Key Points of the Spirituality of Unity
Key Points of the Spirituality of Unity
We will begin by reviewing the various points of our collective spirituality in order to live them with deeper awareness and greater responsibility. Now that they have been written in our Statutes,' they are an expression, for us, of the will of God. We will look at them with a specific purpose in mind. As we praise God for having given them to us at a time when the world around us needed it, we will trv to show how each point is truly a manifestation and a pillar of our collective spirituality. We will try to see how each one requires of those who live it that "something more" our collective spirituality calls for, that is, the giving and receiving involved in love and in unity.
We will examine these points on the basis of what we think the Holv Spirit suggested to us when we understood them for the first time.
Thus, we will use our writings, letters, etc., especially those from the early days of our Movement.
God-Love: Source of Unity
God-Love is the first point of our spirituality. Today, decades away from that first manifestation of God who is Love, we realize more fully what a great gift it was, not only then for us first Focolarine, but also for the millions of people who later met the Movement, and how it is a gift for humanity in our time.
Statutes of the Work of Mary, article 8.
31
In re-reading material relevant to that event and seeing it in its historical context, we can also understand how necessary it was.
Not only had people been affected by the dramatic events of World War II, which sowed destruction and death, but in a more interior manner, they were affected by an atheistic and secularized vision of life and of the world. This had gradually evolved either into the absolute negation of God and consequently of the human being or in the painful quest for the meaning of one's existence, and in any case in the criticism of an image of God as static, uncaring, and far away.
Therefore, in the mind of Christians, in their way of thinking and acting, the reality of God-Love, announced by John the Apostle, was no longer so alive. And much less present — particularly in the West — was the rich doctrine developed from this central mystery of our faith by the Fathers of the Church like Augustine, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, among others, and the great theologians of the Middle Ages, like Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and others.
Certainly, there were stupendous writings through which countless saints and mystics of the Church, in both East and West, shared with us their union with God and their experience of his infinite love. They confirmed and illustrated the progressive in-depth exploration that the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, was making into the reality of God-Love, and they remained precious spiritual nourishment for every age. Yet, they reflected — as we have noted in the preceding chapter — a spirituality that was mostly individual, and for this reason was not suited to the new spiritual needs of our time, which is characterized by more interpersonal relationships and by interdependence among peoples.
32
the first inspiring spark
It was precisely in this context that the Lord revealed to us anew, through the charism of unity, God as love, thus enkindling what John Paul II described as the "first inspiring spark."2
It should be said that, because of my previous Christian formation, I was prepared to accept the reality of God-Love as part of my faith. But, along with other circumstances that forcefully highlighted this reality during those days, the words, "God loves you immensely," addressed to me as we know,3 brought this reality to the forefront within me. And it is important to point out that it did not impact only me. On the contrary! It immediately became the common heritage of many.
I wrote later on: "I am saying this, I am repeating it to my friends: 'God loves us immensely.' 'God loves you immensely.' " Since that moment we first Focolarine perceived God present everywhere with his love: throughout the day, in our enthusiasm, in our resolutions, in joyful and comforting events, in situations that were sad, awkward, or difficult.
2. Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II VII/2 (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1984), pp. 223-225.
3. The author is referring to an episode that is well known within the Focolare. and one that she has related many times: "During those days a priest asked me to offer a part of my day to God. Moved by youthful generosity, I responded: 'Even the whole day!' The priest was impressed, had me kneel down, gave me his blessing, and said to me: 'God loves you immensely.' These words, spoken by a man to whom God had given spiritual authority over others, had a great effect on me. What I had learned as a Christian already as a little girl, namely, that God is love, that he knows me, that — as Jesus says — he even counts the hairs of my head, entered into my mind and heart in a manner that was completely new, as if it were a lightning bolt:
'God loves me! God is Love!'" (Chiara Lubich, Incontri con I'Oriente [Rome: Citta Nuova, 1987], pp. 20-21).
33
He was always there, he was present everywhere. And he explained to us that everything is love: all that we were and all that concerned us; that we were his children and he was our Father; that nothing escaped his love, not even our mistakes, because he permitted them; that his love enveloped Christians such as us, the Church, the world, and the entire universe.
Thus, something new flashed through our mind: God is love. And this absolute novelty made us realize that God was no longer distant, inaccessible, foreign to our life; on the contrary, he was reaching out to me, to us, with the immensitv of his love. God-Love emerged in our hearts as the most real and true of all realities. And, while the war showed all things to be precarious and transitory, we chose him as the ideal of our lives.
The response that God elicited from that first group of Focolarine was equally immediate and meaningful.
A letter written in 1944 communicates the atmosphere of those early days and describes the infusion of light and fire through which God-Love became present in our lives, and — this is interesting — it already shows the intuition we had of the very profound bond it would bring about among us:
"You have been blinded with me by the fiery brilliance of an ideal that exceeds all things and contains all things:
by the infinite love of God!
"It is he, my God and vour God, who has established a bond between us that is stronger than death."
God-Love was therefore the living source of the unity that the Work of Mary is called upon to live and to show to others, so as to contribute to the fulfillment of Jesus' last prayer. Believing in God's love — which he himself "revealed" to us ("We have known and believe the love God has for us," 1 Jn 4:16) — was the starting point of our spirituality, which was already characterized by unity. Thus, it appeared as a collective spirituality.
