{"id":326936,"date":"2014-12-27T06:00:17","date_gmt":"2014-12-27T05:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/the-word-of-life-a-continual-evolution\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:59:01","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:59:01","slug":"the-word-of-life-a-continual-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/the-word-of-life-a-continual-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Word of Life \u2013 a continual evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/FabioCiardi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-116684 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/FabioCiardi.jpg\" alt=\"Padre_FabioCiardi\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a>Fr Fabio Ciardi of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate has been assigned the task of explaining the Word of Life 2015<\/strong>. In an interview with New City published in the 25 November edition, he himself explained the reason for this: \u201cIt may be because I worked with Chiara Lubich for years, especially in the field of spiritual theology. During the last period of her illness, I helped her to prepare the comments on the Word of Life. I hope that my long stay in the Abba School \u2013 the team that studies the \u201cfounder\u2019s writings\u201d on the charism of unity \u2013 has helped me to assimilate some of her wisdom and express it also in these new comments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Generations of Christians have lived the Word of God. What did Chiara Lubich introduce that was new?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;One usually stops to pray or meditate on the Word. Here, instead, one is asked to put it into practice, and transform it into life, as St James exhorted: \u201c\u2026 be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves\u201d (James 1.22). Authentic listening, with one\u2019s heart and not only with one\u2019s ears, means assimilating and internalizing the Word, so that it imbues one\u2019s whole Christian existence. Chiara furthermore focused on the Word of Life\u2019s social dimension: it should generate a Christian community, that is, its effects should have an impact and be shared among those who live it, so that members of the community may discover its potential.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is not so much we who live the Word, in reality, it is the Word that gives us life,\u201d he continued. \u201cThe destiny of the Word, Chiara said, is to be \u201cdevoured\u201d to generate Christ\u2019s presence among us.\u201d On recounting the experience at the start of the Movement: \u201cIn every instant of life, it was our nutriment. Exactly in the same way as the body breathes in order to live, our soul, in order to live, lived the Word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fr Ciardi stressed in the interview: \u201cFollowing the tradition set by Chiara, we are called to continue, precisely in the same way she did, and look to the Scriptures because it always has new answers to the most different situations.\u201d And added: \u201cHer comments are a precious treasure chest from which we will continue to draw inspiration, and will always be something we will always meditate on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He concluded by saying: \u201cI am aware that my comment will only be a small introduction to the Word of Life, and this, and not the comment is what remains in the heart of the reader, and will bear fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting from January 2015, the commentary of the phrase chosen each month from the Holy Scriptures will be done by Fr Fabio Ciardi.<\/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-326936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326936","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=326936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}