediately shared with me his experiences and his life, and he never missed an opportunity to love concretely”. On 7th October last year, a month after the large international event in Budapest, the Genfest was also held in Karachi despite the tense situation prevailing in the city. Muneeb was at the forefront during the preparations and in the programme, adhering to and spreading the ideal of a United World. On 17th January, while greeting his mother, Muneeb said: “I’m happy to give my life to Jesus”. And now the baton passes on to all the gen in the world, to all those who support the United World Project – UWP, and to all those who feel called to build bridges of peace and brotherhood everywhere.

Muneeb Sohail

Boston Marathon: “There’s more good than bad.”

Apr 17, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

Joanna: “I was so anxious
to know if my friends
were ok.”

Two days after the bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the city remains traumatized, partly paralyzed. The inhabitants, though shaken and shattered by the violence, want to stand up against the sense of fear: “We’re the ones to decide when to finish the marathon,” says Joanna, a 19 year-old college student in Boston. An event has been organized for Friday evening – to walk the last five miles of the marathon, which is where the police forced them to stop. The walk will be a sign of hope to show the world that there’s more good than bad in the city of Boston.

Joanna was cheering for several friends who were running in the marathon; she was standing about five miles away from the finish line. “All of a sudden, there was chaos; there were cops everywhere telling the people that the race was over.” Joanna was scared; nobody knew what happened, more-so because the cell phones were not working. There was talk that there had been two explosions, then she overheard two policemen speaking about a bomb attack. “I started to realize that my friends were right there in the middle of it all, and I was so anxious to know if they were ok”. Feeling helpless, Joanna took refuge in a cafe’ when one of her friends who had participated in the marathon walked in the door. “I bought him something to eat; I listened to him”. By doing these simple acts of love, Joanna realized that we can’t remain paralyzed with fear.

She found out that all her friends were fine, though one girl was very close to the bombings. “Unfortunately, a lot of families and other students cannot say the same,” says Joanna, “I’m praying for them.” Every evening, Joanna goes to Mass at 10 pm, and she invited all her friends to go with her. To her surprise, they all turned up. Mass there was normally attended by just a handful of people, but this time the Church was full.  They weren’t all Christian, but everybody felt the need to pray.

More than 12,000 people have already signed up for the Friday walk. Though the sad, strange atmosphere still lingers and continues to be a suffering, Joanna is sure of one thing: “We have to show the world that love is stronger. We have to believe more than ever before in a united world, and to do our little part.”

By Susanne Janssen (Living City Magazine, NY – USA)

Muneeb Sohail

We are responsible for one another

Apr 17, 2013 | Non categorizzato

We are offered a very simple criterion to judge whether we are right with God. We are right with God if we are right with humanity. We love the One in heaven if we love the other on earth. It could be said that our brothers and sisters have been given us to remind us, because of their likeness, of God.

I would not like to be spoken ill of, starved, kept homeless, workless, joyless… and so, as much as it is in my power, I should be active so that others may be honoured, fed, housed, employed and filled with consolation. Then we establish a kind of equality, which is, as I treat my brother and sister, so God treats me; as my brother or sister treats me, so God treats him or her.

It could be said that God is the first to practice the key precept of the Gospel: ‘Love you neighbour as yourself’, and he loves according to his nature as God, that is, infinitely. In fact this love urges him to the point of wanting us one with him, making us sharers in his nature. Did he not, for this very reason, make himself share our nature? And this puts us in our place so as to bestow on us a life together with him.

Individualism, with its closing down and swelling up of the ego in the shell of it is own personal exclusivity, suffocates the soul and, as it lacks the circulation of warmth, it is extinguished. And the soul suffers cold, dies frozen. It is enough, though, that one should love a brother or sister, because bringing warmth back to the spirit of the other, the soul warms up itself. A warning habitually made to us is the exhortation or the prohibition to mix with these or those people… Yet Jesus spoke even with the Samaritan woman, scandalizing his friends. And he wanted us to leave the 99 obedient sheep to seek out precisely the disobedient hundredth.

In coming close to a brother or sister, I come under a responsibility for that person’s eternal future and hence also for my own, given the solidarity that lies beneath our relationships. However many times our brother or sister sins, in a minor or major way, it is also our sin, a collapse created by our lack of love.

How often a criminal is an individual who has had a lack of love, so much so that the Crucified One, over the heads of the judges in session could utter: ‘Let anyone who is pure cast the first stone!’ How many brothers and sisters have been lost because they have been abandoned by us!

Igino Giordani, Il Fratello (The Brother), (Rome: Città Nuova, 2011; first published by Figlie della Chiesa, 1954).

Muneeb Sohail

Romania, Catholics and Orthodox in dialogue

Apr 16, 2013 | Focolare Worldwide

“We have a chance… we can speak on common themes of Christian theology.” With these words, Prof. Stanciu, Dean of Orthodox Theology at the University of Babes-Bolyai, recommended to aim at what unites rather than divides. “We all know that there’s need for love and there are no elements of disagreement when one speaks of love. Why not benefit from this opportunity?”

This second meeting was held on the 16th April at the department in an atmosphere of harmony of thought and life. It was entitled: “Whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him” (1Jn 4,16).