34
The Closer We Come to God, the Closer We Come to One Another
God's will is the second point. To God, who loves each one of us immensely, we respond by seeking to love him immensely. We felt that we would have no meaning in the world if we were not a little flame of this infinite fire: love that responds to Love.
But how could we do this?
We read in a letter from 1943: "Love him! Listen to what he wants from you in every moment of your life. Do this with all your heart."
Therefore, to love God means to do his will.
From the beginning of our new way of life we used the image of the sun with its rays to illustrate how we wanted to live God's will. We find this described in another letter from those days:
"Look at the sun and its rays.
"The sun is a symbol of the will of God, which is God himself.
"The rays are the will of God for each individual.
"Walk towards the sun in the light of your ray, different and distinct from every other ray, and fulfill the particular, wonderful plan God wants from you.
"There is an infinite number of rays, all coming from the same sun: a single will, particular for each person.
"The closer the rays come to the sun, the closer they come to one another.
"We too . . . the closer we come to God, by doing the will of God more and more perfectly, the closer we come to one another. . . Until we are all one!"4
4. Chiara Lubich, 27 October 1947, in Meditations (
35
All one. Each one of us doing God's will makes us all one.
To reach this goal, of being one, we exhorted everyone to say his or her own vigorous, total, determined yes to God's will.
"With all the ardor of our hearts let us say yes to God's will always. . . .
"If we all do God's will, we will very soon be that perfect unity that Jesus wants on earth as in heaven! . . .
"I invite you all to do this because God has placed a magnificent star upon each one of us — his particular will for each of us — and by following it, we will all reach heaven united, and we will see many other stars following in the wake of our own light!"5
"When God's will is done on earth as in heaven, the testament of Jesus will be fulfilled."6
Also this second cornerstone of our spirituality — doing God's will — which at first glance may seem to be the expression of an individual spirituality— is revealed to us bv our charism with a marked collective dimension, with that "something more" as compared to other spiritualities in which the individual aspect seems to prevail over the communitarian one.
In the more individual spiritualities, in fact, it is usually each Christian personally who, by fulfilling the divine will evermore perfectly, reaches union with God, even to the point of transformation in Christ.7
By living God's will according to our spirituality, which springs from the charism of unity, we see that we become
5. Chiara Lubich, Letter, Christmas 1946, in Our Yes to God (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1981), pp. 95-96.
6. Chiara Lubich, 27 October 1947, from the letter quoted above.
7. Cf. Teresa of
36
more united not only with God but also with one another. Thus we are transformed personally and collectively into Christ.
This link between God's will and unity is beautifully illustrated by Peter Chrysologus:
"Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6:10). On earth as it is in heaven. Everything will be heaven, then; the one mind of God will guide everyone;
all will be in Christ and Christ will be in all, when everyone will savor and carry out only God's will. Then all will be one, indeed, one single [Christ], in all.^
To Love and To Be Loved
The third point is love of neighbor. The will of God is God, and God is love. His will, therefore, is love, and he wants us to love too. He wants us to love him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind, and to love every neighbor as ourselves (cf. Mt 22:37-39).
We, too, had to be love in life: little suns beside the Sun.
At that time, the word "love" usually indicated either the natural sentiment that links a man and a woman or eroticism. It was not normally used in religious terminology, where the preferred term was "charity," but often with the limited meaning of almsgiving. The singular manifestation of God-Love that we had received, and our direct contact with the Word of God, re-focused our attention on the Christian meaning of love.
Indeed, we immediately sensed that love was the very core of the Christian message and, as such, it was our
8. Peter Chrysologus, Sermons, 72: PL 52, 406.
37
absolute duty to put it into practice.
We began by loving the poor. But quite soon, because of this practice (since love brings light) we understood that we had to love everyone.
But how could we do this? Bv serving, which the Spirit soon explained to us with the words "making ourselves one."
I wrote: "Making ourselves one with every person we meet. This means sharing their feelings, carrying their burdens, making their problems our own and solving them as if they were ours, because love has made them ours.
"We must make ourselves one in everything except sin.
"This is what Paul meant when he said: 'I made myself all things to all people' (1 Cor 9:22).
"Making ourselves one requires constantly dying to ourselves. Yet, it is for this very reason that when others are loved in this way, sooner or later they are won over by Christ who lives in us through the death of our ego."9
When this happens, the other person responds to our love with his or her own love, and love of neighbor grows to the point of becoming mutual.
In another writing, we find: "See Jesus in every person you meet in each moment of the day, from morning till night.
"If your eye is clear, it is God seeing through you. And God is love, and love wants to unite, by winning over the other. . . .
"Look outside yourself, not at yourself, not at things, not at people; look at God outside yourself in order to unite yourself to him.
"He is in the depths of every soul that has life; if a soul has no life, it is like a tabernacle of God waiting to achieve the meaning and joy of its existence.
9. Cf. Chiara Lubich, "Unity, The Longing of Our Times" in
38
"Look at every neighbor with love, and loving is giving. But one gift calls for another, and you will be loved.
"Thus, love is loving and being loved, as in the Trinity.
"And God in you will capture hearts, lighting up in them the Trinity, already present perhaps through grace, but inactive. . . .
