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Being One

Volume 10 No 1 - 3

August 2001

New Ecclesial Movements for

the New Evangelization

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EDITORIAL

A LETTER FROM JOHN PAUL II

ADDRESSES A New Evangelization

Chiara Lubich

Ecclesial Schools Andrea Riccardi

Epiphany of Communion

Piero Coda

Key to Ecclesial Communion Natalia Dallapiccola

HOMILIES Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos Cardinal James Francis Stafford

Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan

EXPERIENCES OF NEW EVANGELIZATION Schönstatt Movement

Neo-Catechumenal Way Renewal in the Spirit

Communion and Liberation Community of St. Egidio

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EDITORIAL

A Methodology for a New Evangelization

For some time now, names such as Charismatic Renewal, Communion and Liberation, Cursillo, Faith and Light, Focolare, L’Arche, Neo-Catechumenal Way, St. Egidio and other names of large and small communities are becoming part of the Church’s vocabulary. The new and fresh spiritual impetus they are bringing to the Church has been noted, for instance, in recent synods of Bishops. Pope John Paul II has pointed out that as well as bringing this new impetus, these new communities and movements are opening up a new apostolic methodology.

What one notices in these new Movements is a synthesis of the “highest contemplation” while at the same time “being immersed in the crowds” just like Jesus who, while living in a deep intimate relationship with his Father, moved among the crowds and was open to every kind of neighbour he met in order to communicate the Good News to all.

In a short meditation written in the 1950s, Chiara Lubich had already pinpointed this methodology. She wrote:

“THIS is the great attraction of modern times: to penetrate to the highest contemplation while mingling with everyone, as one person next to others. I would say even more: to lose oneself in the crowd in order to infuse it with the divine… I would say even more: made sharers in God’s plans for humanity, to embroider patterns of light on the crowd, and at the same time to share shame, hunger, troubles and brief joys with our neighbour.”1

Recently, a theologian has written on this phenomenon saying that if there is one particular feature emerging in the Church today (and today the Church is increasingly understood as “image of the Trinity”), it is that “the Church is at one and the same time becoming more mystical and more historical. In other words, it is becoming more ecstatic and contemplative and at the same time penetrating further into humanity and history. It is more deeply rooted, more interior …but because of this it is more extrovert and open to the human”.2

1 See Meditations. London and New York: New City, 1986, p. 9 2 L. Sartori, Scritti Scelti 3. Padua: EMP, 1997, p. 221.

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This is the experience the Holy Spirit is bestowing upon those Movements that have come to life in recent years. As we know, the Second Vatican Council highlighted the new awareness coming to the fore among the people of God. A new emphasis was placed on the value of baptism as a right/duty of lay people to strive for holiness and share in the evangelising mission of the Church. It’s enough to read two texts from the Council’s documents to see this focus.

“The Messianic people…established by Christ as a communion of life, love and truth…is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all; as the light…and the salt…sent forth into the whole world” (Lumen Gentium, 9).

“The Holy Spirit…gives the faithful special gifts…so that each and all, putting the grace received at the service of others, may…build up the whole body in charity” (Apostolicam Actuositatem, 3).

All of this is the background upon which John Paul II has vigorously promoted the laity and encouraged the New Ecclesial Movements and Communities to express their charisms. In doing this, he has highlighted the co-essentiality of the Marian and Petrine profiles of the Church. This, in turn, is bringing about a renewal in our vision of the Church as true icon of the Trinity because it is built upon the Apostles and Prophets who are bound together in deep communion.

More and more it is becoming apparent that there’s a great need for a New Evangelisation involving the whole Church in mission.

But where does the Pope see the laity already working for this New Evangelisation? He sees it among the New Movements and Communities. He gave recognition, in a particular way, to communion among the new Movements and Ecclesial communities when he invited them to Rome for the Pentecost Vigil on May 30, 1998. Speaking to over 300,000 members of 60 Movements gathered in St. Peter’s Square, he affirmed:

‘You, present here, are the tangible proof of this “outpouring” of the Spirit. Each movement is different from the others, but they are all united in the same communion and for the same mission’.3

He repeated what he had said in 1996 when he invited the Movements to give their contribution to evangelisation through common witness and by collaborating together. He added that “in communion with the Pastors and linked with diocesan programmes”, the Movements would bring “their spiritual, educational and missionary riches to the heart of the Church as a precious experience and proposal of Christian life”.4

So, hand in hand with statements about the co-essentiality of the Petrine and Marian profiles of the Church, the Holy Father has energetically promoted a fuller and synergetic communion between the Church/Institution and Charims/Movements since the Church is founded on the foundation of Apostles and Prophets. When it comes to speaking about dialogue between the Movements we can certainly note a change of paradigm from a “before Pentecost ‘98” to an “after Pentecost ‘98”. Before ’98 what came into relief was the multiplicity and diversity of the charisms brought to life by the one Spirit of God. But now John Paul II himself highlights how all the charisms are established in unity by the same Holy Spirit and that their unity “precedes” all diversification.

3 See Pontifical Council for the Laity, Movements in the Church (Vatican, 1999), p. 221. 4 Homily on the Vigil of Pentecost, 25 May 1996, n. 7 in L’Osservatore Romano [English edition], 29 May 1996, p. 2

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Unity in the Spirit of charisms and institution is not primarily a goal to be reached but rather their very foundational reality

This communion can be described as a Trinitarian relationship. On May 30, 1998 the Pope defined St. Peter’s Square as the “great upper room of Pentecost”. The One Church professing that it is always “the same Spirit… always the same Lord…the same God who is at work in them all” (1 Cor 12:4-6) was present there. That explains why the Pope could add: ‘Today, from this square, Christ says to each of you: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mk 16:15). He is counting on every one of you, and so is the Church’.5

The most recent significant example of a new collaboration among the Movements was the meeting “New Ecclesial Movements and the New Evangelization” in which 1300 priests, deacons and seminarians took part. The goal was to come into direct contact with what the Holy Spirit is doing today in the Church through the charisms that lie at the origins of the new Movements. It was an opportunity to see just what is the novelty for evangelisation being indicated by the Holy Spirit through these new communities?

Organised by the Priests Centre of the Focolare Movement, the meeting was a powerful experience for all who attended because it showed how the diversity of charisms and the Movements are responding to the spiritual yearnings found in today’s world.

There were many surprising elements to the meeting.

For a start, it was amazing to get to meet in the course of just two days various founders and leaders of some of these Movements such as Chiara Lubich from the Focolare, Andrea Riccardi from St. Egidio, Fr. Michael Marmann from the Schönstatt Movement, Salvatore Martinez from the Renewal in the Spirit, Jesús Carrascosa and don Gerolamo Castiglioni from Communion and Liberation, Stefano Gennarini from the Neo-Catechumenate Way, and Bishop Vincenzo Paglia from St. Egidio.

It was also a grace to meet and hear Cardinal Francis Stafford, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and Cardinal Van Thuan, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as well as some theologians and first companions of the founders. It was all a great joy. It was an ecclesial experience lived in wonderful atmosphere of full communion.

Another surprising element was coming into direct contact with various forms of evangelisation being carried out by the different charisms that manage to bring the light and life of the Gospel into situations where normal diocesan and parish pastoral activity can’t reach. And, of course, a major surprise was the Holy Father’s message sent to Cardinal Stafford and read by him to the assembly. It expressed pleasure at the meeting and was full of enlightening pointers.

