{"id":292660,"date":"2011-08-21T03:00:31","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-charism-harmony-and-environment\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:43:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:43:44","slug":"living-the-charism-harmony-and-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-charism-harmony-and-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Charism: Harmony and Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Marilen Holzhauser<\/a>, <\/strong>one of the first focolarine explained: \u201cFor us every object we have has to have a reason or purpose\u201d.\u00a0 From the start Chiara Lubich<\/a> and the first followers in her adventure have had their own style in living, dressing and home furnishing which was simple and moderate. They understood that beauty revealed in the mystery of a flower that consumes only what it needs and in this way its real beauty. Beauty becomes the splendour of the Truth. The harmony reflected in simplicity makes us discover \u2018the beauty which will save the world\u2019 and that world will save beauty. In the Letter to Diogneto, referring to the first Christians we read:<\/strong> \u2018Living in the Greek and Barbarian cities, as we each have, and adapting ourselves in each place to the customs of dressing,\u00a0 eating and so on, we give witness to an admirable and undoubtedly paradoxical way of living.\u2019

\"\"<\/a>

Dina Figueiredo, "Eucharist" - St Clare Hospital, Trent, 2004<\/p><\/div> All this is reflected in the lives of those who adhere to the \u2018spirit of unity\u2019 today. Even in the buildings and their environs belonging to the Movement there is that simple beauty which helps relationships to be built and restores the integrity of the person: such as in the \u2018Mariapolis Centres\u2019, where congresses and formation courses are held, and the Focolare little towns of which there are 22 in the world. There are many expressions within the Movement of beauty and harmony, such as the products from the Centro Ave and Centro Azur workshops in Loppiano, and the expositions from the \u201cArts\u201d group: works of art by painters, musicians, pianists, dancers\u2026 each an expression of \u00a0the ongoing newness of God, source of beauty and harmony. Chiara Lubich wrote:<\/strong> \u2018The true artist is a great person. Everyone says it though few are art critics, but everyone admires and is fascinated by \u2018beauty\u2019. The artist in a certain way is like the Creator. True artists possess their skill almost unconsciously and use colours, musical notes or stone as easily as we use our legs to walk. Their point of concentration is in the soul, where they contemplate an impression, an idea they wish to express outside of themselves. Hence, within the infinite limits of their human smallness before God, and thus within the infinite difference between two \u2018created\u2019 things (if I may speak like that), artists are in some sense those who recreate, create anew: and a true \u2018recreation\u2019 for some could be provided by the artistic masterpieces produced by others. Unfortunately, for lack of true artists, people find recreation for the most part through empty fantasies in the cinema, drama, shows where art has little place. \u2018With his or her masterpieces, playthings in comparison to nature, God\u2019s masterpiece, the true artist gives us in some way a sense of who God is and makes us discern in nature the Trinitarian traces of the Creator: matter, the law that informs it (what we might call a gospel of nature), life (what we might call a result of the first two. The totality then is something that continuing to \u2018live\u2019 presents an image of the unity of God, of the God of the living. The works of great artists do not die and that is a measure of their greatness, because the artist\u2019s idea, expressed in some way perfectly on canvas or in stone, composes something that lives\u2019. The full text can be found in: CHIARA LUBICH, Essential Writings<\/strong>, New City London 200, p.306<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This aspect of the spirituality of unity expresses beauty, the splendour of God, reflected in architecture and the furnishing of a house, in the style of dress. Harmony reflected in simplicity helps us discover \u2018the beauty which will save the world\u2019.<\/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":[896],"class_list":["post-292660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato","tag-focolare-towns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292660","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=292660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}