We offer a brief writing on this topic<\/strong> taken from a talk given on October 24, 1978 and addressed to the delegates of the Focolare Movement:<\/p>\n\u00abThe Lord used a special technique to teach us how to love our neighbour, remaining in the world without being of the world. He immediately made us understand that it was possible for us to love our neighbour without falling into sentimentalism or other errors, because it was he himself loving in us, with his charity. \u2026<\/p>\n
Charity is a sharing in the divine agape<\/em> (love). \u2026<\/p>\nSt. John tells us that God loved us, but he doesn\u2019t then conclude \u2013 as would have been more logical \u2013 that if God has loved us, we ought to love him in return. Instead he says: \u201cBeloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another\u201d (1 Jn 4:11).<\/p>\n
It is only because charity is a participation in God\u2019s love (agape<\/em>), that we are able to go beyond natural limits and love our enemies and give our lives for our fellow human beings.<\/p>\nThis is why Christian love rightly belongs to the new era, and the new commandment is radically new, and introduces something absolutely new into human history and human ethics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis love,\u201d writes Augustine, \u201cmakes us new, so that we are new persons, heirs of the New Covenant, singers of a new song (cf. Io. <\/em>Evang. tract. 65, 1; PL 34-35)<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n_______________________________________<\/p>\n
Taken<\/strong> from the Italian book: Chiara Lubich, L\u2019amore reciproco<\/em> (Mutual love), edited by Florence Gillet, Editrice Citt\u00e0 Nuova, Roma 2013, pp. 38-39.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rediscovering the evangelical commandment of mutual love in the 1940s was a milestone in the life of the nascent Focolare Movement. To live it was constantly a new challenge.<\/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-342384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342384","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=342384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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