At the end of the meeting we received much feedback, but by way of summary, perhaps it suffices to convey the impression of the German group:

‘It seems to us that this congress has been an historical moment in the Church. What the Holy Spirit is doing today through the Ecclesial Movements has electrified and transformed us. We could sense a unanimous joy vibrating throughout the whole Mariapolis Centre in Castelgandolfo

5 Movements in the Church, p. 224.

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because it was as if we were all discovering a new face of the Church. We come away with a new enthusiasm for the Church, a new hope for her future. When we saw the film about Fontem in Cameroon entitled “A Miracle in the Forest” many of us had tears in our eyes. A rector from a large German seminary commented: “I am really, really happy. What I saw and heard was so strong and beautiful that I felt I was dreaming”’.

SILVANO COLA AND BRENDAN LEAHY

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Living the Church’s Co-essentiality of Gifts

Pope John Paul II and Chiara Lubich

A rich exchange of correspondence occurred on the occasion of the 2001 Congress. Firstly, Pope John Paul II sent a message to Cardinal Stafford. The participants at the Meeting responded by letter to the Holy Father’s message. A week later a letter arrived from the Secretariat of State to Chiara Lubich signed by Bishop Leonardo Sandri expressing the Pope’s joy at the “warm reception” of his words.

TO THE VENERABLE BROTHER CARDINAL JAMES FRANCIS STAFFORD

PRESIDENT OF THE PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR THE LAITY

I have heard that on the Focolare’s initiative, a theological-pastoral meeting will be held from June 26-28 on the theme: “New Ecclesial Movements for the New Evangelisation”. I would ask you, whose task it is to accompany and direct the journey of “ecclesial movements” in the Church’s communion and mission, to pass on my greetings to Ms. Chiara Lubich, to her collaborators, the speakers at the Meeting and all the priests, permanent deacons and seminarians and students of theology who are taking part in it.

In the Apostolic Letter, Novo millennio ineunte, I outlined the directions for the journey that the Church, guided by the abundant outpouring of grace that occurred during the recent Jubilee, is called to take at the dawn of the third millennium. The Church must “start out again from Christ” with her glance fixed on him and, in immersing herself in his mystery, commit herself to being for all a school of communion and concrete charity. Supported by the power of the Holy Spirit, despite human frailty, the Church can in this way bear witness to the love of God in all areas where human life and the building up of society are at stake.

This mission is for all the Christian community. The ecclesial movements are a “providential gift” for this journey as I myself recalled at that memorable meeting on May 30th 1998 in St. Peter’s Square. It was for this reason that in the Apostolic Letter referred to above, I underlined ‘the promotion of forms of association, whether of the more traditional kind or the newer ecclesial movements, which continue to give the Church a vitality that is God’s gift and a true “springtime of the Spirit”’ (n.46).

Many priests take part together with lay faithful in many ecclesial movements, attracted by the charismatic, pedagogic, communitarian and missionary impetus that accompanies the new ecclesial realities. This experience is very useful because “it is capable of enriching the individual priest’s life and animating the presbyterate with precious spiritual gifts.”6 It is clear in the Catholic Church that priests are above all called to live to the full the grace of the sacrament through which they are configured to Christ, the head and Shepherd, at the service of the whole Christian community in cordial and filial reference to their bishop and fraternally united in the diocesan presbyterate. They belong to the particular church and collaborate in her mission. But it is also true that “the charisms

6 Pastores dabo vobis, 31.

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of the Spirit always create affinities, destined to be a support for every one in their objective task in the Church”.7 This is precisely why movements can be useful also for priests.

Their positive efficacy can be seen when priests find “light and warmth” in movements that helps them to mature in a fervent Christian life and, in particular, in an authentic “sensus Ecclesiae” that urges them to a stronger fidelity to their legitimate Pastors. It makes them attentive to ecclesiastical discipline so that they can carry out with missionary zeal the duties of their ministry. Ecclesial movements are “source of help and support in the formation journey towards priesthood”, in particular for those who come from specific aggregative realities while always having the respect due to the discipline established in the Church for seminaries.

It is important, therefore, to avoid (the situation) whereby the participation of a priest, deacon or seminarian in movements or ecclesial aggregations would end up in a presumptious or restricted closure. It must open their spirit to welcoming, respecting and esteeming other modalities of participation of the faithful in the Church, urging them to be more and more men of communion, “pastors of the whole.”8

On these bases, being involved in ecclesial movements will become for priests a possibility of spiritual and pastoral enrichment. By participating in them, presbyters can better learn to live the Church in the co-essentiality of the sacramental, hierarchical and charismatic gifts that belong to the Church, in accordance with the variety of ministries, states of life and tasks that build up the Church.

“Touched” and “attracted” by a charism, sharing in a common story, being involved in the same group, priests and lay people share an interesting experience of con-fraternity among the “christifideles” building each other up mutually without ever confusing things.

It would be a grave loss if ever there were a “clericalisation” of the movements. Likewise, it would be damaging if the witness and ministry of priests would be in some way obfuscated and progressively assimilated to the lay state. Over and beyond the functions and “mansions” that he is called to carry out within a Movement, the priest, through his link with the hierarchical ministry, must place himself within the movement as a presence of Christ, head and shepherd, minister of the Word of God and the Sacraments, and educator in the faith. Indeed, the growth of the movements in the “ecclesial maturity” I mentioned at the Pentecost 98 meeting depends much on their contribution.

I therefore encourage this decastery to look after the journey of ecclesial movements carefully, to encourage an intense dialogue with them and accompany them with pastoral wisdom, ensuring that when necessary they receive opportune discernment, clarifications and directions.

I entrust the meeting to Mary, the Faithful Virgin and while gladly assuring all who will talk at the meeting a remembrance in prayer, I send a special apostolic blessing to all.

From the Vatican, June 21, 2001

7 Insegamenti di Giovanni Paolo II, VII/2, 1985, p. 660. 8 Pastores dabo vobis, 62.

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FOCOLARE MOVEMENT, CASTEL GANDOLFO, 27 JUNE 2001

HOLY FATHER, With great joy and a long applause the entire assembly welcomed the marvellous message you sent to His Eminence Cardinal Stafford on the occasion of the theological-pastoral meeting on “The Ecclesial Movements and the New Evangelisation” that is taking place here at the Mariapolis Centre in Castel Gandolfo.

From the depths of our heart we thank you for the deep reflections you have sent us – a true Magna Charta that will remain as a beacon of light for the life of Ecclesial Movements and especially for the participation of priests in these Movements.

Thanks, Holy Father, for the great encouragement we have received from these prophetic words. Thanks for the luminous guidelines with which you are directing our journey, opening avenues full of promise for the life of the Church!

We will journey now with even greater speed in order to work with you to unleash everywhere through a full reception of charisms the “springtime of the Spirit” that humanity is awaiting.

As you know, Holy Father, this meeting came about following the vibrant call you directed to the whole Church at Pentecost ’98.

In contact with Chiara Lubich, Andrea Riccardi, Salvatore Martinez, Fr. Marmann from Schönstatt and other responsibles of Movements who have spoken to us, we have seen the face of the Church-communion radiate again with a beauty that can be seen only when mutual love and unity are full. All of this has filled us with great joy and has set alight in us a new and great hope.

Renewed by our meeting with the living Christ, we have proposed to put into practice and spread everywhere the “spirituality of communion” you speak of in Novo millennio ineunte so that the communities entrusted to us will become for all a “school of communion.”

Once again, Holy Father, a heartfelt thanks, together with Chiara Lubich who felt very moved on receiving your personal greeting to her. With all our heartfelt affection, united in our prayer that accompanies you always.

In the Lord,

The 1300 priests, permanent deacons and seminarians gathered at the Mariapolis Centre in Castel Gandolfo.

