Oct 19, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
Representatives of the Brazilian Methodist Church and the Baptist Church of the Philippines will also attend. The head moderator will be Cardinal Francis X. Kriengsak Kovithavanij, Archbishop of Bangkok. The theme chosen for this year: “Jesus crucified and abandoned as the basis of a spirituality of communion,” in an atmosphere of fraternal communion and reconciliation, in the context of the 500th anniversary celebration of the Reform. The meeting’s agenda will include theological and spiritual discourses in the light of the spirituality of the Focolare, liturgical celebrations of the various Christian traditions and many sessions of exchange and communion among the participants. Moreover, they will visit the Dachau concentration camp and some important sites of the Reform. An important moment will be the ecumenical rite in the Church of St. Anne in Augsburg on 26 October. The celebration will focus on the memorial of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” with which the Catholic Church and the Worldwide Lutheran Federation had put an end to mutual judgements and anathemas. On Thursday, 27 October, the bishops will be received by the Mayor of Augsburg, Dr. Kurt Gribl.
Sep 28, 2016 | Senza categoria
“The “Smiling Pope,” John Paul I, rose to the chair of St. Peter on 26 August, 20 days after Pope Paul VI’s death. Though his brief pontificate lasted only a month, there was time enough for us to receive a smile from him, along with words of benediction.» This is what Chiara Lubich wrote in the book, “The Cry” (1), where she highlighted the uninterrupted rapport established with the successors of Peter, and also with Albino Luciani in the brief stretch of his pontificate. “The new pope has the gift of making himself immediately understood by all – even by children – wrote Guglielmo Boselli (2), then the director of Città Nuova. His language, like that of Jesus, is normal and straight to the point. It is this wisdom coming from the heart that gives the capacity to immediately create a spontaneous relationship: the wonderful gift of one who came from a long pastoral experience, was always in touch with the people, and did not need any difficult speeches typical of professionals of the trade. He is a man of extensive humanistic and theological culture, who has overcome the phase of those still studying Christianity in a laboratory: his words are immediately and exactly what they should be. He just has to open his mouth and there is already communication, real communication.” He was elected after a brief conclave of only 26 hours, and as they said, “an apostolate of the Council” was elected. In fact, at the audience with the cardinals on 30 August, when reference was made to the Lumen gentium 22, he broached one of the key points of the Vatican II ecclesiology. “The Bishops – he said, speaking off the cuff – have to also think of the universal Church… behind you I see your bishops, and the Conferences which in the atmosphere established by the Council, have to give strong support to the Pope… So this is true, but today it is vital that the world sees us united… Have pity for this poor new Pope, who really didn’t expect to rise to this role. Try to help him and let us try together to give the world a show of unity, even sacrificing some things at times since we have so much to lose if the world does not see us firmly united.” On 28 September, after only 33 days, came the bewildering news of his death. “John Paul I – again wrote Guglielmo Boselli (3) – maybe had the task of bringing down the last external evidences of every type of “distance” between the pope, the bishop of Rome, “president of charity” and the people who still could resist: this was by carrying out dialogue as a man among many in a church, in which all is credible, and authentic. Pope Luciani did his share, which he perhaps shouldn’t have and couldn’t have done… The clear continuity with Pope Francis is very evident.”
- Chiara Lubich, The Cry, New City ed. 2001
- Città Nuova, 17/1978, p. 8
- 19/1978, p. 9
Sep 26, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
John: “At the beginning of the school year, our son came home after his first day in year 11 and said to my wife that he was not returning to school – he said that he couldn’t stand people! He disappeared silently into his room for over a year, coming out only when he thought we were asleep. He withdrew from me entirely and only talked to his mother sporadically. I felt completely abandoned and lost, but Claire’s love managed to help me accept the rejection. What helped me was the phrase of the Gospel: ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another’ (Jn 13:34). One night he made a desperate decision to commit suicide. As we called for an ambulance, he climbed out a window and ran away. The next hours were a blur: the ambulance arrived but he was gone; police support came too. He eventually came back and he was rushed to hospital for treatment. A week in hospital intensive care for someone stricken with panic and terror of people and spaces is a pretty scary thing. Night after night, and day after day, we slept in shifts so one of us would be there whenever he woke up. That ‘night shift’ was the only concrete love I could offer him; I could at least be a presence if needed – something I know that he later understood. When he came home, we thought that we could keep up that 24 hour suicide watch, but pretty soon had to accept that this was humanly impossible. We prayed together in a new way seeking God’s will. Together we offered and entrusted to God our son – His son – accepting completely that we could not prevent him trying to commit suicide again. I well remember the fear, pain, emptiness, anguish and hopelessness of this time, and then, in my acceptance of this terrible role, the feeling of real union with God and with Claire. In the year that followed, we managed to get him to reluctantly agree to enter a day therapy program. We hung