{"id":328802,"date":"2016-12-22T04:11:27","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T03:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/the-gen4-put-jesus-at-the-centre-of-christmas\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:05:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:05:57","slug":"the-gen4-put-jesus-at-the-centre-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/the-gen4-put-jesus-at-the-centre-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gen4 put Jesus at the centre of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sloggiato-IM-DSCN0004\"<\/a>They are the Gen4<\/a>, the children in the Focolare Movement,<\/a>\u00a0 explain their idea of Christmas not only as a colourful celebration, filled with enchanting imaginary characters created by persuasive businesses and a frenetic race to sell and buy gifts: We should put Jesus back into the centre of Christmas, it\u2019s his day,\u201d they explain. The Gen4 made the small figurines of the Holy Child with much patience and love and then gave them away to passersby. They report from New York City: \u201cWhile visiting the city with some friends, in the midst of the crowd, your small table drew my attention … Those words, \u201cThey\u2019ve Evicted Jesus\u201d<\/a> resounded inside me! I\u2019d like to transmit your message to others! This is has been my most beautiful Christmas, you\u2019ve filled my heart with warmth.\u201d <\/em> Maria Helena Benjamin and Pep Cannoves who are responsible for the Gen4 worldwide, recounted how these little ones are particularly sensitive to evangelical love. They learn to concretize it in their daily actions, real factual gestures of fraternity. They discover that when love is mutual it brings the presence of Jesus among them. Thus they come to know Him and create simple and direct relationship with Him. They manage to involve their friends at school, their families, their parents and their teachers with their disarming simplicity, and they enter into the heart of each one of them. \"gen<\/a>Pep Canoves recalled how <\/em>Chiara Lubich<\/a> deeply cherished these little ones, giving them a special place in her heart, going to visit them during their international congresses, sending messages to them, answering their questions. And it was to them that she extended the invitation to prevent Jesus from being banished from Christmas: \u201cLet Jesus be born in your midst through your mutual love; then it was always be Christmas! […] We can offer Jesus, Jesus in our midst to the whole world. We can take this love of ours, Jesus in the midst, our joy, into the streets, into the schools, to young and old … anywhere!\u201d <\/em> The Gen4 also have their Advent Wreath activity<\/a>. They fill the days before Christmas with many concrete acts of love that are appear simple, but in their smallness are quite revolutionary. The Gen4 are involved in many projects, especially for the most poor. \u201cDuring the year,\u201d Maria Helena Benjamin continues, \u201cwe receive lots of news from around the world about their projects for the marginalized, like the story of five year-old Sonia from Romania who became friends with a Roma girl that had just joined her class.\u201d <\/em> \u201cWe received news from Madagascar and from Indonesia. Also from Syria which these days is in so much trouble and at war… Pep recounts: \u201cFrom Aleppo they even sent us photos: in these conflict situations we carry on living with them, continuing with them to believe in love.\u201d<\/em> Once, while answering to a question from one of the Gen4 boys, Chiara had given them a special assignment: <\/strong><\/em>\u201cDo you know what real happiness is? It\u2019s the happiness you have when you love. Try it! Whenever you love, you\u2019re happy. If you love all the time, you\u2019ll be happy all the time. What should you do in the world? Give happiness to people, teach everyone to love.\u201d <\/em> And they really do teach us, with their purity and simplicity, how to put evangelica love into practice, the secret to happiness. Patrizia Mazzola<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people around the world pause along crowded city streets, drawn by small group of smiling children who are giving away small statues of the Baby Jesus.<\/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":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328802","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\/328802","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=328802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}