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SECRETARIAT OF STATE FIRST SECTION – GENERAL AFFAIRS

VATICAN, 5 JULY 2001 TO: Ms. Chiara Lubich President of the Focolare Movement Via di Frascati, 306 00040 Rocca di Papa (RM)

DEAR MADAM, The many priests, permanent deacons and seminarians gathered at the Mariapolis Centre in Castel Gandolfo for the theological-pastoral meeting on the theme “Ecclesial Movements for the New Evangelisation” sent expressions of thanks to the Holy Father for the message that was sent in his name to His Eminence, Cardinal James F. Stafford, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

His Holiness is happy to hear about the warm reception and full assent to his words that principally concerned the relationship between priests and Ecclesial Movements. In wishing that this deeper and shared awareness concerning such an important aspect of the Church’s life may contribute to building up the Church as an authentic school of communion, the Holy Father renews his blessing to you and those united to you in this sincere gesture.

With every kind wish,

In the Lord,

Leonardo Sandri Substitute

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A New Evangelization

Chiara Lubich

The proclamation of the “Good News” that began with the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles has continued uninterruptedly throughout the centuries. It has penetrated and transformed various civilisations. But in moments of great historical transitions when even the Word of God seems outdated and ineffective, God has always sent charismatic individuals to the Church. Through their witness they bring the Gospel back into fashion and renew hope for a better future in the world. It seems today that this might be the special contribution of ecclesial movements. The following is the address Chiara Lubich gave at the beginning of the Congress outlining the Focolare Movement’s contribution to today’s New Evangelization.

Your Eminence, your Excellencies, dear reverend priests, First of all my greeting to all of you present here and my best wishes that the days of this meeting be full of gladness, an expression of that springtime of the Church that is already well underway.

The title of the talk I will give you now, in the context of the theme of your Congress on “Ecclesial Movements and a New Evangelization” is: “The “New Evangelization with particular reference to the experience of the Focolare Movement.”

It comprises three parts. First of all I will review John Paul II's thoughts on the New Evangelization. Then I will try to see whether the Focolare Movement, as I imagine also the other movements and ecclesial communities, can truly claim to be a real gift of God for the New Evangelization, as the Holy Father himself has affirmed. In a third step I will present a concrete example of the New Evangelization.

The Holy Father uses the expression “New Evangelization” for the first time in 1983 in announcing an evangelization that is “new in ardour, in methods and in modes of expression.”9 In 198810 he explains these features and says that evangelization will be new in ardour if it gradually increases union with God in those who promote it. It will be new in methods if it is carried out by the entire people of God. It will be new in modes of expression if it is in conformity with the promptings of the Spirit.

According to the Holy Father the first thing this evangelization should announce is this: “Humanity is loved by God! Each Christian's words and life must make this proclamation resound: God loves you, Christ came for you.”11 Because, he continues, “evangelization is the effort on behalf of the Church to proclaim to all that humanity is loved by God, that he offered his life for us in Christ Jesus and that he invites us to a life of eternal happiness.”12

“This New Evangelization is directed not only to individual persons but also to entire portions of populations -- its purpose, according to the Pope, is the formation of mature ecclesial communities.” The laity, he adds, have their part to fulfil in the formation of these ecclesial communities, not only through a testimony that only they can give (the “consecratio mundi” through the various fields of

9 John Paul II to the bishops of CELAM, Port au Prince, Haiti, 9 March 1983 in La Traccia 3 (1983), p. 269. 10 Homily in Salto, Uruguay, 9 May 1988 in La Traccia 5 (1988), pp. 523-525. 11 Christifideles Laici 34 in EV 11, 1751-1752. 12 To the Bishops of the United States, 17 March 1998 in La Traccia 3 (1998), p. 257.

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human endeavour) but also through a missionary zeal and activity toward the many people who still do not believe and who no longer live the faith received at baptism.”13

These are all indications which the Holy Father gives for an evangelization that is truly new. So too the following passage, which is very significant. He says: “We cannot evangelize if we do not first evangelize ourselves, if we are not personally an object of evangelization.”14

And he explains: “To nourish ourselves with the Word in order to be 'servants' of the Word in the work of evangelization: This is surely a priority for the Church at the dawn of the new millennium,”15 because “only someone who has been transformed by Christ's law of love (as seen from the Gospel) can bring about a true “metanoia” (conversion) in the hearts and minds of others, in the different fields of endeavour, in nations, in the world.”

He continues: “(Human) transformation thus becomes a source of the witness which the world is waiting for. It can be summed up, first of all in love of neighbour, in the works of mercy.”16

So the Holy Father concentrates personal re-evangelization in the practice of love, which contains all the law and the prophets. Love, which he considers as being lived out by each person, but also by more than one person, thereby becoming mutual love.

In fact, we know that several months ago in Novo millennio ineunte he spoke of the need for every Christian to be formed in the life of the Gospel, summing it up in the new commandment of Jesus. And he invited the entire people of God (from those at the apex of the institutional Church down to the last faithful), that people he had called since 1983 to bring about a New Evangelization, to live its necessary consequence: a “spirituality of communion.” It is a spirituality of communion which the Holy Father sees possible if everyone has before their eyes a model and a “key” to communion: the suffering countenance of Jesus crucified and forsaken.

And we could add that it was precisely mutual love which the early Christians regarded as a means to revealing Christ to the world, and therefore to evangelization. “By this they will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (cf. John 13:35). Moreover, mutual love, this “spirituality of communion” lived out, will offer the possibility of sanctity, which the Holy Father regards as necessary to evangelization.

“Just as it does in proclaiming the truths of faith he affirms the ‘New Evangelization’ will show its authenticity and unleash all its missionary force when it is carried out through the gift not only of the word proclaimed but also of the word lived In particular, the life of holiness.”17

So, announcing the Word. The Holy Father feels that the “New Evangelization, like that of all times, will be effective if it proclaims from the rooftops what it has first lived in intimacy with the Lord.”18 “We must rekindle in ourselves,” he says, “the impetus of the beginnings and allow ourselves to be filled with the ardour of the apostolic preaching which followed Pentecost.”19

And he comments on the current situation: “Even in countries evangelized many centuries ago, the reality of a Christian society which, amid all the frailties which have always marked human life, measured itself explicitly on Gospel values, is now gone. Today we must courageously face a situation which is becoming increasingly diversified and demanding, in the context of globalization

13 Christifideles Laici, 34. 14 To Pilgrims of the diocese of Turin, 19 February 1998 in La Traccia 2 (1998), pp. 174-75. 15 Novo Millennio Ineunte, 40. 16 To pilgrims of diocese of Torun, op. cit. 17 Veritas Splendor, 106 in EV 13, 2798. 18 Vita Consecrata, 81 in EV 15, 684. 19 Novo Millennio Ineunte, 40.

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and of the consequent new and uncertain mingling of peoples and cultures. We must (therefore) revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!”(1 Corinthians 9:16).20

Lastly, he says he is convinced this is a concept we have already touched on — that the ecclesial movements “represent a true gift of God both for New Evangelization and for missionary activity properly so-called.”21

All this so far has been in reference to the Pope.

So we have come to the second step. If the Holy Father says that our movements and new ecclesial communities are a gift to the Church for a New Evangelization, we must believe him. He knows us well.

Now I shall try to verify this by analyzing what I myself have seen come to life and develop: the Focolare Movement. And I do so very willingly because many of you belong to this movement and others want to get to know it.

The New Evangelization, the Pope says, must be new in ardour; that is, carrying it out gradually increases union with God. It seems to me that this is truly what takes place in the hearts of the Focolarini, both priests and laity, who evangelize.

