\u00a0<\/p>\n
One day a friend of mine came to see me to talk about a sorrowful situation that had struck his family: his parents were on the verge of a divorce because of his father\u2019s unfaithfulness. My friend suffered because he saw that the love between his parents had grown cold, but what he could not bear was the thought that somebody else was going to decide which son would go with which parent. This meant that he was going to be separated from his only brother, to whom he was very attached.
I was deeply affected at hearing this news and I had a hard time overcoming the sadness I felt. What was more, my friend did not practice any particular religious faith and I feared I would only make things worse if I mentioned God. I felt sure I would be misunderstood; nevertheless I also felt that, as a Christian, it was my duty to try to be an expression of God\u2019s love for my friend in some way.
This realisation helped me to see beyond the painful circumstances and recognise that this was a countenance of Jesus crucified and forsaken who had taken upon himself every human suffering. I offered this thought to my friend saying, \u201cIn your place, I \u2013 as a Christian \u2013 would give my suffering to God; I would put my problem in his hands so his will be fulfilled for the greater good. I would trust that whatever he has reserved for my future is the best thing for me.\u201d
His answer was: \u201cI may be an atheist, but you are crazy!\u201d
Far from getting discouraged, I insisted: \u201cCome on, it\u2019s worth trying. Simply say to Jesus, \u2018I put this suffering of mine in your hands;\u2019 then be at peace and wait for things to develop.\u201d
As he was leaving, I assured him that he could call me anytime, whenever he needed help. I could see that he was still struggling.
The next day, to my great joy, he phoned me saying that out of desperation, he was \u201cforced\u201d to follow my advice and put his suffering in God\u2019s hands. I could tell that he felt a little better. After another couple of days, he called again saying that things had settled down; for the moment there was no talk of divorce and he would not be separated from his brother. His mother had forgiven his father and they were reconciled.<\/p>\n
S.D. (Italy) \u2013 from Fioretti di Chiara e dei Focolari Testimonies<\/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-290662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290662","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=290662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
St. Paul Publications<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"