{"id":329004,"date":"2017-03-20T03:10:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T02:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/is-there-meaning-in-suffering\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:06:41","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:06:41","slug":"is-there-meaning-in-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/is-there-meaning-in-suffering\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there meaning in suffering?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Agnese Fermo is a mathematics professor from Milan, Italy; she is married and has two children. <\/strong>She is also a member of the International Commission of the Centre for Dialogue with people of the Focolare<\/a> that have no religious affiliation<\/a>. We asked her to tell about her experience of the past several years engaged in this open dialogue and to present the upcoming conference titled \u201cIs there meaning in suffering?\u201d \u201cI attended the international gatherings on this dialogue <\/strong>at Castel Gandolfo and other gatherings where we went deeper into the spirituality of the Movement. Right from the start we perceived the importance \u2013 for each one of us \u2013 of this communitarian experience that Chiara Lubich<\/a> was offering to us. Dialogue, besides being an expression of the gift of diversity, was also a tool that enriched our thinking. I\u2019ve belonged to the \u201cdialogue group\u201d in Milan for about 15 years. <\/strong>The need and desire that each of us had for dialogue made us feel that we were necessarily part of the human experience of a whole sector of humankind, and carriers of part of the truth through the relationships that we were building. But this experience couldn\u2019t remain enclosed in a group: it was the trace of a path for each one of us to follow, besides for the Movement itself. We felt like we had to step out of structured groups, especially after Chiara left us. In Milan this has taken place, but with the many people with whom we\u2019ve shared this experience \u2013 both members and non-members of the Movement \u2013 the relationship has remained deep and real. Regarding the upcoming conference titled <\/strong>Is there meaning in suffering<\/a>? I believe I can say that we haven\u2019t fixed any particular goal. I think this is because of the need we feel to give space to dialogue, not so much in the sense of comparing thoughts on the theme itself (there\u2019s a lot of literature on this topic! And it\u2019s often avoided as a topic). Rather, we\u2019d like to create a space in which we can welcome people that have such a different religious sense towards life, a space capable of giving enough breathing room to this other portion of humanity that we represent, we who have different religious convictions. But there is also the desire to offer a communitarian experience, <\/strong>even if only for three days, to live within a dimension of mutual freedom beyond affiliation, in which each one of us can offer their our experience and innermost feelings on such a delicate topic as suffering. Personally, I wouldn\u2019t know what the meaning of suffering is. <\/strong>I haven\u2019t found an answer that has been able to express the mystery contained in that question. As I wonder about it whenever I visit the women\u2019s prison, made me discover the value of my presence in that place as a time of sharing made up of mere moments, of the solitude that marks the pain of those women that I encounter. From them I\u2019ve receive precious gifts and discovered the value of the embrace that that sharing contains which, although brief in time, brings to life our being [gifts] for each other. Knowing how to \u2018stay inside the wound\u2019 <\/strong>\u2013 which for me, means to say, being called to accept whatever life has in store for me in that moment \u2013 there\u2019s submission in front of what you can\u2019t avoid, [submission] to the suffering that we\u2019re all asked to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the title of the conference being held on March 24-26 at Castel Gandolfo, Italy, promoted by the Focolare’s Centre for Dialogue with people of no religious affiliation.<\/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-329004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329004","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=329004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}