Prompted by their charism, they put love of neighbour at the basis of all they do, and we know that this is the root of love for God, the source of a growing union with him. St. Catherine says it and we repeat it, with the example of the plant: Love of neighbour and love of God are the root and foliage of one another.

Does the Pope want all the members of the Church, the entire People of God, to work for the New Evangelization? In giving life to our movement, God did not choose special persons such as priests or religious. He chose lay people, indeed he chose laywomen, a few young girls. And even now, although this ecclesial reality of ours spread in 182 nations of the world and comprises every state of life, from little children to bishops, the majority are lay people. So it is above all our lay people that God uses as his instruments for a New Evangelization.

Another point. The New Evangelization should begin with the great proclamation that “God loves everyone”. The fact that the Pope indicated this as the first thing to announce, struck me very deeply, because from the very first days of our new life, the Holy Spirit enlightened us precisely on this. And I know this is true for other movements too. In fact, the first words that we movingly and with enthusiasm learned to repeat to ourselves and to others were: “God loves me. God loves you. God loves us immensely.”

We had come to understand this under the bombs of the Second World War. We were young and open to the future, and we were dismayed to see everything falling apart. We were searching for an Ideal that could not be destroyed and we found this Ideal in God. God who had revealed himself if we can use this word -- for what he truly is: love.

And so, if until then we had known only the earthly affection of our relatives and friends, now we discovered a heavenly Father who watches over us with immense love, in all the circumstances of our life, happy, sad or indifferent. Moreover everything that happened was an expression of his love, a love which enveloped us, everyone.

We believed in the love of God; and we continued to announce it to whoever we met, in these 58 years of the movement's existence.

20 Ibid. 21 Redemptoris Missio, 72 in EV 12, 688.

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Another point: The New Evangelization destined, as the Pope desires, to form mature Christian communities

Isn't this in itself the goal which the movements and ecclesial communities can reach, including the Focolare Movement? In fact, our aim is not only to evangelize once in a while, when we go on a mission or we carry out some other activity; or to evangelize a first generation of members. Our formation is continuous, for people of every age, and so we can hope to see the formation of mature Christian communities.

But, as we heard, in order to bring about a “New Evangelization” we must first evangelize ourselves. One of our first concerns has always been to re-evangelize above all our own selves, changing our way of thinking, desiring, and loving to those of Christ, as the Gospel describes. Those who are familiar with our history know that this is true.

And to bring about this personal evangelization the Holy Spirit prompted us from the very start to live one sentence of the Gospel at a time. We would write a simple commentary on it, according to the interpretation of the Church, so that whoever reads it could put it into practice. This little page today is printed in 3 million copies. It is translated into 95 languages and regional dialects and sent to every corner of the world.

It is usually taken from the liturgy of the period in question. It is put into practice and the experiences made in doing so are then shared in our large and small communities, for the mutual edification of its members. We give utmost attention to all the Words of the Gospel that are suitable to be put into practice.

And the Gospel, as you know, contains very many of these. However for our typical “charism of unity” there is one which is of particular interest to us, and which sums up all the rest: It is love. And it is there that we aim. In fact, in speaking of the New Evangelization the Holy Father said that we should not only believe in God's love for us but also evangelize our own selves with love. And this is what we do.

In our movement (I mention this as an aside), in contact with the Gospel, we have experienced and become convinced that the love the Gospel speaks of has particular requirements. In our circle we speak of the art of loving. It is the art the Gospel teaches of loving everyone, including enemies, as our heavenly Father who sends rain and sun on the good and the evil.

It is a love that is always first to take the initiative, first in loving as our Father, who sent his Son to die for us when we were still sinners and therefore not loving him.

It is a love which consists not just in words, but by which we “make ourselves one” with others, to use the words of St. Paul. Therefore it is concrete.

It is a love by which we love Jesus in our brothers and sisters, reminded of his words: “You did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

It is a love which by nature tends toward becoming reciprocal.

And this brings us to another requirement of the New Evangelization: that of living the new commandment of Jesus, by which we live the spirituality of unity or the spirituality of communion, as it is called in the Pope's letter, Novo millennio ineunte, which I already mentioned.

The early Christians lived this way and people said of them: “See how they love one another and are ready to give their lives for one another.”22 Jesus crucified and forsaken lived in this way: He who is the key of the spirituality of communion, and has been a model of unity for us since the

22 Tertullian, Apologetic, 39,7.

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beginning of our movement. And now the Holy Father is presenting the spirituality of communion to the entire Catholic world so that it may make the Church, through him, a home and a school of communion.

This too is something we have done in the Focolare Movement from the start. The Word rings out in every corner: in personal relations, in our meetings and congresses, in some 170 Mariapolises (cities of Mary) which are formed every summer in various nations, and in the 20 permanent little towns in every continent of the world.

There is a direct personal communication and we use the most modern communication media: press, radio, TV, theatre, telephone conference calls, musical groups, etc. For example we use written words to speak of the Gospel through 37 editions of our magazines and 26 New City publishing houses throughout the world.

As John Paul II has said, there no longer exists a Christian society. What exists is globalization with its typical interwoven mixture of peoples and cultures. And here we want to single out the “new modes of expression” which, as I said earlier, the Holy Father spoke of in 1983 as characterizing the New Evangelization, together with new ardor and new methods. They are new modes of expression brought about by the Holy Spirit for new situations. I am referring to the modern forms of evangelization consisting in the dialogues already pointed out by the Second Vatican Council: the first, within the Church itself; the second, the ecumenical dialogue; the third, interreligious dialogue; the fourth, with persons of other convictions but of good will.

In the past 40 years the Focolare Movement has opened all four of these dialogues. It does so first of all in the Church, among individual Catholics, among ecclesial movements and new communities, as well as with other associations and also among the new and ancient charismatic realities.

For the remaining three dialogues it has opened a kind of dialogue which is also an interfacing between the truths which both sides live and profess.

In the first stage of this dialogue we try to understand our dialogue-partner, emptying ourselves of our own ideas so as to be able to make ourselves one with our neighbour. This way of acting has two effects: It helps us to become inculturated in the world of our neighbour and it builds up, in our neighbour, a willingness to listen.

The next step is what the Pope defined a “respectful announcing.” In this step, to be loyal to God and sincere toward our neighbour, we speak about what we think and believe, without forcing our opinion or wanting to gain others over to our own ideas, but letting the Holy Spirit work.

In this we give our contribution toward ecumenism. And here we have a very vast range of experience. We have many things in common with our fellow Christians (baptism, Scripture, the Creed, the councils, etc.), as well as our own spirituality, which they live as far as they can, and which is considered by the heads of the churches to be an ecumenical spirituality. Thus with these members of 350 different Churches we feel we are almost like one Christian people awaiting full unity. This is the dialogue of the people.

With the faithful of other religions the first step is to live together the so-called golden rule, which is one of the “seeds of the Word” present in almost every faith (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” see Luke 6:31). Also in this dialogue we have had a vast range of profound contacts for years: with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Shintoists, Hindus, etc. But, we would need time apart to be able to tell you something about it. Suffice it to say for now that their openness toward us is so great that they call us to speak about our Christian experience in Muslim mosques, Buddhist temples, Jewish centres.

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Lastly, the people of good will who are members of our movement, number nearly 100,000. Although they have no religious points of reference, they realize that mutual love is not only for Christians, but is something inscribed in the DNA of every human being. And so it is possible to work also with them for universal brotherhood and to safeguard the human values that are our mutual concern.

In this way little by little a dialogue is born also with these people, with a “respectful announcing” of Christian truths. And when expressed with love, they cannot help but interest and fascinate every human being, who in himself or herself is “naturally Christian.” And this is evangelization.

