{"id":327942,"date":"2016-01-27T14:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T13:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/word-of-life-february-2016\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:02:50","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:02:50","slug":"word-of-life-february-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/word-of-life-february-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of Life February 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

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  This Word of Life is an invitation to believe in God\u2019s loving action even where his presence is not felt.\u00a0It is a proclamation of hope and challenge that we too might we become instruments of consolation. Who hasn\u2019t seen a crying child throw itself into its mother\u2019s arms? Whatever the matter is,\u00a0important or not, the mother dries its tears, covers it with tenderness and, bit by bit, it starts to\u00a0smile again. Her presence and loving kindness are enough. God behaves like this with us, and\u00a0compares himself to a mother. These words are how God speaks to his people on their return from exile in Babylon. They\u00a0had seen their homes and the Temple demolished and had been deported to a foreign land where\u00a0they felt lost and grief-stricken; now, returning to their homeland, the people had to rebuild from\u00a0the rubble of destruction. The tragedy Israel had lived through is repeated by many war-torn peoples, victims of\u00a0terrorist atrocities or inhuman exploitation. Houses and streets ripped apart, sites symbolic of a\u00a0cultural identity razed to the ground, goods pillaged, places of worship destroyed. How many people\u00a0kidnapped, millions forced to flee, thousands dying in deserts or at sea! It looks like an apocalypse. This Word of Life is an invitation to believe in God\u2019s loving action also where his presence is\u00a0not felt. It is a proclamation of hope. He is beside the one who suffers persecution, injustice, exile. <\/p>\n

He is with us, with our family, with our people. He knows our personal pain and that of the whole\u00a0human race. He became one of us, to the point of dying on a cross. This is why he knows how to understand us and comfort us. Just like a mother who takes her child onto her lap and comforts it. We need to open our eyes and hearts to \u2018see him\u2019. To the extent that we experience the\u00a0tenderness of his love, we will be able to transmit it to those who live in pain and under trial, so that\u00a0we become instruments of consolation. Paul, too, suggests it to the Corinthians: \u2018console those who\u00a0are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God\u2019 (2 Cor. 1:4). <\/p>\n

This was also a deeply personal and specific experience of Chiara Lubich: \u2018Lord, give me all\u00a0who are lonely … I have felt in my heart the passion that fills your heart for all of the forsakenness in\u00a0which the whole of the world is drifting. I love everyone who is sick and alone. Who consoles their\u00a0weeping? Who mourns their slow death? Who presses to their own heart, the heart in despair? My\u00a0God, let me be in this world the tangible sacrament of your love; let me be your arms that press to\u00a0themselves and consume in love all the loneliness of the world.\u2019\u00a01<\/p>\n

Edited by Fabio Ciardi<\/p>\n

This Word of Life was chosen by an ecumenical group in Germany. We are living it together with\u00a0brothers and sisters from many different Churches. Our hope is that our lives throughout the year\u00a0may be accompanied by the promise from God that it contains.<\/em> 1\u00a0Chiara Lubich,\u00a0Meditations\u00a0(London : New City, 2005), 24 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018As a mother comforts her child,\u00a0so I will comfort you.\u2019 (Is 66:13)<\/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":[1,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato","category-word-of"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327942","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=327942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}