Jan 1, 2014 | Non categorizzato, Word of
In this month in particular, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Christian Churches and communities remember together that Christ is their one foundation and that it is only by following him and living his one Gospel that they will reach full and visible unity among themselves.
Christ, the Church’s one foundation
To base our lives on Christ means to be one with him, to think as he thinks, to want as he wants, to live as he lived.
But how can we be grounded, rooted in him? How can we be perfectly one with him?
By putting the Gospel into practice.
If we live his words, or better, if his words ‘live us’ to the point of making us ‘living Words’, then we will be one with him, bonded with him: it is no longer I or we who live, but the Word in everyone. It’s possible to imagine that living like this we’ll contribute to making unity among Christians a reality.
As the body breathes in order to live, so the soul lives by living the Word of God.
One of the first fruits is the birth of Jesus in us and among us. This causes a change in mentality. It injects into the hearts of all (whether European, Asian, Australian, American or African) the same sentiments that Christ had in the face of circumstances, individuals and society. […]
The Word lived sets us free from human conditioning. It gives joy, peace, simplicity, fullness of life, light. It makes us follow Christ, transforming us bit by bit into ‘other Christs’.
Christ, the Church’s one foundation
But there is one Word that summarizes all the others. It is love: to love God and our neighbour. In these two commandments Jesus sums up ‘all the law and the prophets’ (Mt 22:40).
The fact is that each Word, although expressed in human terms and in different ways, is the Word of God. Yet since God is Love, every Word is love.
How should we live this month? How can we bind ourselves to Christ ‘the Church’s one foundation’?
Augustine of Hippo once said, ‘Love, and do what you will.’[1] In effect he was summing up the law of Gospel life, because if you love you will not go wrong, you will do God’s will to the full.
Chiara Lubich
[1] Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John, 8
First published in January 2005
Every year the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is held in many parts of the world from 18th to 25th January. Elsewhere it is celebrated at Pentecost.
The theme for the Week of Prayer in 2014, based on 1 Cor. 1:13, is: ‘Is Christ divided?’
In the past, Chiara Lubich used to offer a commentary on the biblical verse behind the Week’s theme for that year. To keep up the tradition and explore this year’s theme, we offer the commentary from January 2005 on ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 3:11).
Nov 30, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all. Since love is the core of Christian life, if it doesn’t grow, the whole life of a Christian is affected, grows feeble and may even die. It’s not enough to have had the light to understand the commandment to love our neighbour or to have experienced with enthusiasm its drive and zeal at the beginning of our conversion to the Gospel. We need to make love grow by keeping it always alive, active, at work. This will happen if we know how to grasp, with ever-increasing readiness and generosity, the various chances life offers us each day. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all. Paul believes that Christian communities should have the freshness and warmth of a real family. It’s easy to understand, therefore, the reason why he warns against the dangers that most threaten them: individualism, superficiality, mediocrity. But he also wants them to avoid another grave danger, one closely connected to those just mentioned. It’s the danger of settling into a way of life that is orderly and peaceful, but closed in on itself. He wants open communities, because it is the nature of charity both to love the members of the community of faith and to go out towards everyone, to be sensitive to the problems and needs of all. It’s charity’s nature to find the way to welcome anyone whoever that person may be, to build bridges, recognizing the positive and uniting its own desires and efforts to do good with all who show good will. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all. How should we live this month’s Word of Life? We, too, can try to increase mutual love in our families, in our work places, in our communities or church societies, in our parishes, and so on. This Word of Life asks us to have an overflowing charity, a love capable of going beyond the mediocre measure and the barriers of our subtle selfishness. It’s enough to think of just some of the aspects of charity (tolerance, understanding, mutual acceptance, patience, readiness to serve, mercy towards the true or presumed shortcomings of our neighbour, sharing material goods, etc.) to spot our many chances to put it into practice. Clearly then, if such an atmosphere of mutual love exists in our community, its warmth cannot fail to spread to everyone. Even those who do not yet know the Christian life will feel its attraction and, very easily, almost without realizing it, they will become involved to the point of feeling part of the same family.