The necessary conclusion, I feel, with immense gratitude toward the Holy Spirit, is that the Focolare Movement is indeed suited for the New Evangelization. We could even say that it seems to be the answer. And we could say the same, I think, of other movements and ecclesial communities.

And now we have reached the third step. I would like to present to you an example of the “New Evangelization” of the Focolare Movement, which many of you may have already heard, but which I hope you will like.

What I am going to tell you is a short story, which seems almost like a fairy tale. It’s about a tribe, the Bangwa people, in West Cameroon.

In 1966 we Focolarini were invited to take care of this people that lived in the heart of the forest, in primitive, very poor conditions, affected by many illnesses, with a 90% infant mortality rate. Feeling desperate because their own assiduous prayers to the god of their traditional religion had not obtained any results, they brought an offering to the closest Catholic mission and entrusted themselves to their prayers.

Upon their request, the Focolarini soon opened something like an outpatient clinic in a very squalid shed, where even snakes occasionally passed by.

During one of my visits there in the '60s, while groups of Bangwa who shared the ideas and views of their wise and prudent king, Fon Defang of Fontem, took turns in performing various dances in a large clearing in the forest, I had a strong impression. It seemed to me that God, like a sun, was enveloping all of us together; and a city we would build together would rise up in the middle of that tropical forest.

In later years the Focolarini built a modest hospital, with the help of funds collected by the youth of the movement in various nations; they opened schools; they channeled a spring of water flowing down the mountain in order to generate a bit of electricity; they made mud bricks and built a few houses.

But first and foremost, with a constant thrust to live the Gospel, they put into practice the Word of Life. They loved concretely all those brothers and sisters who were in dire need, sick and illiterate, seeing Christ in them. And, following our fundamental norm, they loved one another.

The Bangwa, who had learned about the unhappy fact of colonialism even if they were in the forest, observed them for months: They wanted to see if those white people were perhaps motivated by personal interests.

Convinced of the sincerity and transparency of these new guests, they collaborated, as much as they could. They listened willingly to fundamental ideas about our faith. And soon, they asked to be baptized. Thus during the first few years thousands of them converted to the Catholic Church. They were about 10,000.

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Years passed and everything grew: The hospital was enlarged; the infant mortality rate was reduced to 2%; the plague of sleeping sickness was eradicated; a college was built with all the lower and higher classes; 12 roads were opened to connect the various villages; the Focolarini, with their help, built 60 houses; the Bangwa, with our help, built many others. A parish church was built by the ecclesial authority.

Now, more than 30 years later, I returned to Fontem and the beautiful large town is there for everyone to see. I saw what the Gospel can do when it is proclaimed alongside witness. And also what brotherhood can build when it is lived between people of two continents and two races who have become one.

In the meantime the government provided for the most urgent social needs, and in 1992 the district that included Fontem and other locations became a prefecture.

And now, although the Bangwa continue to profess the traditional religion, and although the main structure is still supported by an ancestral system based on thousands of ancient norms, brotherhood prevails and works miracles. The new king, Dr. Lucas Njifua Fontem, son of the previous king, saw and understood.

He openly declares that there, in Fontem, the inhabitants who follow the movement never present any problems. They resolve everything among themselves with love; they don’t fight over land boundaries but rather define them in harmony and peace. They do not rob; they do not injure and much less kill; they do not seem to have any need for the police; they live in peace.

It has also been observed that illiteracy is diminishing; there is a great solidarity in the families; they defend life, which has always been greatly appreciated by the African culture, at all ages, and they have a profound esteem for the elderly; they respect authority; they are incredibly generous.

This is why during my recent stay there, the Fon of Fontem publicly invited his people, with determination and ardor, to make their own the Christian spirit of our movement.

Naturally, all this must continue and go forward. Toward this end, a project has begun, carried out by the Focolarini present there and by suitably prepared members of the Bangwa, aimed at an evangelization of the whole region. Periodic meetings are held in which an explanation of the words of the Gospel are underlined by experiences, interspersed by songs, dances, mimes, music, slides or brief documentaries, with an ever-growing participation of the people.

Now four other Fons, with their peoples, are beginning to participate in this initiative and have asked us to come to their territories.

There have been numerous fruits everywhere: forgiveness and reconciliation between relatives and between neighbour s; the loving acceptance of sufferings and even of mortal illnesses as the will of God; believing in God's providence which arrives exactly when needed; helping people to be faithful to Christian morality; a return to the sacraments, especially to matrimony; an experience of inner peace. The church, with our two priests, is always full and the liturgical functions are always carried out in a very beautiful, supernatural atmosphere.

Ecclesiastical and civic authorities encourage us by saying: “What you have done in Fontem, you must do all over Africa and in Madagascar.” In the meantime, four other dioceses have begun to take action. They have set up parochial commissions to look after the preparation and following up of this New Evangelization.

In observing what has happened, people have said it’s a kind of miracle. A revolution of love is being carried out similar to what was seen in the times of the Roman Empire. Thoroughly corrupt

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though it was, the early Christians, “born yesterday” as Tertullian said, had invaded the whole world known at that time.23

Your Eminence, your Excellencies, reverend priests, this is an example we can offer you with regard to the New Evangelization. Certainly, it is not the only one. May God help us to evangelize the world in a new way, where we can and must work. All for the glory of God!

23 Ibid., 37,4.

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Ecclesial Movements — Modern Schools of Communion

Andrea Riccardi  

Prof. Andrea Riccardi is the founder of the St. Egidio Community. In his talk he traces the vitality of the Movements and their place in the Church. He highlights the spirit of communion that they are building up with the pastors of the Church.

Dear friends, I am very happy to be here on the first day of this congress organized by the Focolare Movement. I am pleased to meet with so many priests from around the world associated with the charism of the Focolare and other Movements. The title of this congress represents your common experience: "Ecclesial Movements and the New Evangelization." Indeed, dear friends, you have an important contribution to make on the most important frontier of the Church’s life in the third millennium: the communication of the Gospel.

I am happy to see you face to face and to get to know your experience. In fact, the Movements and new communities really feel a strong need to collaborate and meet together. Recently Chiara was in Trastevere, in Rome, at the Basilica of Santa Maria, where the community of Sant’Egidio prays every evening. Prayer is the first vocation of our community throughout the world, from Maputo in Mozambique to San Salvatore in Central America. It is the first work in a community that works in many parts of the world for the poorest, those the world considers on the fringes.

Chiara's visits have become a regular feature for us. In the course of her visits, we feel united in the diversity of our charisms. We support and complement one another. It is in that same spirit that I am with you today because what one Movement lives belongs to all the other Movements. This is not because of a marginal connection, but because of the profound communion that we are living together. We realize we are walking in the same direction, on the same path even though the manner of the walking seems and is indeed different. The direction of our journey, to communicate the Gospel, originates from the depth of our charisms. As we read in the Gospel, Movements usually begin from sharing the compassion of Jesus for the tired and sick crowds. It was to them that he sent his apostles to preach the Gospel of the kingdom. The Movements are born at different moments in the course of history. They are the Lord’s gifts of love for the people he desires to evangelize.

The first thing the apostles and the early community did after the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost day in Jerusalem was the communication of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, the principal characteristic of the Church’s life was to evangelize not only in countries where the Gospel never arrived, but also in “old” Christian lands. The institutions and social contexts that historically managed to communicate the faith have disappeared. At the same time, every new generation symbolizes a great opportunity to rediscover the words of the Gospel and to open its way of life to the presence of the Lord. For this reason, dear friends, it is correct to speak of a new evangelization.

