{"id":292614,"date":"2011-07-30T21:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-07-30T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-charism-witness-and-outreach\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:28","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:28","slug":"living-the-charism-witness-and-outreach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-charism-witness-and-outreach\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the charism: Witness and outreach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>True happiness<\/strong>, that can be seen on people\u2019s faces, in their eyes, in their actions. It takes root in the depths of a person and unleashes buried energies that can no longer be still. It\u2019s a contagious and liberating joy that helps us to see the events of life correctly.  It was the same story for everyone in the early days of the Movement, everyone who drew close to the Movement followed this same track. It\u2019s what happened to <strong>Graziella De Luca<\/strong> in Massaia Hall, in Trent, where the newly-born Focolare community would meet. \u201cAs Chiara spoke, with the eyes of my soul I could see a very great light and I realized that this light was God, endless Love. The understanding was simultaneous to the light. Saying \u201cI realized\u201d implies a lapse of time. It was an immediate understanding. It was God, infinite Love, satisfying my soul, there was no emptiness left inside me. It was what I had always been searching for.\u201d  <strong>The experience of being loved by God and responding with love is the common plot of every story<\/strong> that is shared in environments where the Focolare is at work. Whether in small sharing groups or in the large public gatherings promoted by the Movement, it is a thrust toward universal brotherhood that begins in the place where you live in the present moment: in the family, at school, at work, even on a hospital bed. It\u2019s this natural personal and communitarian spreading that leads to a deep inculturating of the Gospel and of the charism of unity in every continent and country.  Stressing<strong> how our age is called to live unity<\/strong>, Chiara Lubich wrote: \u00ab(. . .) if it is lived, its reflections on society will quickly become obvious. And one of these will be mutual esteem between States, between peoples. This is somewhat unusual. We have become strongly accustomed to seeing the boundaries between peoples, fearing the other\u2019s power, unless to join powers for our own benefit. But we think it difficult to act \u2013 since popular morality has never reached this point \u2013 only out of love for another people. But when the life of the Mystical Body is so developed among individuals who actually love their neighbours \u2013 black or white, red or yellow \u2013 as themselves, it will be easy to transplant this law to between States. And we\u2019ll witness a new phenomenon, for love either finds or makes us similar, and nations will learn from what is better in the other and each people\u2019s virtues will be put into motion for the enrichment of all. Then there will truly be unity and variety and a new people will blossom in our world which, though child of this earth will be formed by heavenly laws, and be called \u201cPeople of God\u201d\u00bb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The joy of being loved by God cannot be hidden. It signifies the discovery of that golden thread that joins together all the events of one\u2019s life. A thrust toward universal brotherhood that begins in the place where you live in the present moment. Third reflection on the culture of unity.<\/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-292614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292614","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=292614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}