{"id":328752,"date":"2016-11-25T03:10:02","date_gmt":"2016-11-25T02:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/50th-anniversary-of-the-gen-movement-at-castel-gandolfo-italy\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:05:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:05:47","slug":"50th-anniversary-of-the-gen-movement-at-castel-gandolfo-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/50th-anniversary-of-the-gen-movement-at-castel-gandolfo-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"50th Anniversary of the Gen Movement at Castel Gandolfo, Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2congr<\/a>The words of the young Iraqi, Aziiz, were welcomed by a long applause and attentive gazes<\/strong> of more than a thousand Gen attending their annual congress. They listened closely as he recounted the drama that he and his family had lived through in Qaraqosh, a town on the Nineveh Plain, when the militiamen of the self-styled Islamic state arrived. \u201cBefore telling you my story,\u201d <\/strong>Aziiz began, \u201cI\u2019d like to ask you a question. Have you ever thought that you could one day lose everything? Your family home with all of your most cherished memories, your friends, dreams and your people? That\u2019s what happened to me….\u201d The suffering of the escape from his hometown with his family towards Iraqi Kurdistan was still visible in his eyes: \u201cI wondered why I had to go through this Calvary, and that\u2019s where the experience began of finding myself living with Jesus Forsaken<\/a>. I felt like I was in an action film, where I couldn\u2019t differentiate between what was real and what was imaginary: masses of people walking on foot in search of a way to escape, tears, cries…. I was stiffened by the pain, but I said to myself that perhaps I could smile back at the people next to me. With us there was a group from the Yazidi religion, who were in need of even more help, because ISIS had inflicted torture on them. I put my fears aside in order to be close to them and to offer them support.\u201d Aziiz and his family are now taking refuge in France. <\/strong>It was a difficult decision, given the thousands of challenges they would have to face, but he never felt abandoned by God\u2019s love \u201cwhose invisible hand continues to wipe away our tears and lightens our sufferings.\u201d We young people possess an enormous potential for changing the world, beginning with the small things: either we live to change something and make the world better; or our life is meaningless.\u201d <\/a>\"gen2\"<\/a>Chiara Lubich<\/a>\u2019s words spoken to the <\/strong>Gen2<\/a> in 1967<\/strong> sounded timely as well as prophetic: \u201cRumours and news of wars sadden the world horizon. Perhaps in the Middle or Far East some of our Gen (…) were or are in danger of dying. Our very goal \u2013 to help peace in the world \u2013 seems painfully compromised. What will we do? Not be discouraged (…) The bombs fall and destroy houses and kill people: let love spread even more quickly to build a new society and a new world.\u201d \u201cFifty years have passed, but we\u2019re still that same generation that never stops, said Gloria from Uganda, <\/strong>\u201cthat still wants to live the ideal that Chiara has given to us.\u201d Dami\u00e1n from Argentina <\/strong>explains: \u201cThis is a moment of celebration for us. We revisited some important moments of the Gen Movement from past years, trying to revive each word that Chiara said to us.\u201d Testimonies were given by Gen from several countries, <\/strong>dialogue and reflection with music and song to celebrate the fifty years of intense life of the Focolare\u2019s second generation. In a video message, Focolare president<\/strong>, Maria Voce<\/a>, invited the young people to follow the plan of love that God has for each one of them, following the example of Jesus who chose the Cross \u2013 love to the very end \u2013 to be generous and willing to work for a world of peace. During an enabling and very open discussion, Focolare co-president, Jes\u00f9s Mor\u00e1n<\/a>, encouraged the Gen to live a life of love for others, opting for the least, the people that society rejects in an ever more divided world. The more than a thousand young people departed with Chiara Lubich\u2019s prophetic mandate: <\/strong>\u201cIt will be the second generation that will make the cry of Jesus Forsaken echo to the ends of the earth … And in that cry the entire world will breathe again.\u201d <\/em> Patrizia Mazzola<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than a thousand Gen from the second generation of the Focolare meet at Castel Gandolfo, Italy. They are seriously committed to peace and the unity of the human family.<\/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_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328752","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\/328752","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=328752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}