We find ourselves in a very new world, a globalized world, without borders, and yet a world where unfortunately many walls are reappearing. Between the twentieth century and the new one, a new anthropological and historical shift has happened. As a result, evangelization in this new world is positioned between a global world and many closed factions. We are here, however, to speak not

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only about evangelization, but also to ask ourselves what are the responsibilities the new Movements have in evangelization?

Our program began with the words of John Paul II on that unforgettable Pentecost day of 1998. I repeat them: "I have often had occasion to stress that there is no conflict or opposition in the Church between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension, of which the Movements are a significant expresission. Both are co-essential to the divine constitution of the Church…”.

He was not speaking theoretically but reflecting the reality of our life. This is a reality that touches on the nature of being Church and has a direct bearing on evangelization in the contemporary world. Moreover, priests who through their ministry are in contact with the institutional dimension of the Church, and who – like you – are very connected with the charismatic dimension, are very attentive to this reality. Priests who participate in the charisms of Movements are living on the front lines. This can be a rich experience of exchange and at the same time it can be difficult.

In the long history of the Church this was not always as luminous and clear as on Pentecost day of 1998 in Saint Peter's Square. That Pentecost day represents a point of arrival and a moment of great theological and ecclesial clarity. I think we must make that speech of the Pope better known and reflect upon it more. Moreover, the problem of the relationship between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension of the Church is as old as the history of the Church. My desire as a historian tempts me to examine this long history and gather examples of this relationship. But this is not my purpose today.

Nonetheless, I would like to cite for you an episode from early in the history of the Western Church. It’s an episode narrated by Gregory the Great about an incident in the life of Saint Benedict who was at the beginning of that great charismatic Movement of men and women that became Western monasticism (the heart of the evangelization in many parts of medieval Europe).

This story is about a big difficulty that arose between Benedict, a great charismatic, and a priest named Florentinus. This priest was envious of Benedict’s good reputation and the fact that many were attracted to him. His envy reached a point that the priest sent him a poisoned piece of bread. But God saved the father of the monks. Then the priest tried to defame him and test him. However, God protected the father of the monks. This episode is about a tension between an ordained minister who could not tolerate the charism (even to the point of wanting to suppress it) and a great charismatic man. That same tension can occur in reverse order. If a charismatic group with no sense of being a child of the Church arrogantly views itself as the perfect Church or has a messianic complex or does not look upon the ministerial dimension with love and veneration, forgetting the fact that in the house of God there are many dwellings (and among them new ways of living the same faith), these tensions are bound to occur. In fact, to live the co-essential nature of the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension of the Church means understanding that we are all children in the Church. An ancient Armenian saying of the fifth century states: "Let us recognize the sacred Gospel as our Father and the Universal, Apostolic Church as our Mother."

A great charismatic person of the 1200's, Francis of Assisi, has very significant expressions in this regard. They are fitting expressions of the genuine evangelical nature of his charism. Tommaso da Cealano recounts in his Life of the saint that during those difficult times the Pope had a dream before meeting Francis. ‘He dreamed that the Lateran Basilica was about to collapse and that a small, irrelevant religious, propped it upon his shoulders so that it wouldn’t fall. The Pope thought to himself: “Here is the one who, with his deeds and words will sustain the Church of Christ.”’ It is a marvellous image of the co-essentiality of charism and institution. That small man

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carried the immense basilica that was about to fall, without forsaking his littleness. It is an evocative image of co-essentiality becoming exceptional co-responsibility.

I cannot delay too long on this aspect of Francis, this great charismatic figure and great son of the Church as seen by his relationship with the Pope and his decision never to preach against the will of the local bishop. But I would like you to listen to words taken from his testament, written in 1226, the same year as his death:

“Then the Lord gave me and still gives me such faith in priests who live according to the manner of the Holy Roman Church because of their sacred orders, that if they were to persecute me, I would [still] have recourse to them. And if I possessed as much wisdom as Solomon and came upon pitiful priests of this world, I would not preach contrary to their will in the parishes in which they live. I desire to fear, love, and honor them and all others as my masters. And I do not wish to consider sin in them because I see the Son of God in them and they are my masters. And I act in this way since I see nothing corporally of the Most High Son of God in this world except His Most holy Body and Blood which they alone consecrate and which they alone administer to others.”

The Franciscan charism engaged so much of the thirteenth century Christian world, that it pushed it beyond the borders of Christianity. Its encounter with Islam went beyond the logic of violent counter-positions. At that time – as we know – the relationship between Islam and Christianity was represented by the war of the “holy-crusades”. But Francis took another direction. The Franciscan charism manifested a strength in communicating the Gospel. This communicative strength of the charism resided in its unity with the institutions and ministers of the Church at that time. Where this unity exists, where there is communion, the attractive and communicative strength of the Gospel of the Lord is multiplied. We are not speaking of a pastoral plan or project, but of something that comes from the depth of a living Church that breathes with both lungs in the immensity of both dimensions, without mortifying one or the other.

When co-essentiality between charism and institution is authentically lived, the entire Church becomes adorned with a particular strength. It’s a point on which I would like to conclude my reflection in a few moments. The charism of a layman, Francis (who was later ordained a deacon), attracted many priests, as we find out from the first companions of Francis and then in the development of the Franciscan Movement itself. Priests gathered around the humble Francis and were to be found in his Movement from the beginning. But, moreover, Francis’ charism transmitted the Gospel beyond the tired, feudal borders of ecclesiastical life into the heart of society; and carried it even beyond Christianity. This is an image we must keep in mind as we enter a new century.

It’s an image that was explicitly to be found in the talk of John Paul II at the vigil of Pentecost 1998. He reminded us that when charism and institution live together in unity, when there is freedom in service of the Gospel and love in differences, then the strength of salvation in the life of the Church, of communities and of individuals becomes evident. And this is what many priests who are associated with the charism of a Movement tell me. They feel more fulfilled as “priests”, better able to communicate the Gospel, stronger in their faith and fully at the service of the People of God. And many bishops and priests who do not belonging to the charism of a Movement, when they see the charism lived well in the Church comment on how the Gospel speaks in an eloquent manner.

Every charism has its own history. As children of the Church, all of them have value even though some of them might be more or less developed. The history of the last three or four years in which we have met many new communities and many new Movements has been a period of discovering the value of each reality – even if each is different – brought about by the Spirit. Every Movement has its own history and its own way of living the co-essentiality. Each represents an enrichment for all of us. For this reason the dynamic of the future of each Movement is not to

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become clericalized: it is not more ecclesial, if it is more clerical. A charism is not a surge that, good or bad, has to be absorbed. There is a fluctuation of the charism in life. Free and yet united, in strong communion with the institutional dimension and with the other charisms, each charism represents a great richness.

The problem about Movements is not their clericalization or their being absorbed. An ancient example of how this issue was dealt with can be found in the rule of St. Benedict – expression of the great monastic charism in the West that was a profound power of evangelization and humanization from the very early Medieval times. The Rule of St. Benedict deals in two chapters on the topic of priests who want to enter the monastery and share the monastic charism, and on the presbyteral ordination of monks. In the first case, that of the priests who enter the monastery, Benedict writes: “Should a member of the priesthood wish to enter the monastery, permission is not to be immediately granted. If he persists in his desire, he must know that he shall have to obey the Rule strictly.”

The point is that the priest who enters to become part of the community knows that he must live the charism in depth, represented by the Rule. The Rule and the abbot come first. What has to be avoided is that, because he is a priest, the ordained man considers himself over and above the charism itself.

On the other hand, from within the Benedictine Movement some monks can be ordained. And so the Rule states:

“Should the abbot wish to have a priest or a deacon ordained, he should chose from among his own monks. Those chosen must be worthy of the priesthood. The ordained monk must be neither arrogant nor proud. He must not do anything other than what the abbot orders, for he is even more subject to the Rule’s discipline. He should never use his office as an excuse to stray from the Rule’s obedience and discipline, but must forever strive to reach God.

