![\"WelwynGardenCity\"](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/WelwynGardenCity.jpg\")
Welwyn Garden City<\/p><\/div> \u201cIf Mary, or perhaps better said, Marian theology<\/a> and devotion have at times constituted an obstacle to the re-unification of Christianity, in the present climate of dialogue and desire for mutual understanding, along with a renewed attention to the biblical discourse on Mary, there is emerging in some Christian circles a realization that Mary, along with being a fellow disciple, walking together with us in the journey of faith, is a mother and as such can be seen as having a special role in conserving the unity of the Church: \u201cMother of the unity of Christians.\u201d Judith Povilus<\/strong>, an American from Chicago, is a mathematician and a theologian and is quick to point out that mathematics and theology have a lot in common. She is currently Professor of Logic and Foundations in Mathematics at the University Institute of Sophia, Loppiano, Italy. Central to her talk was Chiara Lubich<\/a>\u2019s experience of Mary during a period of particular illumination over the summer of 1949. At a gathering in Welwyn Garden City \u2013 the \u201cgarden-city\u201d built in the 1920\u2019s around 30 miles from London \u2013 she addressed fourteen bishops, six Anglicans, six Roman Catholics, a Lutheran and a Coptic Orthodox, as well as leaders representing the United Reformed Church, a Methodist theologian, the Convenor of Action of Churches Together in Scotland and the General Secretary of Churches Together in England. At the annual meeting of leaders from various churches, held at the end of January in Welwyn Garden City, a small Focolare town near to London, the theme for the day was \u201cMary, a model for living God\u2019s Word.\u201d The keynote address was given by the theologian Judith Povilus of the Focolare Movement.<\/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":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-305928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305928","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=305928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Church](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Church-leaders-6.jpg\")
<\/strong>Povilus explained how, during that period, \u201ca new and vast horizon opened up an unimaginable vision of Mary<\/strong>\u201d for the founder of the Focolare Movement. She was discovered \u201calmost as if for the first time\u201d as a human being, \u201cone of us\u201d, but at the same time \u201cimbued with the Word of God.\u201d \u201cMary revealed herself as the Mother of God, Theotokos, Mary was not just, as we had thought, the young girl of Nazareth, the most beautiful creature in the world, whose love surpasses the love of all the mothers in the world. She was the Mother of God in a dimension that was completely new to us. To explain it, Chiara used an image, that of the sky enveloping the sun.\u201d \u201cIt was a new intuition of the significance of the event that took place at the foot of the cross, of the sword that must have passed through Mary\u2019s heart, being asked to renounce her maternity towards her divine son to take as a substitute child John. And yet Jesus in his death was giving his life to all humankind, making us all God\u2019s children. As Mary\u2019s role in the Annunciation was to say \u201cyes\u201d to something beyond herself that God was bringing about, here again, on Golgotha, what was asked of her was, as theologians have said, a \u201csecond yes.\u201d There is a wealth of implications for our own lives that Chiara derived from this understanding of Mary Desolate. First and foremost is that of recognising Mary to be a model that can be imitated: \u201cby loving one another we generate the presence of Jesus in our midst. Like Mary, we can offer Christ to the world spiritually.\u201d ![\"Church](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Church-leaders-4.jpg\")
<\/strong>Another point that comes to new light in Chiara\u2019s mystical experience of 1949 has to do with Mary\u2019s place in the Church. \u201cWe know from the Acts of the Apostles that she was present at Pentecost which is often marked out as the birth of the Church. Chiara, describing her intuition of Mary\u2019s place in the Church, from that early moment of the descent of the Spirit, used the metaphor of her being a heart: If Christ is the head of his mystical body, the Church, Mary is at its heart. Mary plays an essential role in helping the Church to respond fully to God\u2019s project for it, which is to be a presence of Christ.\u201d Great interest was shown in this Spirituality of Communion of Chiara Lubich\u2019s, which aims \u201cto increase the typical contribution of vitality, beauty and holiness that the Church, following Mary\u2019s example, is called to bring to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"