{"id":290538,"date":"2010-07-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/i-discovered-heaven\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:36:02","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:36:02","slug":"i-discovered-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/i-discovered-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"I discovered Heaven!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cToday I discovered Heaven: God is Love, He loves us immensely!\u201d<\/strong> This is what the 780 Gen 4 <\/a>sang \u2013 children of the Focolare Movement \u2013 gathered at Castelgandolfo for their congress. They came mostly from Italy and other European countries, but in the first row were also girls from Burundi and Ruanda, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Valeria from Bolivia: \u201cHonestly, this congress is the best thing that ever happened to me<\/strong>. What I liked the most was learning from Jesus how to love, and now I love more than before, I don\u2019t know how to thank God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travelling to Rome would have been unthinkable for her had it not been for a variety of money-raisers by Gen4 from around the world. They raised more than 5,000 euros, which enabled her and others from outside Europe to attend the event.<\/p>\n

Like the Gen4 boys<\/a>, the girls also examined the God\u2019s Love for his Chosen People<\/strong>, all the way to Jesus, who came on earth to bring us the Father\u2019s love. A lively game lasting all afternoon helped them to discover Jesus\u2019 presence not only in Heaven, but among us, when we love each other, in our neighbor, in his Word, and in the Eucharist.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cThe answers you gave were all interesting and we felt them coming from your heart<\/strong>,\u201d they wrote to Maria Voce<\/a> following her meeting with them, in which she answered some of their rather demanding questions. They also wrote: \u201cThank you for answering so wisely to our questions! I finally know how to fulfill my dream: To become a saint you need to love everyone because Jesus in everyone! (. . .) \u201cThe congress taught me many things about Jesus, it changed my heart. I won\u2019t be the same when I return home. I\u2019m not the same. Whenever there\u2019s an opportunity to help, I\u2019ll be the first to step forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a feast with dancing, songs, and skits as they met with the first companions of Chiara<\/strong>. It was a mutual gift, a moment of such intense and profound simplicity that it was difficult to say who enjoyed it more.<\/p>\n

Having experienced the love of God, the Gen4 girls realized that they are truly sisters beyond their countries of origin, languages and culture. \u201cI was happy being with the other Gen4,\u201d writes Laurette from Ruanda. \u201cWe loved each other and when I reach Ruanda I\u2019ll love everyone.\u201d <\/p>\n

Everywhere in the world \u2013 from California to Hong Kong <\/strong>\u2013 groups of Gen4 got together to follow some moments of the congress via internet. From Fontem, Cameroon, they write: \u201cThe video link-up was so beautiful! We saw that it doesn\u2019t matter where we are: God is always with us and in Heaven at the same time. . . . We\u2019re happy to give to our friends the most beautiful treasure we have: God! With love, we can transform our world that is so filled with hatred. This will Jesus please Jesus and we\u2019ll meet him in Paradise. Thank you!\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arriving from many European countries and from Burundi, Ruanda, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Lebanon, 780 Gen4 girls gathered at Castelgandolfo for their congress. They truly discovered and experienced that \u201cGod loves us immensely\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}