He will keep his entrance rank except in the service at the altar…”

The ordained minister continues to be someone who shares in the charism (he keeps his place always!), and indeed – because he is a priest – he knows that he has to live the charism even more (to place himself more than the others under the discipline of the Rule). A priest – and this is the spirit of the Rule – cannot be less a monk, but because he is a priest he must almost live the charism more. Thus the monastery does not become clericalized, but rather through both the lay and clerical monks, the monastery revolves around the charism, represented by the Rule and the abbot.

We can see that the issue of the relationship between the two dimensions in the life of the Church, and that of priests belonging to charismatic Movements did not originate with us, but has its roots even in the first millennium. To resolve this issue in a unilateral manner – that is without communion – could end up in either a clericalization of the Movements or, at the opposite extreme, their absolutization in the Church where they see themselves as superior over other experiences or even over the ordained ministry itself. In this regard, I am again reminded of words from the Testament of Francis of Assisi:

“And I act in this way since I see nothing corporally of the Most High Son of God in this world except His Most holy Body and Blood which they consecrate and which they alone administer to others.”

After the Second Vatican Council and with John Paul II, the history of this issue has reached a particular point of maturation in the Church’s consciousness. However, this awareness, as expressed by the Pope during Pentecost of 1998, represents a great responsibility for all of us in the

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contemporary world. In what sense do we mean responsibility? I believe under two aspects: 1. communion in the Church and 2. the communication of the Gospel in the modern world.

A political and external reading of the life of the Church often portrayed almost a rivalry among the Movements, starting from their diversity. The experience that we have in dialogue, in unity and in mutual support among the Movements, makes us say the opposite. I do not see this rivalry except, perhaps, sometimes in some experience that is only beginning and is still immature. In fact, our experience is that the diversity does not motivate rivalry, but instead helps each one to see – exactly in the encounter with each other – the specificity of his own charism.

In order to remain true, a charism cannot claim to want to shape all of the Church upon itself in some messianic way. That would be an absolutization of the charism that wrongs the very gift that has been received. What has been going on in the life of the Church since Pentecost 1998 has been a profound growth in collaboration and friendship among the Movements. I say that because, together with Chiara Lubich, I have participated in this new stage that has developed into many meetings among the leaders of the Movements themselves. But this new stage has also led to a growth of friendship among people of different Movements.

This friendship had, of course, already been alive for years. A friend of mine of St. Egidio who works in a hospital told me how in a situation of great tension and disunity, other colleagues from different Movements came together. Life situations, witness of the Gospel and charity draw us near to those who participate in different spiritualities. The same experience is verified in the meeting with bishops, pastors and priests who are part of a Movement or who are related to the spirituality of a new Community.

A lived spirituality developes a taste for other charisms in the life of the Church in the sense of welcoming and receiving a stimulus from another charism, even if they do not belong to that spirituality. I have a lot of concrete experience in this regard that confirm this for me. I have seen priests of the Focolare Movement who were very concretely dedicated to getting the St. Egidio community started where they live, treating it as if it were their very own experience.

Why? It seems to me that in these last years we have become aware that diversity lived in love is a richness for the Church and for every charism. It is a widespread awareness among the Movements, but also among those who do not directly participate in the spirituality and life of the Movements. Many meetings and days of reflection, animated by the Movements and based on the unity among them, have given joy to numerous bishops. In some cases, the bishops themselves have organized these days. It’s not a question of coordinating and forming a Council of Movements. Rather it is something much more profound. After all, what is the use of coordination if the profound awareness of unity is missing, if love is not at the base, love that brings to light how each of the Movements is indispensable for each other?

Coordination, consultation and advisory bodies are nothing new in the organization of the Church. But here we are speaking of something more: it is a question of the true reception of the Council, as John Paul II proposes: that of a Church rich in charisms, proud of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but united and cohesive in love.

The Movements are not small Churches, ambitious to become a large Church. They are gifts that throughout the history of the 20th century the Lord has given to his Church. Every Movement has interpreted an aspect of the vocation of the Church itself in an original way: but it naturally returns this gift to the Church. Many priestly vocations born within the Movements are a gift to the Church. The witness of charity towards all, but above all towards the poorest is a gift to the Church throughout the whole world. The communication of the Gospel that is at the base of the missionary structure of the charism of the Movements is a gift to the Church.

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The Movements are – to use a term of John Paul II’s in Novo millennio ineunte – schools of communion. The common life itself among priests and laity, jointly sharing in the mission, in the spirit of a charism, is a school of communion. If the Movements are born from a charism and a founder, they move – at least those of the twentieth century – in the dynamic itself of communion. This communion establishes original, simple, direct methods to communicate the Gospel and to live it in an attractive way for many men and women, our contemporaries. This communion gives rise to a fullness of life that embraces the bigger and smaller Movements, Church institutions, ordained ministers, local Churches, parishes and religious communities. This fullness of life is eloquent, communicative by itself: it speaks of the beauty of the Christian life, communicates its evangelical foundation, engages others.

Unity among the Movements is not the construction of some kind of frontline of the most active forces of the Church. It is not that at all. Being united does not mean that we all speak the same language and do the same things. That would be a diminution of the idea of unity. Our profound communion is one that becomes solidarity in diversity and represents a richness in mission. After Pentecost, the first Pentecost at Jerusalem, the apostles were not heard speaking the same language, but were heard speaking in different languages. Yet their unity was profound, as was manifested with the address of Peter.

After Pentecost 1998, following the talk of John Paul II, we are not called to form some kind of united front: that would be too little. But we are called to love one another deeply, to become one, to understand that we have a mission together in the world, to sustain one another, but also to be ourselves, to make of our freedom an occasion to live according to the Spirit, to serve the Gospel, to edify the Church.

I say to each of our communities, especially to those that are more distant and in difficult parts of the world: you are never alone! In March of this year I was in Mozambique where I visited a good part of the 50 or more communities that have come to life in that country after the peace accord. This treaty was signed at St. Egidio and was mediated by us between the government and the guerrillas. It put an end to a war that had lasted 15 years and produced one million dead. To all of them I said: you will never be alone! But I also realized that also a Movement will never be alone: it is beautiful to know that someone is travelling along with you.

In the Gospels, Jesus sent his disciples on the first missionary journey two by two. Gregory the Great asked himself why Jesus did not send them out alone. His answer is that journeying one next to the other, communicating the Gospel together, and curing the sick, they could witness at the same time to the mutual love they shared together. They were to be recognized by that love. In that love between the two, Jesus was with them. Their mission was so effective that Jesus saw Satan fall from the sky and upon their return he welcomed them full of joy. Those two disciples are the sign of a journey that we are making together with the different Movements. The mission we accomplish along different roads, in different ways, will be more attractive and convincing because it is based in unity.

It is unity that will be able to tear down many barriers, to open wide new frontiers, to build bridges instead of walls in the life of the Church and in the world. I think of ecumenism, in which many Movements have a particular task. I am thinking of the dialogue of life, with people of the world religions. I am thinking of war and the other situations of tension. The experience that we can have, following Pentecost 1998, is that of living unity in a profound way. Ignatius of Antioch, a great bishop of the 2nd century who died a martyr, wrote: “when you come together, the strength of Satan collapses and his scourges dissolve in the concord that the faith teaches you.” There is a strength of love that is born from a profoundly lived unity. I am convinced that a new force is coming to life that is able to tear down many walls and divisions because when things move even an

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inch an earthquake can follow. Our contemporary world needs this deep earthquake of love and Gospel life.

