{"id":328020,"date":"2016-02-26T10:49:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-26T09:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/claretta-dal-ri-and-the-adventure-of-unity\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:03:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:03:09","slug":"claretta-dal-ri-and-the-adventure-of-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/claretta-dal-ri-and-the-adventure-of-unity\/","title":{"rendered":"Claretta Dal R\u00ec and the adventure of unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Claretta_dal_Ri-04\"<\/a>\u201cDecember 1948<\/strong>. This evening, the whole cr\u00e8me of Catholic society in Rovereto was gathered in my father\u2019s study: the presidents of the Catholic Youth, the Saint Vincent Society, the Daughters of Mary, the Franciscan Third Order and naturally the pastor. Plus, eighteen year-old me was there as the president of Student Youth. The speaker was Valeria Ronchetti<\/a>. There was something in her that took me by surprise. She talked about God, but in a way that I\u2019ve never heard any other person talk \u2013 until then. It wasn\u2019t anything external as with a scholar; Valeria possessed God! She expressed something that urged her from the heart and that overflowed with force . . . I was in a state of shock. It was a war story . . . They were experiences of what she, with her friends, had found in the Gospel, how they had discovered God who is Love. It was a torrent of living water that completely engulfed me. In the candlelight \u2013 since the electricity had gone out \u2013 a quite serious-looking, elderly gentleman asked her in a rather ironic tone: \u2018But aren\u2019t you afraid, Miss, to excite the youth in this way? And if it\u2019s just a flash in the pan?\u2019 Valeria was a really enthusiastic type of person, all fire in her words and in her answers. She jumped to her feet and responded with energy: \u2018What? Aren\u2019t you afraid of exciting the youth over sport, music, paintings, mountains \u2013 all those beautiful things that pass away? And you\u2019re afraid of exciting them over God who is the only thing that remains?\u2019 \"Claretta_dal_Ri-02\"<\/a>Total silence: I was completely taken. The mountains, music, paintings . . . Hadn\u2019t I myself tried all of that? I had tried every beautiful and wholesome thing you could ask for, it had completely occupied me for years even, but none of it had ever really filled me up. I had always been left unsatisfied in my search. Well, then, here was the point . . . this is what I sought: it was God who was the answer to that recent period of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, of the confusion among my friends, of activism, of boredom . . . Everyone left my father\u2019s study smiling, exchanging cheerful goodbyes with Valeria. But I didn\u2019t really think we had actually understood what she was telling us. I asked myself: if she could have what she had just talked about \u2013 and it was clear that she did \u2013 why can\u2019t I have it too? And at this point I recall a saying attributed to Saint Augustine: \u2018If this one and that one, then why not me?\u2019 I extended my hand to Valeria and told her: \u2018I want to do what you have done, help me!\u2019 We said goodbye and agreed to meet the next day. And the adventure began!\u201d Source: Citt\u00e0 Nuova online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of Chiara Lubich\u2019s early followers passed away on February 25, 2016. A few years ago, an article appeared on the Citt\u00e0 Nuova website which contains the personal account of her encounter with the ideal of unity. Her funeral will be held at 10:30 am, on Saturday, February 27, at the Mariapolis Centre of Castel Gandolfo, Italy.<\/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-328020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328020","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=328020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}