"Look then at your neighbor and give yourself to your neighbor in order to give yourself to Jesus, and Jesus will give himself to you. It is the law of love: 'Give and gifts will be given to you.'
"Let yourself be consumed hv the other person — out of love for Jesus. Let yourself be 'eaten' — as another Eucharist. Put yourself completely at the other's service, which means at the service of God, and your neighbor will come to you and will love you. . . .
"Love is a fire that penetrates hearts and makes them perfectly one.
"Then within yourself, you will no longer find yourself, or your brother or sister; you will find Love, which is God living within vou.
"And Love will go out to love other brothers and sisters because, now that your eye is clear, it will find Him in them, and all will he one. . . . "w
And "all will be one." Not just any kind of love, then. No, the kind of love that brings about unity.
Reciprocity, therefore, and unity: the "something more" of our collective spirituality in another of ii-s points.
Being "Living Words" So As to Be One
The Word of Life is the fourth point. Having discovered the uniqueness and universality of the Words of God, while
10. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Writing, November 1949.
39
we were still in the air-raid shelters, we felt the desire to translate them into life, one by one. This was the beginning of a practice that continues today, more than fifty years later, and that will never end.
I wrote in 1948:
"We have understood that the world needs to be cured by the gospel, because only the Good News can give back to the world the life it lacks.
"This is why we live the Word of Life. . . .
"We make it flesh in ourselves to the point of being that living Word. All the words of the gospel are equal to each other since they all contain the truth, just as a tiny piece of the sacred host contains Jesus.
"One word would be enough to make one a saint, another Jesus.
'And all of us can live the word, whatever our vocation, age, gender, or background, because Jesus is light for every person who comes into this world. . . .
"Only in this way: only in doing the truth do we love! Otherwise, love is emptv sentimentalism.
"Let us be living gospels, living words of life, another Jesus! . . . and we will imitate Mary, Mother of the Light, of the Word: the living Word.
"We have no other book except the gospel; no other science, no other art.
"That is where life is! 'Whoever finds it never dies.'""
And quite soon we understood that living the Word makes us one with each other.
"Although we are far from one another, some in the mountains and others by the sea, a light will join us together. It is a light that the senses cannot grasp and is unknown to the world, but it is more precious to God . . . than anything else: the Word of Life.
11. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 17August 1948.
40
"We can be one only on condition that each of us is another Jesus: a living Word of God."'2
Using the example of the grafting of plants, where two branches stripped of their bark are united since they are "alive," we said:
"When can two souls be truly living in unity? When they are 'alive,' that is, when they are stripped of all that is merely human . . . when they have lived and incarnated the Word of Life so that they become living words. Two living words can be consumed into one. If one of them is not alive, the other one cannot be united with it.'"3
But the "something more" in this point of our collective spirituality — that is, reciprocity and unity — comes into full relief if we consider a practice we had and still have today in living the gospel Words.
It is not enough to live them on our own.
No, we need to share our experiences of the Word of Life with one another. In this way, we are evangelized, that is, transformed into another Christ because of the effort we make to live in this way, and because of all we do to receive within ourselves the light and experience of others. Thus we evangelize ourselves as individuals and as a community. We become more and more Jesus, individually and collectively.
The Law of Heaven
Mutual love is the fifth point. As we have already seen, love of neighbor, making ourselves one with the others, led the initial group ofFocolarine to mutual love, the heart
12. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, June 1949.
13. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 23 October 1948.
41
of the gospel: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (Jn 13:34).
Taking the words "as I have loved you" literally, declaring that we are ready to give our lives for one another, and ready to give up anything for our brothers and sisters as Jesus did in his abandonment out of love for us, even to the point of feeling that he had lost his union with God, made of these words the typical commandment of our collective spirituality. It contained the required "something more": mutual giving and receiving and, as we shall see, unity.
At various times in the history of the Church, the holy founders and their disciples referred to this commandment in their Rules.
The Rule of Augustine, for example, says: "The main reason you are gathered in the same house is to live in harmony and to be united in mind and heart as you strive toward God."'4
Saint Benedict's Rule: "Seek to be first in honoring each other . . . competing in mutual obedience; let no one seek his own interests, but rather that of the others; offer fraternal charity with pure love."15
And the Rule of Francis: "Let them love one another, as the Lord savs: This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. Let them express the love they have for one another bv their deeds, as the Apostle says:
Let us lore not in word or speech but in deed and truth. . . . Let them not consider the least sins of others. Instead, let them reflect more upon their own sins in the bitterness of their soul."11'
14.
15. Saint Benedict, Rule for Monasteries LXXII.
16. "The Earlier Rule" (The Rule without a Papal Seal) XI, in Francis of
42
However, what we notice in these splendid Rules is that — it would seem — the word "as" in "as I have loved you" has not always been given much explicit consideration.
From the earliest days of the Focolare, looking to our model Jesus crucified and forsaken (this is our measure, the "as"), we understood that faithfulness to mutual love would bring about unity according to the life of the Trinity
"Do you know to what point we must love one another?" we said one day, still unaware of Jesus' last prayer. "To the point of being consumed in one."17 Like God who, being love, is Three and One.
At that time 1 wrote: "Jesus really brought the 'law of heaven' to earth. . . .
