{"id":306426,"date":"2018-08-23T23:10:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T21:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-gospel-a-mothers-heart\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:37:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:37:56","slug":"living-the-gospel-a-mothers-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-gospel-a-mothers-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Gospel: a mother\u2019s heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drugs in school<\/strong> I had to take care of a student who had been using drugs. The usual punishment for this is exclusion from lessons for a week. I didn\u2019t want this student to spend the time in bad company and so I arranged for him to work with a community and to come to school and study on his own in the library. In school, I stayed with him the whole time and helped him with the work his group were doing in class so that he would not fall behind. I found this very demanding but it helped me realise that loving your neighbour means practical action. M.M. \u2013 Spain<\/a> A new way of life at home<\/strong> We are part of a team that runs courses for engaged couples. One day, just before leaving for a meeting, we had a row with our son. My wife and I still left the house and began to make our way to our appointment but we didn\u2019t feel at peace about the situation. After a few kilometres, we realised that we had nothing to offer the engaged couples. I stopped the car and rang our son saying we were sorry for the way we had behaved. We continued the journey but then my wife pointed out that I had spoken in a very curt and dismissive way on the telephone and then we too began to argue. After a few more kilometres, we realised that we were not in a position to talk about mutual love and so we called one of the other couples and said that we were going home. As soon as we set foot inside the door, we explained what we had done to our son who was amazed that we had turned back.\u00a0 This was a lesson that has helped us establish a different way of life at home. K.E. \u2013 Czech Republic<\/a> The school trip<\/strong> During a school journey, some of my friends threw away food from our lunches without even opening the packaging. I was really shocked. The following day, I made plans in advance:\u00a0 at lunch time, I collected all the food that my friends hadn\u2019t even touched and put it in a bag. Then I took it to a centre for the homeless that was nearby. N. \u2013 Italy<\/a> A new move<\/strong> After thirty-five years of service, the bishop asked me to move to a new parish. At first, I felt very confused and prayed a lot. Then, I realised that I shouldn\u2019t see things only from my point of view and said that I was ready to make this move. Straightaway, all my fears about my new role and worries about my health vanished. I saw clearly that I wasn\u2019t doing anyone a favour; it was the opposite, I was receiving a grace. This was the solid basis upon which I began life in the new parish \u2013 it was very different from when I started my ministry as a young priest many years before. E.B. \u2013 Slovenia<\/a> A little act of love<\/strong> I heard that a colleague had been admitted to hospital. I was following a course in another town but, for a few months, every weekend when I came home I used to go to visit him.\u00a0 His parents also used to come from quite a distance to see him. I thought that they might like to go for a pizza with me after one of their visits and so I invited them out. I listened to all their worries and walked back with them to the place they were staying. They said they had not had such an enjoyable evening since their son had gone into hospital. A. \u2013 Italy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God\u2019s faithful and everlasting love shows us how we can welcome others.<\/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-306426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306426","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=306426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}