{"id":329178,"date":"2017-05-17T01:07:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T23:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-gospel-tried-and-true\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:07:17","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:07:17","slug":"living-the-gospel-tried-and-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-gospel-tried-and-true\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Gospel: Tried and True"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carmen_Catarino_b\"\u201cThere are questions in life that are truly difficult to answer:<\/strong> why does death, war, violence, separation or the gap between rich and poor exist? I would often talk with my university friends about these. I studied languages and literature at the University of Porto, in the north of Portugal \u2013 but no one seemed to be able to ease my concerns.<\/p>\n

One day someone mentioned the Gospel<\/strong> and proposed I try living it. I couldn\u2019t believe what I was hearing and objected. I know a lot of people who profess their Christianity, like I do. But after 2,000 years, things haven\u2019t changed much. Yet given that finally someone was actually listening to me, I vented my doubts and judgements and went on for a bit. When it was time to say goodbye, the person only had space to say \u2018Try it!\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Porto I live in an apartment with other girls.<\/strong> That day I was the only who stayed home because I was studying for an exam. A poor lady knocked at the door. My first reaction was to get rid of her quickly, but I was held back by that \u2018try it,\u2019 which would pop up and challenge me every once in a while. We didn\u2019t have much at home, but I found something to give the woman. \u201cA bit later my mother called. She was in town for her medical checkup, and wanted to see if I was around: she had a bag of fruit and meat for us. My heart was full of joy, not just because that God-given food would feed us for a whole week, but because this confirmed that the Gospel is true. That small thing that I had just given to that woman had just come back to me hundredfold, just like the promise, \u2018Give and you will be given.\u2019<\/p>\n

And so my new relationship with Jesus began,<\/strong> and got stronger every time that I tried to recognize him in each person I found myself next to. For my birthday I received a pair of fur gloves. I was hoping to get them for some time, since it gets icy at times here. Then I saw a woman shivering from the cold on the bus \u2013 what if I gave her my gloves? I did what I was thinking. This time I was jumping ahead a bit, since Jesus had already given me a hundredfold with that gift, so I could give my gloves to someone who needed them more than I did.<\/p>\n

I was going to class when a lady carrying a baby stopped me. She was crying.<\/strong> I didn\u2019t want to be late, I thought to myself, trying to get going. But inside I thought, \u2018How can I say I love a God I don\u2019t see and not love my neighbor that I do?\u2019 (Jn 1:20). I looked at my watch and resisted the urge to leave. I stopped and got interested in her situation: she told me she had just left her child in the hospital doing quite poorly. She and her husband were living in two squalid rooms with their eight children.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t do much right then and there,<\/strong> but I promised her I\u2019d visit. That same day I told other young people<\/a> and families<\/a> from Focolare<\/a> how I had gotten to know her. Each of them offered to help in whichever way they could. Together we provided the basic necessities (food, clothing, things for the house) and organized turns to help the children with their homework and play with them so their mother could be with their brother at the hospital.<\/p>\n

At the same time we tried to understand how to let the city know about the situation and request better living space. A couple of weeks went by, and finally the much-awaited town truck arrived to move them to public housing. The privilege of taking the youngest child to their new home fell to me, and I will never forget that bus trip. The little one slept peacefully in my arms, unaware of the changes I\u2019ve been seeing ever since I started living the Gospel.<\/p>\n

Now those big questions,<\/strong> which are still there, have found some answers. I know now that taking the first step not only involves other people giving of themselves, but can even influence society.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carmen, a Portuguese university student, begins to live the Gospel together with others. Their way of being is contagious, to the point of making an impact on institutions. And her existential questions find their answers, too.<\/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-329178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329178","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=329178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}