"It is the life of the Most Holy Trinity that we must try to imitate by loving one another, with the grace of God, as the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity love one another."18
And the dynamism of the intra-trinitarian life is the unconditional mutual gift of self; it is total and eternal communion ("All that is mine is yours and all that is yours is mine," Jn 1 7:10) between the Father and the Son in the Spirit.
A similar reality, we felt, is imprinted by God in the relationships among people. We wrote then: "I felt that I have been created as a gift for the person next to me, and the person next to me has been created by God as a gift for me. Just as the Father in the Trinity is everything for the Son, and the Son is everything for the Father."'9 And "The relationship among us is the Holy Spirit, the same
17. Chiara Lubich, "Unitaewmunita"!. "Lacomunitacristiana," in Fides, October 1948, p. 4.
18. Chiara Lubich, "Sintesi delta spiritualita," in Mariapoli '68, Rome, 1968, p. 76.
19. Marisa Cerini, Go^ Wio is Love (New York: New City Press, 1991),p. 52.
43
relationship that exists among the Persons of the Trinity."20
The Key to Unity: Tesus Forsaken
•• J '
Jesus Forsaken is the sixth point. Jesus Forsaken, as we have said many times, is the "something more" of the Passion and in the Passion. Jesus had lost his disciples and his mother; his life was being brutally drained from him through the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails, the blood he shed, through being hung on the cross.
All he had left was his union with God, his Father. He consented to losing, to renouncing that too: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). And he sacrificed himself in this way out of love for us.
His abandonment is a "something more," and through our spirituality we know that it leads — as is stated in our Statutes (art. 8) — to that "outer and inner renunciation" necessary for every form of unity.
We understood all this as early as 24 January 1944 when, not even two months after the date we consider to be the beginning of the Focolare, 7 December 1943, through a well-known incident21 we discovered this suf-
20. Ibid.
21. " . . . the encounter with fesus forsaken at Dori [Zaniboni]'s house, an encounter which this time we will let her describe herself. "She tells: 'We went in search of the poor and it was probably from them that I caught an infection on my face. I was covered with sores. The medicines I took did not halt the disease. But, with my face appropriately protected, I kept on going to Mass and to our Saturday meetings. It was cold, and to go outside under such conditions could have been bad for me. Since my family would not let me go out, Chiara asked a Capuchin priest to bring me Communion. While I was making my thanksgiving after receiving the Eucharist, the priest asked Chiara what in her opinion was the moment of Jesus' greatest suffer-
44
fering of Jesus. On that day, 24 January, we decided to give ourselves to him, as to the greatest love.
In Jesus Forsaken — we would soon understand — we contemplated the "key to unity."
Several letters bear witness to this. Here are three excerpts:
"Is it not understood yet . . . that the greatest ideal a human heart can yearn for — unity — is a distant dream and a mirage if those who want it do not set their hearts exclusively upon Jesus, who was forsaken by all, even by his Father?"
Another:
"It is only by loving Jesus Forsaken with all your heart, him whose body is all wound and whose soul is all darkness, that you will be formed in unity."22
And finally:
"He is everything! If the world only knew him! If souls who pursue unity would only welcome him as their only goal, as their everything, then unity would suffer no fluctuations; it would never break."23
Still other letters give further witness:
"I am convinced that in its most spiritual aspect, at its deepest and most intimate level, unity can be understood
ing during his passion. She replied she had always heard that it was the pain he felt in the
22. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 1 February 1949, in Jesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 60.
23 Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 23 April 1948.
45
only by a person who has chosen as their portion of life . .. Jesus forsaken, crying out 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'
'All light on unity flows from that cry.
"To choose him as our only goal, our only objective, the point of arrival for our own life is ... to generate an infinite number of souls into unity."24
"What is he missing in his anguished state?
"What is the medicine that can heal his pain?
"God\
"It is God that is missing.
"How can we give him God?
"If we are united we will have him in our midst, and the Jesus who will be born of our unity will console our crucified Love!"25
Unity
Unity is the seventh point. It is a cornerstone of our spirituality because it expresses, even by itself, what the Spirit wants from us.
Indeed, in it the "something more" of our spiritual way of living, when compared to others, is more than evident. This is true simply because those who live other, more individually accented, spiritualities do not always consciously strive, as something essential, toward unity with their brothers and sisters, as they do toward unity with God.
Unity instead requires this "something more," because it presumes a communion of at least two persons.
24. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 30 March 1948, mjesus: The Heart of His Message, pp. 58-59.
25. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 1 April 1948, mjesus: TheHeartof His Message, p. 65.
46
Unity is a grace that Jesus asked of the Father: "May all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may thev also be in us" (Jn 17:21). And since it is a grace, we cannot attain it through our own efforts. We need, however, to prepare ourselves so that we can receive it: by loving one another as Jesus loved us. And what must be emphasized here is what "as" means: with the measure of the forsakenness of Jesus. Jesus, in fact, loved in this way and to this point. Thus, it is not enough to love one another in just any way — for example as friends, who immediately understand one another or who exchange gestures of kindness. Material and spiritual detachment is needed on both sides in order to "make ourselves one" with one another. This is the best preparation for obtaining the grace of unity.
For this point too, after investigating writings and documents from the early days to see what our charism taught us about unitv, and how we considered it, we came up with a few passages.