in with our background support role and I think that God did the rest from the mundane of our ever-extending health insurance cover, to the miraculous – of an incredible group of fractured kids who supported and lived for each other.” Claire: “One of the girls in the group, with her multiple challenges, not the least of which was drug addiction, became part of our family life, and, as time went on, she and our son grew closer together. She hung in with him and helped draw him through his anxious times. And he stood by her rugged attempts at drug withdrawal. But it wasn’t easy.” John: “Their relationship suffered a setback due to our son’s stand on drugs, his personal abhorrence of them. But slowly, over the period after release from her months of involuntary hospitalisation, they tried again and worked at rebuilding their relationship on a firmer ‘no drugs’ foundation. Eventually they decided to marry.” Claire: “But, as everyone knows, wedding preparation is a pretty stressful experience, and our soon-to-be daughter-in-law was still working in an environment where drug taking was a common way to cope with life. So the inevitable happened. Our son rang me a month before the wedding and said bleakly, ‘Mum, she’s on ice again*. What should I do?’ My heart fell through the floor, and my brain went blank. Then I said, ‘I can’t tell you what to do – only the two of you have the grace for that. But I can tell you that, if you look into your heart and you see that you have loved wisely to the very end, then that tells you that it’s time for your part to finish. But if you look into your heart and you see that there is even the smallest bit more of loving wisely that you can give, then you keep trying.’ There was a long, long pause. Then a big, sad sigh. And he said, ‘I guess I can love a bit more’. Eventually they found a place that allowed her to have an extended live-in rehabilitation program with its associated outpatient support systems. It’s now 14 hard months down the track, and she is still clean – a tribute to her continuing efforts in working with her counsellors, fuelled by her incredible love for her husband – our son – in his ‘no drugs’ stand, as well as to his extraordinary love for her through all their struggles. We’re so proud of both of them. It has been a long road for all of us. And I guess one that we’ll all travel or the rest of our lives. But what I have seen shining through all the tears is that God’s love for John and me gave us the wisdom and strength to love our son in the way he needed to the end, and that maybe our love showed our son the way to love his wife in just the way that was right for her.”
Experience shared at Health Symposium “Darkness to Light – Spirituality of Unity in Chronic Disease and Disability” Australia, July 2016
*Crystal methamphetamine
Sep 22, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
It’s been six years since the beginning of the war in your country. What do you think have been the worst effects on society? Six years of war have shaken the very bulwark of Syrian society: the family, the basic cell that has absorbed the blows and the disgrace of this unending violence. The family was the safeguard of the country and of the Church up until 2014. But the insecurity, intolerance, violence and chaotic destruction have now completely uprooted more than two million families. Without houses and scattered all over the world, how could they have gone on under the weight of such a heavy Calvary? It was common at the beginning of the war – March 15, 2011 – to see the family gathered around a mother. The men go to war and often die. The saying now is: ‘An orphan without a father is not an orphan’. The family is left gathered around its mother who ensures the unity and the survival of the hearth. In the midst of this long and burdensome suffering these heroic mothers live in poverty and in tears. They have honoured their calling, living in tents and dying drowned. Is there any greater suffering? The destruction of the basic cell of society, and the youth? Can we count on them to look towards the future? The general mobilization that was decreed in October 2015 invited all men under the age of 45 to enter military service. It was a decision that also distressed other family members who couldn’t leave and had to stay where they were, waiting for a conclusion to this endless war. This age group that vanished had once comprised the backbone of economic activity that was still being carried out. Some reached the barracks and others chose to flee on the trail of illegal immigrants that is often irreversible. This destabilized the job market and the modest family life that found itself even more deprived of resources. What future is there for a community without young people? How has the war affected the Church? These things have weakened the Church. Families often decide to get up and go to their son who has left the country. Hence, you have the exodus of families resulting in the dizzying drop in the number of the faithful in parishes. There is the demographic imbalance: in the absence of young men, our young women who find themselves alone often marry Muslim polygamists. With fewer marriages, there are fewer baptisms. For the first time the Church finds itself facing another crucial problem as well: one in three priests in Damascus have decided to move to another more peaceful country. What can be done to keep priests in Damascus? What will come of the Church without priests? What do you think is the challenge and the hope of the Christians living in Syria today? The dead cities in the north of Syria are an unsettling photograph of what we could become. How are we to avoid becoming the guardians of brick and stone? It remains to the Christians of the East to reconsider their calling and to live along the lines of the small primitive Church that lived without protection or guarantee. Will we be capable of responding to this apostolic challenge? The Gospel encourages: ‘Fear not, little flock” (Lk 12:32).