Chiara Lubich
(First published as the Word of Life for November 1994)
Oct 28, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
It means entering into the hearts of the people we meet in order to understand their mindset, their culture, their traditions, so as to make them, in a certain sense, our own, and really understand what they need and be able to discern those values God has planted in the heart of every person. In a word: kindness means to live for whoever is near us.
Tender-heartedness: welcoming others as they are, not as we would like them to be, with a different character, with our political views or our religious convictions, and without those faults and habits that annoy us so much. No, we need to expand our hearts and make them able to welcome everyone, with their differences, their shortcomings and troubles.
Forgiveness: always seeing the other person as new. Even where we find our most beautiful and most peaceful relationships, in the family, at school, at work, there are inevitably moments of friction, differences of opinion, clashes. People reach the point of not speaking to each other, of avoiding one another, to say nothing of when real and true hatred towards someone who thinks differently roots itself in the heart. We have to make a strong, rigorous and thorough commitment to try and see each brother or sister as though they were new, completely new, not remembering at all how they have hurt us, but covering everything with love, with a complete amnesty in our hearts, imitating God who forgives and forgets.
True peace and unity are attained when kindness, tender-heartedness and forgiveness are lived not only by people individually, but together, with one another mutually.
And just as the embers of a fire have to be stirred every now and then, so that they are not smothered by the ashes, so too from time to time it is necessary deliberately to revive the decision to love one another, to revive our relationships with everyone, so that they are not covered up by the ashes of indifference, apathy, selfishness.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
These attitudes demand to be translated into deeds, into practical action.
Jesus himself showed us what love is when he healed the sick, when he fed the crowds, when he brought the dead back to life, when he washed the feet of his disciples. Actions, deeds: this is what it means to love.
I remember the mother an African family whose daughter, Rosangela, lost an eye after an aggressive young boy poked her with a stick. He even continued making fun of her afterwards. Neither of the boy’s parents said that they were sorry. The silence, the lack of relationship with that family, made Rosangela’s mother feel bitter. ‘Don’t be upset,’ said Rosangela who had forgiven the boy, ‘I am lucky because I can see with my other eye!’
‘One morning,’ Rosangela’s mother said, ‘the boy’s mother sent someone to get me to go round to her house because she felt ill. My first reaction was: “Look, now she comes to me for help. With so many other neighbours she could have asked, she asks me, after all her boy has done to us!”
‘But suddenly I remembered that love has no limits. I hurried over to her house. She opened the door and fainted into my arms. I took her to the hospital and stayed with her until the doctors saw her. A week later she was discharged from the hospital and came to my house to thank me. I welcomed her with all my heart. I had managed to forgive her. Now we are in touch again. In fact, our relationship is totally new.’
Every one of our days, too, can be filled with real acts of service, humble and intelligent expressions of our love. We will then see fraternity and peace grow around us.
Chiara Lubich
(First Published August 2006)
Sep 28, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
This Word of Life emphasizes two things.
In the first place, love is presented as a debt, that is, as something we cannot be indifferent to, something we cannot put off. It is presented as something pressing on us, spurring us on, leaving us no peace until it is satisfied.
It’s like saying that mutual love is not an ‘extra’, the result of our largesse, whose strictures we can set aside without incurring any legal penalty. This Word urges us to put mutual love into practice on pain of betraying our dignity as Christians called by Jesus to be instruments of his love in the world.
Secondly, this Word of Life tells us that mutual love is the moving force, the soul and the goal of all the commandments.
It follows that, if we want do the will of God well, we cannot rest content with a cold and legalistic observance of God’s commandments. We must always keep in mind the goal that God sets before us through the commandments. So, for example, to live well the commandment not to steal, we cannot limit ourselves to not stealing, but we ought to be seriously committed to eliminating social injustice. Only like this will we demonstrate love for our neighbour.
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
How should we live the Word of Life for this month?