I wrote in 1947:
"Fix in your mind one single idea.
"It was always one single idea that produced the great saints.
"And our idea is this: Unity."26
And this — I add now — holds true also for the present.
In another letter, from 1948, I wrote:
"Let everything else go, but Unity never! . . .
"Always bring among you . . . this blazing Fire.
"Don't be afraid to die. You've learned already by experience that Unity requires all to die, to give life to the One. ...
"Do this as a sacrosanct duty, even if it will also bring
26. Chiara Lubich, Letter, New Year's Day 1947; mjesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 36 (translation revised).
47
you immense joy!
"Jesus promised the fullness of joy to those who live in unity! . . ,"27
Unity, unity, I add now, and certainly not to close ourselves in but to open ourselves up as the gospel asks.
The letter continues by saying:
"Let's make Unity among us, which gives us the fullness of joy, peace, and strength, the springboard for rushing to ... wherever there is no unity and to bring it there."28
And another:
"... as long as all are not one, are not Jesus, we cannot sit back and rest. We must always be on the front line in the struggle against ourselves and evil, hating Satan and the world. We must feel that every lack of unity around us is a grave responsibility that weighs on our soul. Jesus, often, is present in people's hearts, but buried. Living the fullest unity among us, we must bring such a Light that it will enchant everyone. Then they will search for it within themselves and allow it to shine forth."29
Jesus Among Us
Then we immediately discover what unity offers. And here we pass on to the eighth point: unity offers Jesus in our midst. Here again, the "something more" is evident. There must be at least two of us in order to have him among us, and two of us united in his name, that is, in his love.
Jesus among us. He is the grace that we obtain in unity.
27. Letter, 1 April in Jesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 32.
28. Jesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 35.
29. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 4 January 1949.
48
It is a super-grace because it is Jesus himself.
The presence of Jesus among us is a directive of his to be lived ("Where two or more . . ."), and it is Jesus himself who gives it.
This presence of Jesus is surprisingly up-to-date. We know that often it is difficult in our day to speak of Jesus because he is seen as someone far away, someone who lived two thousand years ago, who is superseded, perhaps of a former world. That Jesus is still alive today, that he journeys with us through history, as he promised when he said "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Mt 28:20), is no longer understood today. And this is due to the secularized, materialistic, and indifferent environment that has had an influence even on the Church itself.
Instead, if we bring him into our midst, many will be able to meet him now, two thousand years later.
Jesus in our midst is really the effect of unity. This is what I wrote in a page that expresses our surprise at these first discoveries, as well as our excitement and joy.
"Unity!
"Who would dare speak of it?
"It is ineffable like God!
"You feel it, see it, enjoy it but ... it is ineffable!
"Everyone rejoices in its presence, everyone suffers from its absence.
"It is peace, joy, love, ardor, the atmosphere of heroism, of the highest generosity.
"It is Jesus among us!"30
And the letter continues:
"Jesus among us! To live so as to have him always with
30. Letter, 29 April 1948 in The Secret of Unity (London: New City, 1985), p. 27; cf. Jesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 28.
49
us, so as to bring him to a world so unaware of his peace, so as to carrv within ourselves his light! His light!
"I would like to speak to vou, but I don't know how. . . .
"The mind contemplates, satiated by beauty!
"I would prefer to let the whole world go to pieces, so long as he is always with us, among us who are united in his name because dead to ourselves!
"Brothers, our Lord has given us a magnificent ideal . . . let us stick to it faithfully, at whatever cost, even if some dav our souls might have to cry out in the torment of infinite pain: 'My God, my God, why have you too forsaken me?'
"Let's go ahead, not counting on our own petty and limited strength, but on the omnipotence of Unity.
"I have had firsthand experiences of how God among us works the impossible. . . .
"If we stick faithfully to our commitment ('that all may be one') the world will see Unity. . . .
"And don't be afraid to give up everything for Unity;
unless we love . . . beyond all measure, unless we lose our own judgment and our own desires, we shall never be one! . . .
"Unity above all, in all, after all! Arguments don't count for much, nor do the holiest of discussions, unless we give life to Jesus among us. . . "31
The following passage, too, is from 1948:
"These past few days ... it occurred to me, I felt in my soul, that Unity is not made up of focolare houses, of being near to one another or far. ... It is Something above all these things. It is the Peace of Heaven, it is full-
31. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 29 April 1948 in Judith Povilus, United in His Name (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1992), p. 18.
50
ness of Joy, perfect Light that illumines the darkest night, it is the most ardent and pure love. . . it is Jesus. . . .
"And unity, this Something intangible, untouchable, invisible, rises up and asserts itself! It is all spiritual, all Spirit. But it is real, concrete; it satisfies the soul and makes it sing.
"What a Way the Lord has given to us! What a wonder! What a gift!"'"
Jesus in the midst of the world, among the Christian people . . . among nations. This promise of his, which down the centuries was realized perhaps in convents and monasteries, and highlighted for our times by Vatican II, has now become, through our Movement, something accessible for all people.
Let's listen again to what we said about him when he manifested himself and how, even then, we felt the need to make him known.
