{"id":306474,"date":"2018-09-11T23:10:20","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T21:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/i-am-free-to-love\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:38:05","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:38:05","slug":"i-am-free-to-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/i-am-free-to-love\/","title":{"rendered":"I am free to love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"“The year was 1975. I was at high school in Sicily. <\/strong>Learning about Cicero\u2019s denunciation of Cataline in ancient Rome sparked a lively discussion among me and my schoolmates about the hot topic of freedom. Our class teacher wisely channeled our increasingly heated argument into a formal debate between the supporters of Cicero, expressed by one of my companions, and those of Cataline, for whom I was the spokesperson. My passionate defense of freedom became so ardent that they all applauded me. And from that day, the idea of freedom has characterized my whole life<\/strong>. But what is freedom? And am I free?” Francesco is Italian; he is 59 and is married to Paola. The progressive nature of his illness means he can no longer move his body or speak. But he can move his eyes.<\/strong> Last year he started a blog, at the suggestion of a journalist who contacted him for a brief interview. At first Francesco used his thumbs and later began using an eye-gaze device, which may be slow but allows him to communicate the strength and dynamism he is finding within himself even as his body is becoming less active. His blog is entitled: \u201cSLA: io Sono Libero d\u2019Amare\u201d. SLA = Sclerosi Laterale Amiotrofica translates as “ALS. I am Free to Love\u201d. “I\u2019m no author. But a voice within suggests what words to put down. I\u2019ve found I\u2019m watching a film of my life that I never knew of before. This is my strength and I\u2019ve been able to start communicating in this way. I receive messages that are deeply moving. I\u2019ve simply expressed some of my thoughts and I receive back so much love. People communicate their emotions, sufferings, joys and most of all, life!” \"\"<\/a><\/strong>“In my life, I\u2019ve always tried every day to find time for a personal and intimate moment with God<\/strong>. It\u2019s not always been possible, but every time I passed a church, I\u2019d say \u201cCiao\u201d to Jesus present in the tabernacle. Often I would actually go inside the church just to dedicate a little bit of my time to God. I\u2019d try to silence myself so that He could speak to me. And before leaving I\u2019d entrust the difficulties of the day to Him, sometimes joking ‘Jesus, this one is yours because I certainly can\u2019t solve it on my own’. And I have to say, He\u2019s never let me down.” “How often, no matter how full our life may be, do we detect a feeling of emptiness or apathy inside us which covers our life with a veil of unhappiness?” “One man brought me a glimmer of light: Augustine of Hippo. Reading his Confessions prepared me for an event in August 1976 which changed my life: my meeting with God who is Love<\/a> and who loves me immensely<\/strong>. How can I correspond to this infinite love? It was the Gospel, which I\u2019d read but not actually lived, that gave me the answer: how can you love the God you do not see, if you don\u2019t love the neighbour you do see? This was my Copernican revolution. I found myself among a group of friends living this experience: we would read the Gospel together and try to put it into practice<\/strong>. My heart practically exploded with joy, and I began to appreciate that even suffering can be life!” \"\"<\/a><\/strong>“I can still remember the smell of the sea, even if my illness has left me with no sense of smell, (…) I can feel the sensation of water on my skin, even if I\u2019ve not been able to swim for the past three years.<\/strong> But this is not nostalgia. I\u2019m not suffering over what I used to be or what I\u2019ve become. I close my eyes and my body is floating. It\u2019s not a dream or fantasy; it\u2019s my Lord who continues to say to me ‘Do not fear’.” “This disease \u2013 ALS \u2013 was written in my heart from when I was born, but I didn\u2019t know it until a few years ago. My tax code actually starts with ALS, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s just coincidence! I don\u2019t believe in fate, but I trust in one who has chosen me as her son and has never abandoned me. Mary, the mother of Jesus is my safety net, like the one a trapeze artist has (…).”<\/strong> “It is an experience that keeps on repeating itself, every time I\u2019m assailed by doubt and I feel my hope sinking. Mary is always there, so I can\u2019t be afraid! (…) Mary<\/a> has marked out the way for me, and Chiara Lubich<\/a> has taught me every day to point my interior compass on Jesus Forsaken<\/a> on the cross. He is the secret to finding the Truth.” “Living the present moment perfectly brings us into God eternally. That\u2019s what Chiara has taught me. And in the present moment I can cry out loud, maybe not with my voice but with my heart: I am FREE TO LOVE!” (In Italian = \u201cSONO LIBERO di AMARE!\u201d\u00a0 SLA – Sclerosi Laterale Amiotrofica). Extracts from Francesco\u2019s blog<\/a> (in Italian)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 13th June 2016 Francesco was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a form of Motor Neurone Disease which attacks the neurons controlling voluntary muscles, progressively affecting his movement – but not, according to Francesco, his freedom to love.<\/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-306474","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\/306474","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=306474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}