Sep 10, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
There was must festivity on August 14th at José C. Paz, fifty kilometres from Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was the 10th anniversary of a social centre that hosts the activities of the Juntos Por El Barrio Programme (Together for the Quarter), which is a social project that focuses especially on children, teenagers and their families. Even though the building is ten years old, the project began its work long before and, as is often the case, it was the people from the quarter that had initiated and carried it out. When Francis, the Pope from Argentina, invited everyone to take care of the peripheries, he was probably thinking about settlements like the barrio where the social centre is located. It is a residential settlement that was haphazardly put up behind some buildings by families that had moved to the city in search of fortune. Unfortunately, that fortune was nowhere to be found. The overwhelming unemployment made them even poorer and more vulnerable to every sort of threat: marginalization, alcoholism, drugs, violence and prostitution. And the ones most threatened were the many children and teenagers that spent most of their time on the streets. 
In 1999, with the support of the Focolare that had a meeting hall nearby, some local residents got together to do something for the newcomers. First they tried to identify the main issue for the barrio. It turned out to be the need for a safe place where children and teenagers could be welcomed and taken off the streets. This is how the “Juntos Por El Barrio” Project was begun. An academic support programme was set up in a makeshift classroom. Seeing how successful it was, receiving distance support from the Focolare’s New Families non-profit association (AFN onlus), many other projects were begun. With the help of donations from outside the country a building was constructed where the activities could be carried out. The centre quickly became a meeting place and a point of reference for the entire barrio. It was therefore necessary to celebrate, also because the quarter is really changing face. At Juntos Por El Barrio there are currently a variety of activities, many of them geared towards the young, but also towards people of all ages: food and nutrition, preventive health, sewing, literacy, artisan and screen printing workshops, classes for gardeners, hair-stylists, tailors and recreational activities. More than 70 families are supported by the project, and the centre is visited by 200 people every week. The 220 people that took part in the August 14th celebrations – including a hundred children – were spurting happiness from every pore. They all felt like protagonists not only of the feast, but also of their own liberation. Perhaps because they felt like they were part of a process in which what comes into light is not giving and receiving, but reciprocity.
Sep 7, 2016 | Focolare Worldwide, Senza categoria
“I come from a simple family in the province of Naples. In my town, my father, a special deacon of the Eucharist, was in charge of the sick and the poor, who had in some way become members of our household. I was14 when dad passed away due to a tumour. I suffered so much, and in that time I didn’t believe that God was taking care of us, as he had always said. I threw myself into my studies, with the objective of earning lots of money to build a house of my own. At the age of 20 God appeared once more in my life: a group of friends had invited me to a meeting of which I honestly remember nothing; the only thing that pushed me to frequent succeeding ones was the joy I saw amongst them, and which was lacking in my life. I excelled in my studies, and had many friends but was not happy like them. I wanted to get to know more about this God they spoke to me about, and after a few years, also what I wanted to do with my life. I was introduced to my congregation almost by chance. To be sincere, I didn’t hold the nuns in great esteem. In my region the convent is still regarded as an escape from the world: and this certainly was not the life I wanted! I am a joyful, happy person and l love being with people. I had a degree and also many boyfriends. But in this religious family I found the love of my life – God, to whom I couldn’t say no. This was the house I had sought ever since I was an adolescent, but now with an addition: I was no longer alone, but had other sisters who loved Jesus, like me. My religious family – the Franciscan nuns of the Poor – had met the Focolare Movement at the turn of the 1960s. That period had been a painful one for the Congregation due to many internal problems. Our charism – to see Jesus in the poor and treat his wounds – in contact with the spirituality of unity, had taken on a new light and the Gospel with its message of mutual love was the answer to all that pain. The nuns created a Youth Centre so that the young girls could find their aim in life. Upon returning to the source of our charism, we also understood that the poor are not only in the sick, but in every suffering person. Today in Italy we care for the homeless, and the women who decide to escape from the trafficking of migrants, and work with the Caritas. We offer our help and consultancy also in the framework of the families: new unions, separations and divorce. We also work in the prisons and with minors, etc. Over the last six years I have worked as a teacher in Messina – I have a degree in Educational Sciences – in a therapeutic community for youths subjected to the control of the Juvenile Courts. I used to visit them to help them discover their importance in society. They would often say: “When you are with us, we feel the presence of something beautiful and good, could this be Jesus?” Recently, my superiors received a request for someone to work under a permanent contract, in the prisons of the Philippines and with street kids. I was assigned the job since the experience I have acquired in this field could be of great help. I have already said yes to God and do not want to back out just now. In September I shall leave for six months, to see if I can give my contribution there.”