"The happiness that we feel in unity, which you have given us through your death, is something we want to give all the souls that touch ours. We cannot reserve it to ourselves, seeing that there are so many . . . who feel hunger and thirst for this complete peace, this boundless joy.1. . ."33
We had such great esteem for him in our midst that in another well-known passage we wrote:
"If we are united, Jesus is among us. And this has value. It is worth more than any other treasure that our heart may possess; more than mother, father, brothers, sisters, children. It is worth more than our house, our work, or our property; more than the works of art in a great city
32. Unpublished Letter, 15 June 1948.
33. Letter, 27 December 1948, in Jesus: The Heart of His Message, p. 34.
51
like
"It is he who, inspiring his saints with his eternal truths, leaves his mark upon everv age.
"This too is his hour. Not so much the hour of a saint but of him, of him among us ...
But we must enlarge Christ. . . . Make one of all and in all the One."34
In later years, when we had already begun to look more closely, even though in a different way, at these cornerstones of our spirituality, we said:
"We all know that the great choice of the Focolare and of each one of us was the choice of God. . . . We adored him present in the tabernacles, we loved him in our neighbors, we contemplated him beyond the stars in the immensity of the universe.
"But one day we were surprised by the thought that such a God who was so close to us with his love, hut so far away from us with his majesty, had come down to be near us when we were united, setting his dwelling place among us. . . .
"Jesus in our midst: brother among his brothers and sisters, teacher, guide, comfort, light; we have no cause to enw those who lived with him in
"We have a huge treasure, we have the treasure."35
34. Chiara Lubich, When Our Love is Charity. Spiritual Writings, vol. 2 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991), pp. 46, 53 (translation revised).
35. When Our Love is Charity, pp. 54-55.
52
Another passage:
"When we were united . . . we felt all the power of Jesus among us. It was as if we were all clothed in the power and blessing of heaven. We felt capable of the noblest actions for God, the most ardent and difficult resolutions, which we were then able to carry out; whereas before, when alone, for all our good will, it was difficult to fully live up to the promises we had made to the Lord. We felt a power that wasn't merely human."36
)esus in our midst — he cannot help but do great things because he is Jesus.
Jesus in our midst — he enables us to obtain everything through praying the "consenserint."
Jesus in our midst is an everlasting Christmas in the world, an everlasting Easter, because the risen Lord is constantly alive among us.
Jesus in our midst is the treasure we must leave to those who follow us, with the exhortation to keep him present through the new commandment and unity.
The Eucharist
And now the Eucharist.
Where is the "something more" in the Eucharist? It is quickly said. The Eucharist can be seen (and many Christians do see it only in this way) simply as food that nourishes our soul spiritually, to be received at least once a year or on feast days or on Sundays, or even daily. Since, however, the Eucharist is our Lord in person, whom we adore and to whom we pray, in the Focolare Movement
36. The Latin term means "agree" and is from Matthew 18:19: "... if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven."
53
we have always seen the Eucharist also for what it produces: unitv. And this is the "something more."
It is the Eucharist that gives us that grace that we should expect when we live the new commandment, where we experience unitv, Jesus in our midst.
But even before we became acquainted with this quality of the Eucharist (that is, the bond of unity), the Holy Spirit was aware of it, and because he had called us to the ideal of unity, he urged us to be nourished by the body and blood of Christ.
Just as newborn babes instinctively feed at their mothers' breasts without knowing what they are doing, we noted something that happened from the very beginning of the Focolare: those who got to know us began to receive Holy Communion every day.
How can we explain this?
What instinct is for the newborn baby, the Holy Spirit is for adults who have been born anew into the life that the gospel of unity brings. They are carried into the "heart" of the Church their mother, where they feed on the most precious nectar she has.
Moreover, we became aware of one thing quite soon. It seemed indicative to us that Jesus, speaking to the Father in his famous prayer, asked for unity among his followers and among those who would come later, after having instituted the Eucharist.
Unity, therefore, reaches its fullness through the Eucharist.
Unity can be lived fully only through the Eucharist, which makes us not only one through love, but one body and one blood with Christ and with each other.
54
The Church
If it is the Church that makes the Eucharist, then it is the Eucharist that makes the Church and makes it communion.
In this affirmation lies the reason for the "something more" in our consideration of the Church.
At the time when the Focolare began, the Church was often seen only as a stone structure, with Jesus in the tabernacle, and with Mary, Saint Anthony or another saint above the altar . . . the Church was, in a certain sense, for many people taken as being the same things as the catechism. First Communion. ... It also meant the other sacraments, as well as Patron's Days; perhaps it meant belonging to Catholic Action groups, and so on. It meant the parish and the parish priest and, if people were aware of their existence, the bishop and the pope.
Through the charism of unity and all that goes with it, we understood that while the Church may be all of this, more than anything else, in the depths of its being, it is the people of God. It is communion: the Church-communion.
Then, Vatican II defined it this way, and this brought about a revolution.
What does it mean to live the Church as communion?
It means creating bonds of love among all those who are part of it: among its members, its various subdivisions (parishes, dioceses, movements, structures, councils, commissions, and so on); with other things that are in some wav linked to the Church (other Churches, other religions which are connected with the Church through the presence of the "seeds of the Word," and other cultures with the values thev bring).
Our spirituality teaches and helps us to practice all of this.
55
It also means that persons in positions of responsibility create bonds of love with the faithful, so that each command may be prepared by love (making those in charge into people who "preside in love").
