… To understand what we should do, let us look at how the Spirit urged the entire Work of Mary to act, to make all become one.

In our Movement, we have welcomed persons of other religions and non-believers. We love these persons as we love ourselves. We joyfully accept the commitments that they spontaneously take as integral parts of our large family. We share with them all the spiritual and material patrimony of the Opera. We are the Work of Mary because they too are present. Without their presence, we would lose our identity.

It must be like this in our families as well. We not only with human love, but also with supernatural love must welcome whoever is a little distant from this or from any other Christian ideal, whoever has other ideas or another faith.

We must treasure and appreciate whatever they give to the family, however small this may be. We must know how to highlight the good ideas they have. We should make them participate, as much as possible, in the spiritual and material riches of the family.

In short, we should do all we can to love this son or daughter or these sons and daughters, so that although they have not yet received the light of faith, they return this love in some way, and the family becomes an expression of the Work of Mary.

Moreover, to make the family a small cell of the Work of Mary or a small church, which is synonymous, means to imitate the family of Nazareth, that family which lived with Jesus in the midst in the most concrete and divine way. In order to compose this masterpiece, the members of the family of Nazareth loved one another in a supernatural way, which means out of love for God and not for them.

(Source: Chiara Lubich to the Congress on Family and Education:  One and only teacher – Castel Gandolfo, May 2,1987)