The subject of love for our neighbour, which it puts before us once again, has infinite shades of meaning. Here we pinpoint one in particular that would seem to be suggested in a special way by the words of the text.
If, as Paul says, mutual love is a debt, we need to have a love that is the first to love as Jesus was with us. It will be, therefore, a love that takes the initiative, that does not hold back, that does not delay.
Let’s do this in the coming month, then. Let’s try to be the first to love each person we meet, we speak to on the phone, we write to or we live with. And let’s love in a concrete way, knowing how to understand the other, foresee the other’s needs, be patient, trustful, persevering, generous.
We will notice that that our spiritual life takes a qualitative leap, to say nothing of the joy that will fill our hearts.
Chiara Lubich
First published in September 1990
Aug 26, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. We are to love, John says, not only in action but also in truth. Christian love, at the same time as trying to be translated into actual deeds, is deeply concerned with being inspired by the truth of love that we find in Jesus; it is deeply concerned with doing deeds that conform to Jesus’ wishes and teachings. We must love, that is, in the way and with the measure Jesus shows us. Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. How are we to live the Word of Life this month? Its message is almost too clear. It is a reminder of that genuine Christianity upon which Jesus insisted so much. But isn’t this also what the world is longing for? Isn’t it perhaps true that the world today wants to see witnesses of the love of Jesus? Let’s, therefore, love in action and not only in word, beginning with the humble services that are asked of us each day by those around us. And let’s love in truth. Jesus always acted according to the Father’s will. In the same way, we should act always according to Jesus’ words. He wants us to recognize him in each neighbour. In fact, whatever we do to any person he considers as done to himself. He also wants us to love others as ourselves, and he wants us to love one another ready to give up our lives one for the other. Let’s love like this, then, so that we too may be instruments of Jesus for the salvation of the world.
Chiara Lubich
First published in May 1988
Jul 29, 2013 | Non categorizzato, Word of
‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.’
The first and most significant characteristic of God the Father’s love is that it is absolutely free. It is totally opposite to the world’s love. The world’s love is based on getting something back and feelings of attraction (we love people who love us and people we like). The Father’s love is completely selfless. He gives himself to the people he has made however they react. It is a love whose nature is to take the initiative, giving all that it has. Consequently, it is a love that builds and transforms. Our heavenly Father does not love us because we are good or spiritually beautiful and so deserve his attention and kindness. On the contrary, by loving us, he himself creates in us the goodness and spiritual beauty of grace, making us his friends and his children.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
Another characteristic of the love of God the Father is its universality. God loves everyone without distinction. The measure of his love is to have no limit or measure.
Besides, his love couldn’t be free and creative if it weren’t completely poured out wherever there is a need or a void to fill.
This is why our heavenly Father also loves those children who are ungrateful, far from him or rebellious. Indeed, he feels particularly drawn to them.
If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
How shall we live the Word of Life this month? We should behave as true children of our heavenly Father, imitating his love, above all in those characteristics we have emphasised here: its being freely given and universal. Like this we’ll try to be the first to love, with a love that is generous, in solidarity with the other, open to all, aware particularly of the voids we find around us. We’ll try to love without looking for results. We’ll make an effort to be the instruments of the open-handedness of God, sharing with others the gifts of nature and grace we have received from him.
If we let ourselves be guided by this word of Jesus, we will have new eyes and a new heart for every neighbour coming across our path, every time this chance is offered by our daily life. And wherever we are (home, school, work, hospital and so on) we will feel urged to be distributors of this love which belongs to God and which Jesus brought to earth, the only love that can transform the world.
Chiara Lubich
First published in full as the Word of Life for June 1983
Read more on this topic:
Brandl, Gary and Tom Ess, OFM. The Gospel in Action: A New Evangelization Day by Day, New City Press, 2013, p.54–61.
Lubich, Chiara. “Be the First to Love”, The Art of Loving, New City Press, 2005, p.47.
Lubich, Chiara. “The Art of Loving”, Essential Writings, New City Press, 2007, p.77.
Next month:
September 2013 – “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” (1 Jn 3:18)