Moreover, the faithful should build bonds of love with those in positions of responsibility. This is documented by the following letters, which show that the Focolare's relationship with the Church was also marked by communion.
I wrote in 1969:
"This was not only out of a principle of obedience to the Church or simply from fear of heresy! It was actually the Church which was drawing us to itself. Or better still, it was the Holy Spirit in us who urged us to be united with the Holy Spirit who is in the Church, because it is one and the same Holy Spirit."37
The following sentence is from our early years:
"The Focolarini see the Church as a family in which each member has to retain his or her own position and vocation, but all should feel they are brothers and sisters, through love in Christ Jesus."38
And everything is done in obedience to whoever has the charism of authority In fact, we owe the Church an obedient love, a love that is then reciprocated, as we have always experienced.
We have consistently had this attitude toward bishops.
We wrote back in 1947:
" 'Who hears you hears me' (Lk 10:16).
"Our souls, caught up by the voices of this world, need so much to hear the voice of Christ!
"But you must not expect Christ to descend on earth
37. Chiara Lubich, Servants of All (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1978), p. 85; cf. also Sen'ants of All (London: New City, 1979), 54.
38. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Writing, How the Work of Mary relates to people who do not belong to it.
56
to speak to you. When he was here on earth, he appointed his ministers: those who were to carry on in his place.
"Go to them with faith!
"You are fighting a battle for the triumph of the spirit over matter, the triumph of the supernatural. . . . Look at the minister — whoever he is — as someone who speaks on behalf of Jesus, without regard to his possible imperfections. His word is the word of God.
'Who hears you hears me'! "Jesus wants to be listened to through his ministers. This is the way he established it; this is the way it is."39
And in 1952:
"We must neither argue nor hesitate. We are one only in the divine will, and that is expressed by the bishop."40
". . . only in this way, in unity among us and with the Church, will our ideal invade the earth and be an invasion of love."4'
In 1956:
"From experience we can say that bishops are different from other people. One senses it when one tells them about our spirituality, or when they speak. Their words have a weight and fervor that immediately distinguishes them from even the holiest priest or theologian.
"Moreover, thev have the grace to get to the point of the matter, and to explain it amply. It is their charism."42
In 19601 said:
"I wish that all would feel that they have a mother, and that this mother is always there to nourish them. And I wish that everyone would seek this genuine milk that is given by the Holy Father and the bishops, and that they
39. Chiara Lubich, Servants of All, pp. 79-80.
40. Chiara Lubich, Servants of All. p. 80.
41. Chiara Lubich, Letter, 14 February 1952. Servants of All, p. 81.
42. Servants of All, p. 82.
57
would drink it and make it their own."43
Thus one day a sort of hymn sprang from our hearts:
"The Church, our most pure mother, has received us into her family, opening for us, through her priests and sacraments, the gates of the true paradise.
"She has forged us as soldiers of Christ.
"She has forgiven us and canceled our sins seventy times seven.
"She has nourished us with the Body of Jesus and has given a divine seal to the love of our fathers and mothers.
"She has raised a number of poor created beings like us to the exalted dignity of the priesthood.
"Finally, she will give us the last farewell; she will put us on our way to Cod. She will give us God.
"Unless our hearts sing her praises, they are withered organs.
"Unless our minds see and admire her, they are blind and dark.
"Unless we speak of her, our words might as well dry up on our lips."44
Mary
And now we come to Mary.
Let us see, first of all, how Mary, who is considered to be one of the main points of our spirituality, contains that "something more."
Reflecting on the way we thought of Mary before the experience in our Movement, and attributing this, in some measure, to the more individualistic spiritualities, we could
43. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 6 September 1947.
44. Chiara Lubich, Stirrings of Unity (Queens, NY: New City Press, 1964), p. 12.
58
say that there was a great love, an enormous devotion for the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, for whom shrines, at times elaborate, have been erected all over the world. The rosary was the preferred prayer, which she herself often recommended; people willingly participated in the popular celebrations of her various feast days; the month of May was especially honored; at times, people "consecrated themselves" to her, as they used to say; and the elderly, in particular, wished to die with her name on their lips. These are many different aspects of a deeply-felt devotion, but — I repeat — a predominately individual one.
In the Focolare experience, there is "something more."
In fact, while she is loved for all her splendid attributes, such as the Immaculate One, the Thcotokos, the One Assumed into heaven, and is admired as the "Word fully lived," the "Woman of Love," the "Daughter of the Father," she is not only venerated and invoked but imitated and, in a certain way, re-lived as the Mother of Unity, which means the mother not only of individual Christians, but of the Church as a whole.
She is the mother of unity, mother of the Church, in the moment of her desolation, similar and next to Jesus Forsaken, as she gives her second yes. In her own way, she too is forsaken.
For us, Mary Desolate does not onlv stand for a masterpiece of virtue, which she is. Mary Desolate is the one who, with Jesus crucified and forsaken, gave her own contribution toward the redemption of the human race and became our mother in John.
In that moment, she co-generated another Christ, the Christ who formed his mystical body, and as mother she appears as the bond of unity among all. She unites her children, making them brothers and sisters, as the mothers around the world do.
And just as these children, whom she too has gener-
59
ated, have the features of Jesus, they have hers as well.