Orthodox and Catholics in turn presented academic papers and life experiences in an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual productiveness, as a fruit of the shared intention to live this moment in the light of Jesus’ words: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst” (Mt 18,20). “From the presentations it seemed to be that there was not just a dialogue of concepts among the speakers but also of hearts”, commented an Orthodox professor. “We not only spoke but also lived”.The friendly and fruitful relationship among some Catholics and Orthodox has in fact developed over several years.

Bishop Vasile

The Meeting began with the Metropolitan of Cluj Andrei’s greetings to the nearly seventy participants present, and ended with the speech of bishop Vasile, the Metropolitan’s deputy. He drew a parallel between the birth of the Focolare and Saint Basil’s activity or the message of Assisi “because in the difficult times the world was passing through, they knew how to bear an extraordinary witness to Christ, uniting forces with whom they helped society advance, mobilizing all the Church’s energies in order that it might mirror that what it ought to be and for which Christ founded it.” He also wished that these meetings of mutual enrichment, knowledge and fruitful exchange, would continue to be held on a regular basis.

In order to highlight the importance of the event, the Metropolis radio hosted a programme with various interviews.

Muneeb Sohail

Oreste Basso: a Focolarino with a sense of humour

Apr 15, 2013 | Non categorizzato

The funeral of Oreste Basso, focolarino and priest, was held at Rocca di Papa in the presence of hundreds of people as well as telecast live via internet. A huge number of testimonies, messages and thanks arrived from all over the world including the Vatican Secretary of State.

The homage to Oreste Basso during his funeral celebrations on the 15th April 2013 began with the words: “The Holy Father wishes to express his deep condolences to the entire Focolare Movement”. This message signed by the Secretary of State, cardinal Bertone, was read by Maria Voce. It also remembered “his generous service to the Church as a fervent priest who did his utmost to joyously proclaim the gospel and zealously witness to charity”.

Cardinal Bertone, who knew Oreste Basso personally in the course of discussions on some details of the Focolare Movement’s (Work of Mary) statutes, also expressed his own thoughts through a letter to the Focolare president. It read: “I was impressed with his keen listening to advice and his total willingness to collaborate. I experienced a sense of true fraternity with him, which left me with this feeling of friendship even later on when we no longer meet. I sensed the fineness of his soul as a fellow priest, in the Movement, without authoritarianism. It served me as an example.”

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Rylko, wrote: “I appreciated his clarity of ideas and his profoundness as witness to the gospel”. He considered him as “a faithful and an untiring collaborator of Chiara Lubich”; “His being a priest with a heart conformed to that of Jesus shone beyond his amiable trait, and he witnessed to the flowering that the Movement’s charism can bring about of the grace of the sacrament of priesthood”.

Marco Tecilla, the first focolarino and Oreste’s fellow companion for many years right till the final moments of his life, narrated his story. He said it was only a brief presentation of a life lived to the fullest.

Oreste Basso, a focolarino who was amongst the closest collaborators of Chiara Lubich since the 50s, passed away peacefully at the age of 91 between Saturday night and Sunday 14th April morning. He can be described as a “giant” of the Focolare. During his lifetime, he undertook various functions of great responsibility in governing the Movement, thereby becoming an eloquent witness to the charism of unity. Ordained a priest in 1981, he considered the ministry as a service and a calling to a greater love. He was elected Co-president of the Movement in 1996 and he exercised a fundamental role at the time of the foundress’ death (14th March 2008) and during the General Assembly that followed (July 2008). During this assembly, which was the first of its kind for the Focolare, the person who was to succeed Chiara Lubich as president was elected.

Born in Florence on the 1st January 1922, he met the Focolare in Milan in 1949, when he along with his friends (Piero Pasolini, Danilo Zanzucchi, Guglielmo Boselli, Giorgio Battisti), who later all became focolarini, heard Ginetta Caliari speak at the university canteen. He worked for a prestigious firm in Milan as engineer and inspector of locomotive engines. In those difficult years that followed World War II, the spirituality and life of the Movement based on the gospel were for him a discovery of a force, which with others would have given back peace, progress and hope to the world. In 1951 he opened the first male focolare in the main town of the Lombard region along with other companions. At the end of the 50s, Chiara Lubich called him to be at the Centre of the Movement in Castelli Romani, where he exercised his functions in a spirit of service. Everyone who met him experienced a deep sense of being family.

The Centre of the Focolare is receiving messages from all over the world expressing condolences and a deep gratitude for Oreste Basso’s tireless work in service of the Church, the Movement, and for his vividly evangelical life. Some spoke of “a sanctity with a sense of humour” bringing to mind this wonderful gift he possessed.

Oreste’s last words reveal his deep relationship with Mary that marked his whole life: “Beautiful, wonderful, amazing, Paradise. There’s Our Lady… we must pray, above all we must help the poor and the weakest who are the ones most in need of mercy”.

Marco Tecilla while concluding said: “We always asked Chiara for a sentence of the gospel to guide us during our lifetime, and Chiara proposed to Oreste the phrase: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1Cor 11,1). Now that he has completed his journey, we feel that Oreste recommends this sentence to each one of us”.