![\"20150203-a\"](\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/20150203-a.jpg\")
<\/a>The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the <\/strong>Catholic Church\u2019s year dedicated to the Consecrated Life.<\/a> Two happy coincidences in which the vocation of German Evangelical Lutheran focolarina<\/a>, Heike Vesper<\/strong>, becomes even more meaningful.<\/p>\nHeike recounts: \u201cI was sixteen years old when my mentally handicapped twin brother <\/strong>died. That very sorrowful event gave birth to my desire for a life with true meaning. But I was certanily never thinking of a life of consecration to God\u2026 That monsastic lifestyle had practically disappeard in the Reformed Church. For Luther, every baptised Christian already had within them the call to follow Jesus in a total way and, essentially, this was lived out in work and in family. Luther didn\u2019t see the consecrated state as a higher state, since all are called to a perfection that becomes attainable only through God\u2019s love, through his mercy. Consecration to God was a totally foreign concept for me, therefore; foreign also because of the atheistic environment that surrounded me in East Germany.<\/p>\n A few months later, in the spring of 1977, <\/strong>I got acquainted with young people<\/a> from the Focolare<\/a>, a movement that had begun in the Catholic Church and was open to dialogue with the faithful of other Churches<\/a>, religions <\/a>and people of non-religious convictions<\/a>. I felt strongly drawn by their evangelical choice and even became invovled in their many foramtive and social activities that were offered to us, or that we ourselves produced. Our animators were a bit older than us, the men and women focolarini. They had made a total choice of God and lived in community. Their way of life greatly fascinated me, but I saw it to be too high a calling for me, and unreachable.<\/p>\n At one point <\/strong>a misunderstanding arose between the Focolare and my pastor because of a personal decision one of us had made. It was nothing serious but enough to make me realize that it only takes a small thing to reawaken ancient prejudices and reopen wounds that had seemed to be on the mend. It was a very strong experience in which I perceived God to be calling me to offer my life as an example, and that I could do this through the focolare. I felt both happiness and shock in front of this call. I didn\u2019t feel up to to facing up to the diversity between our churches for 24 hours a day. For two years I tried to to silence God\u2019s invitation, but every once in a while it would forcefully resurface.<\/p>\n Once, when i Chiara Lubich <\/a>was visiting Germany<\/a>, a group of Evangelical Lutherans posed questions to her. Her answers loosened the knots within me. Her words made me realise that entering the focolare would mean living the Gospel with the help of sisters who were animated by the same radical intention: trying to live Catholics and Evangelical Lutherans together; that meant choosing as our model Jesus in the moment of his abandonment by the Father when crying out a \u2018why\u2019 which, left unanswered for him, has recomposed unity between God and men, between the peoples, between the different Churches, between us.<\/p>\n Then and there I didn\u2019t think <\/strong>that all of this meant consecrating myself to God, but only responding to God\u2019s call to witness with my life that unity is possible. That passion for unity marked me in heart and soul, and gave me wings even in moments of darkness and trial.<\/p>\n When I found myself living in the focolare in Leipzig, <\/strong>I often attended the Lord\u2019s Supper at my brothers and sisters of the Christusbruderschaft<\/em><\/a>. One day, one of them asked me how we could stay faithful to our churches and live such an intense spirituality with the Catholics. That\u2019s when I understood the great value of Chiara\u2019s great mandate: <\/strong>Jesus forsaken<\/a>. By loving him, who became division for us, not only do we find the strength to no longer feel divided within ourselves, but to be unity for the others. In Him we discover the importance of living with Jesus spiritually present in our midst, drawn by our mutual love. This presence is not linked to any sacrament, but to the life of the Word.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Consecrated life today. A young Lutheran\u2019s vocation blossoms within a Catholic environment. A consecration to God showing that unity among Christians is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"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-327052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327052","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\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327052\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}