Having mentioned some of the challenges in the world today – the threats to peace and the search for and affirmation of identity – Maria Voce offered some reflections arising out of Chiara Lubich’s charismatic experience of dialogue. Her talk was given on 26^th January at the India International Centre in New Delhi If we seek to grasp the specific characteristics of the Movement’s dialogue, the first of them can be seen as its foundation. Chiara [Lubich] always taught us to look to God as the one Father of all and as a result, to see every man or woman we meet as his son or daughter, and therefore our brother or sister. Chiara herself said this, writing to her companions in 1947: “We must keep our gaze fixed on the one Father of so many children, and then consider all people as children of that one Father. Our thoughts and affections must go beyond every human limit and acquire the habit of aiming constantly towards this universal brotherhood in our one Father: God.”[i] I remember how happy Chiara was when she told us what our dear Professor Kala Acharya said after their meeting in India in 2001: “Each had grown up enclosed behind its own walls, admiring its own garden, without knowing that on the other side of these very high walls there are beautiful gardens to behold. Now is the time to break down the walls and discover each other’s garden.” If this is the foundation, the dialogical method that Chiara taught us cannot be other than love! It is a dialogue among brothers and sisters, therefore a dialogue among people, not between ideologies or thought systems. Dialogue must necessarily be supported and sustained by mercy, compassion and charity, summed up in the Golden Rule [do to others as you would have them do to you”. Love and mercy, once put at the basis of dialogue, not only enable us to see the people alongside us in a new light, but help us discover diversity, whatever it is, as a gift. Chiara said: “Whoever is close to me has been created as a gift for me and I have been created as a gift for those near me. On earth everything is in a relationship of love with everything else: each thing with each thing. But we need to be Love in order to find the golden thread of love between beings”[ii]. Nowadays, contacts are being multiplied, due to the great many possibilities offered by all the communications media. But these become short, ephemeral, lacking meaning, while at the same time relationships break down or diminish. Only when the I-you relationship includes a love which goes beyond purely natural dimensions, can contacts be transformed into relationships, and we can truly build networks of brotherhood. In this regard religion is called to help give meaning and a soul, as well as true and satisfying answers, to humankind which is so confused and lost and traumatised today. Over the years, we have seen the irreplaceable role religions have to lead their faithful to recognise one another reciprocally, to respect one another, to collaborate and become front runners in building a peaceful world, where justice and respect for the human person prevail. Chiara Lubich, founder of the Focolare Movement, lived and spread this adventure to all those who are inspired by her, an adventure in which any kind of love is not enough, but it is necessary rather to learn an art, as she herself said: the “art of loving”. … If we were all to live this “art”, we would be practising some of the indispensible principles for dialogue among religions. I’ll mention just a few: Unity in diversity. It is necessary for every religion to be welcomed in full respect for all that it considers sacred according to its own tradition. Proselytism and syncretism are incompatible with peace. Reciprocity in relationships In sharing a lived spirituality, each person is enriched not only without risk of compromising their own faith, but with the opportunity to deepen it. Equality in our shared human dignity This is the key to any type of harmonious relationship with a view to collaborating in building democratic societies founded on peace. Many of you know that the charism of Chiara Lubich, founder of the focolare Movement, can be summed up in a single word: unity. It is the specific vocation of the whole Movement, which is committing itself to live unity this year with greater intensity. We want to work and commit ourselves on all fronts to contribute to building a united world, to bring unity peace and reciprocity in every place. Faithfulness to our charism demands this, faithfulness to the first intuition that Chiara expressed in 1946: “In our hearts, one thing is clear: unity is what God wants from us. We live in order to be one with Him and among us and with everyone. This splendid vocation binds us to heaven and immerses us in a universal brotherhood. Nothing could be greater. For us, there could be no loftier Ideal.”^[iii]». New Delhi 20^th January 2016 [i] C. LUBICH, L’arte di amare, Città Nuova, Roma 2005, p. 29 [ii] C. LUBICH, Scritti Spirituali 1, “L’attrattiva del tempo moderno”, Città Nuova, Roma 1978, 140. ^[iii]». Cf. C. Lubich, Unity and Jesus Forsaken, New City New York 1985, p. 26.