As we briefly look over the history of the Focolare Movement with regard to Mary, we can see more clearly who Mary is for us, and how she can be considered as a cornerstone of our spirituality
From the earliest days of the Focolare, although during that period of time it seemed that she was letting the Spirit highlight almost exclusively Jesus and his gospel, Mary appeared, although discreetly, in order to reveal to us at once her relationship with unity.
Some examples.
I wrote in 1947:
"I am convinced that it is she [Mary] who wants unity. She [Marv]: Mater unitntis! . . .
"She knows Satan, his promises, deceptions, and traps;
and she calls her children to be united, to help one another as they journey along the way of love!"45
Another letter from 1947:
"Our Lady wants us to be united in our journey! She knows that 'where two or more' are united in the holy name of her Son, he is in their midst! And where there is Jesus, dangers flee and obstacles disappear. . . . He overcomes everything because he is love!"46
Later on she manifested herself to our soul in all her splendor. We saw that her greatness was in proportion to how much she had lowered herself, to how much she had annulled herself.
In 1949, while we were together in the mountains, it seemed that the Lord showed us the main lines of the Work of Mary that would come to life.
45. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 6 September 1947.
46. Chiara Lubich, Another Unpublished Letter, 6 September 1947.
60
We understood that, through it, Mary wanted in some way to return on earth.
This perception was so strong that in admiring her unique beauty and thinking of her and seeing her almost alone — because we couldn't find anv children beside her worthy of such a mother, except for Jesus — we felt urged to ask her to bring about on earth a family of sons and daughters all like her.
Before that, we had asked Jesus in the Eucharist to entrust us, to "consecrate" us to Mary, as he knows how.
We had understood that this act had not been merely an expression of devotion empty of true content, but that this "consecration" had brought about something new.
It seemed to us that Mary had clothed us with her immaculateness.
It seemed as if we were experiencing in our small group what Montfort spoke about with regard to the interior wonders that Mary secretly works in souls: "The principal effect is that Mary comes to live in the soul so that it is no longer the soul that lives, but Mary who lives in the soul."47
Essentially, it seemed that what Paul VI had asked one day had become a reality. He prayed: "Teach us what we already know . . . to be immaculate as you are."48
We felt ourselves to be children of Mary and — in a way that we will never be able to forget — for the first time, we felt that Mary was our mother.
A few years later, the following well-known episode confirmed all this for us:
"I went into church one day, and with my heart full of trust, I asked: 'Why did you wish to remain on earth, on
47. L. G. Montfort, II Segreto di Maria, n. 55.
48. Insegnamcnti di Paulo VI, VII (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), pp.685-688.
61
every point of the earth, in the most sweet Eucharist, and you have not found — you who are God — also a way to bring and to leave Mary here, the mother of all of us who journey?'
"In the silence he seemed to reply: 'I have not left her because I want to see her again in you.' "m
To be another Mary, a little Mary; to find in our mother what we are called to be and in ourselves the possibility to be another her.
But to be mother as she is means being able to imitate her in her spiritual maternity (which becomes spiritual paternity for men), a maternity or paternity which forms the people entrusted to them, not only in order to make them beautiful and holy, but to unite them with God and with one another.
This is the way Mary is mother. She is Mater unitatis.
Thus, we conclude: this point of our spirituality, "Mary," means that we live as she did, being in some way another Mary, who is the mother of unity.
The Holy Spirit
And now the Holy Spirit, the final point.
The third divine Person had not been explored in depth by our Church, at least not bv the people. The Holy Spirit was said to be "the unknown God." We knew that he existed. We prayed to him, "Vcni, Sancte Spiritus," but there was not much more.
In the Focolare Movement, the Holy Spirit is considered, above all, for what he is in God and for humankind.
He is the bond of unity between the divine Persons,
49. Chiara Lubich, Meditations, p. 69; cf. Christian Living Today, p. 126.
62
Father and Son, and the bond of unity among Christians.
Moreover, because he can be present in the hearts of non-Christians of good will, he is in a certain way the bond of unity also with them.
One characteristic of the Focolare is that of listening to his voice within us. And that is not all, for we also learn to listen to the voice of him present among us, united in the risen Lord. Indeed, we attribute great importance to listening to the voice of the Spirit when Jesus is among us, because Jesus perfects our listening to his voice in each one of us. And here we can see the "something more" in our consideration of the Holy Spirit.
Because of this "something more" we have always experienced a special atmosphere in our gatherings, in our communities, in our model towns, in our small or large-scale meetings.
It is the effect of the presence of the risen Lord, who is among us and who brings with him the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, breath of Jesus and atmosphere of heaven, is also the breath of his body, the Church. And we are aware of his presence if the Church is itself in the full sense; that is, if it is
These are the twelve points of our spirituality. Now it is up to all of us to live them with fullness, in order to make the Church, also through our Movement, ever more beautiful, harmonious, and strong and—with Mary, who is its model, its mother, its head, its queen — invincible.
63
posted by focolare.men.northeastmanila @ 6:54 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Would love to hear what you think of my commentary on Pope Benedict's God is Love encyclical.
Thanks!
Tom Reagan
(PS--The other two installments of my commentary will be coming out in the next week or so at TomReagan.com.)
Post a Comment
<< Home