{"id":329426,"date":"2017-08-26T00:10:48","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T22:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/maria-voce-dialogue-a-lifestyle-1\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:08:09","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:08:09","slug":"maria-voce-dialogue-a-lifestyle-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/maria-voce-dialogue-a-lifestyle-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Voce: Dialogue, A Lifestyle\/1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Emmaus“In today\u2019s globalised and interdependent world,<\/strong> dialogue seems to be the only way that humankind can survive.\u00a0 Either we fight one another to the point of mutual destruction, or we dialogue. In fact, only openness to others and dialogue create life and bring life, because every action is then founded on having recognised one another as brothers and sisters, as children of God.\u00a0 I feel the Holy Spirit is at work everywhere, pushing our Churches in this direction: to dialogue so as to re-establish the unity broken over the centuries, so that Christians can give a shared witness to the world according to Jesus\u2019 prayer: \u201cFather, that they may all be one, so that the world may believe\u201d (Cf Jn 17:21-22)” This was<\/strong> Focolare president<\/a>, Maria Voce\u2019s<\/a>, strong encouragement in her presentation. She began from her own personal ecumenical testimony up until her encounter with the spirituality of unity; \u201cIn the 1960\u2019s, through the experience of Chiara Lubich<\/a>, who had come into contact with members of the Brotherhood of the Common Life Germany, dialogue was opened to the Movement. The ecumenical community of Ottmaring was established in Germany, where Catholics and Evangelical Lutherans live together.\u201d During the Second Vatican Council,<\/strong> Chiara entered into contact with several Observers from other Churches. This gave rise to the so-called \u201cEcumenical Weeks\u201d<\/em> in which Christians from different Churches gathered yearly to share their experiences of living the Word with particular emphasis on Jesus\u2019s New Commandment: \u201cThis is my command: Love one another as I have loved you\u2019\u201d (Jn 13:34). At the<\/strong> historic encounter<\/a> between the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I and Chiara Lubich, on June 13, 1967, Maria Voce was head of the local Focolare community in Istanbul. \u201cIt was the first of 25 meetings that Chiara would have with that charismatic figure. Athenagoras announced that he was \u201cher disciple\u201d and wanted a focolare to be established in Constantinople.\u201d Other important ecumenical meetings would follow. <\/strong>\u201cChristians from the most varied Churches have wished to share the spirituality of unity<\/a> and many have embraced specific vocations of the Movement. In fact, Maria Voce recalled, <\/strong>\u201cyou don\u2019t dialogue with cultures, but with people. Or rather, we live in dialogue.\u201d She continues:<\/strong> \u201cGod is the foundation of dialogue, God who is Love and the Father of all of us and makes us is sons and daughters in the Son, all brothers and sisters in one big family. Right from the start, Chiara took Jesus\u2019s prayer that all be one <\/em>\u2013 which we can translate as \u2018making humankind into one family \u2013 as her motto in life. She invited millions of people from around the world to live it and make it happen.\u201d So, for the Focolare, \u201cdialogue is a lifestyle, a new culture that the Movement can and wants to offer to all the people of today.\u201d And it has to be \u201csustained and substantiated by mercy, compassion and love.\u201d Maria Voce cited Chiara Lubich who writes in 1970: <\/strong>\u201cIf we don\u2019t have love and charity, we\u2019ll never have the light of God and dialogue. Generic dialogue can become sterile, unfruitful…<\/a>\u201d[i]<\/a>. Chiara Lubich continues: \u201cThe [person] near me has been created as a gift given to me. On this earth everything is in loving relationship with everything…every thing with every thing. But you need to be Love in order to discover the golden thread among beings\u201d <\/a>[ii]<\/a>. Then the Focolare president described the so-called <\/strong>Art of Loving, <\/em>which is summarized in a few points: love everyone; love always; be the first to love; and make yourself one with your neighbor (see 1 Cor 9:22). (Part 1<\/strong>)   <\/a>[i]<\/a> C. LUBICH, Discorso ai focolarini,<\/em>1970. Testo non pubblicato cit. in Vera Ara\u00fajo, Il quinto dialogo del Movimento dei Focolari. Cosa \u00e8, cosa vuole, cosa fa<\/em>, 7 <\/a>[ii]<\/a> C. LUBICH, Scritti Spirituali 1, \u201cL\u2019attrattiva del tempo moderno\u201d<\/em>, Citt\u00e0 Nuova, Rome 1978, 140.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Invited last May by the Malta Diocesan Ecumenical Commission, some excerpts from part 1 of the presentation given by the Focolare president – Dialogue or dialogues? A lifestyle.<\/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-329426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329426","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=329426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}