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The Varied Face of the Church: An Epiphany of Communion

Piero Coda

In his talk, Piero Coda, professor of theology at the Lateran University, provides an important, solid and accessible theological understanding of the inseparability and integration of the Petrine and Marian principles in the Church.

In Novo millennio ineunte, John Paul II writes with joy and gratitude of the surprise that came about during the Jubilee (n.12): the beauty of the varied face of the Church, “a beginning, a barely sketched image of the future which the Spirit of God is preparing for us.” (n. 4). An important and specific aspect of this icon was the epiphany of the communion between the ‘hierarchical gifts’ and the ‘charismatic gifts’. The Holy Spirit rejuvenates the Church with, and guides her in her mission.

My task is to say something about this communion, on its theological significance, its historic relevance, and its practical effects—these are the three areas I’ll touch on in this conversation, focusing particularly on the first one.

It’s a matter of fact rather than a theological deduction, that from the beginning, charisms have played a unique and irreplaceable role in the life of the Church. What’s new is that with Vatican II the Church, ‘under the guidance of the Spirit, has rediscovered the charismatic dimension as constitutive of herself.’24 Pope John Paul II, in fact, says that the sacramental-hierarchic and the charismatic dimensions ‘are co-essential to the divine constitution of the Church founded by Jesus.25

This now belongs to ecclesial self-awareness. It is a fundamental contribution to the Vatican Council’s reply to the question– “Church: what do you say for yourself?” But what is the theological significance of the co-essentiality and complementarity of hierarchical and charismatic gifts?

In the first place we should note that the language used—of hierarchical and charismatic gifts—is taken from the text of Lumen Gentium 4, which attributes the action of the One Spirit of Christ equally to both. This is to exclude from the beginning any reductive and misleading opposition between institution and charism. Not only the charisms but also the ordained ministry are gifts of the Spirit—with different natures and finalities, certainly—but flowing from a single principle and directed towards a single end: to actualize Christ’s presence in history, bringing humanity’s growth to its full maturity, in fervent expectation of His parousia at the end of time.

In this context, how are both hierarchical and charismatic gifts constitutive of the Church? And how do they relate to each other? Vatican II’s trinitarian ecclesiology on the one hand, and, on the other hand the flourishing of the new movements and ecclesial communities (or of experiences related to them) have in recent years offered to theology a new framework for posing these questions in a way that’s faithful to the revealed Word and within the furrow of tradition. I’ll limit myself to recalling three important contributions opening the way to further promising developments. 24 John Paul II, Discourse during the Vigil of Pentecost, 1998. 25 John Paul II, handwritten Message to the participants of the World Congress on Ecclesial Movements, 1998 in Pontifical Council of the Laity, Movements in the Church (Vatican, 1999), pp. 13-20.

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The first was offered by Cardinal J. Ratzinger at the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements in 1998.26 There, through a historic-theological analysis particularly attentive to the Church’s mission in its effective self-realization, Ratzinger sites within apostolicity the theological position of the charismatic gifts and the movements of ecclesial renewal they’ve given rise to during the course of history.

Ratzinger’s central thesis is that the traditio of the Christ-event, fulfilled in its original form by the apostles, is renewed and continued not just through the Church’s hierarchic and sacramental structure. This structure assures:

° the link with its christological origin and norm;

° the authoritative guidance of the local community;

° the authentic interpretation of revelation.

But the traditio of the Christ-event is also achieved through the unforeseeable irruption of the Spirit who raises up ever new forms of commitment to, experience and expansion of the gospel, characterized by radicality and universality.

This interpretation, Ratzinger emphasizes, implies an amplification and deepening of the notion of apostolicity, and a specific understanding of the Petrine ministry not only as the centre and visible principle of communion between local Churches but also as the guarantee of the universal range of the great charisms.

A second, complementary and systematic contribution, attentive to the Church’s trinitarian form and her vocation to holiness, has been offered by Hans Urs von Balthasar, and in his wake, developed by other authors.27 Very briefly, according to von Balthasar it can be said that by means of the hierarchical gifts the Holy Spirit objectively guarantees the presence of Jesus given through the Word and the Sacraments to the Church, by generating and nourishing her as his spouse (cf. Eph 5, 25ff.). For an example of the highpoint of Jesus’ giving of himself to the Church in all her objective reality, you can think of the Eucharist.

On the other side, through the charismatic gifts the same Spirit opens out and forms the subjectivity of believers—that is, their minds, their hearts, their entire existence—so that they become capable of receiving, penetrating and bringing to the full effectiveness of life and holiness, the objective gift of Christ whom they receive in Word and Sacrament. Normally these gifts are given to a single person, but in such a way that ‘they can be shared by others and so are conserved over time as a precious and living inheritance, generating a special spiritual affinity between people,’ to the advantage of the whole Church (ChL, 24).

Precisely for this reason, the objective and subjective charisms—as von Balthasar defines them28—are co-essential to the Church’s identity and mission, insofar as they express and realize the spousal relationship existing between Christ and his Church. Through the Word and the Sacraments entrusted to and administered by the pastors, Christ continues to give himself in the Spirit to the Church, his Spouse. And the Church- Spouse, formed by the charismatic gifts she receives from the same Spirit, welcomes, generates and causes to grow in herself the Christ given to

26 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Ecclesial Movements and their Theological Position,” in Movements in the Church, op. cit., pp. 23-52. 27 Cf. by von Balthasar, the pneumatological essays collected in Explorations in Theology III: Creator Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993); Teologica III: Lo Spirito della Verità, Italian tr. (Milan: Jaca Book, 1992). For a systematic development, see David Schindler, “Istitution and Charism” in: The Movements in the Church, pp. 53-76. 28 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodrama III: Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), pp. 339ff.

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her by the Word and the Sacraments, by living the new commandment of love, the bond of perfection (Cf. Col 3:14; Rm 13:10).

In the first case, the gift is objectively guaranteed by Christ’s fidelity to the Church (by which, for example, Jesus-Eucharist is made present independently of the subjective holiness of the minister). In the second case, the Holy Spirit is received and granted only when whoever is called, freely and gratuitously to receive the subjective charism, to live it and transmit it, is prepared to allow him- or herself to be existentially configured to the crucified Christ, the one mediator of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church.

So, the objective and subjective charisms are constitutively directed towards one another. The members of the hierarchy, sacramentally configured to Christ, are called in their ministry to be signs and instruments of Him—they act in persona Christi Capitis Ecclesiae (cf. PO 2; LG 10)—so that He can give Himself to the Church, his spouse. Insofar as they are pastors, they also have the grace and duty of receiving gratefully and discerning the genuineness of charismatic gifts, and of regulating their ordered exercise according to their specific field of competence: for the Pope, that of the universal Church, and for the Bishops united in collegial communion with him, that of the particular Church (cf. LG 12).

In addition, insofar as members of the Church as spouse, the ordained ministers are called to live with that open and welcoming subjectivity that receives in itself the gift of Christ. So they can be helped by the charismatic gifts to live their being Christian, and even to exercise their ministry, according to the heart and mind of Christ. As John Paul II has said, ‘the charisms of the Spirit always create affinities, destined to support each one in his own objective task in the Church.’29

For their part, “true charisms cannot but aim at the encounter with Christ in the Sacraments,” and to the living out of a “trusting obedience to the Bishops, successors of the Apostles, in communion with the Successor of Peter,’30 according to the words of Jesus: “he who hears you, hears me” (Lk 10:16).

We should also remember that characteristic of the charismatic gifts, brilliantly identified by Karl Rahner as the ‘dynamic’ element of the Church: ‘the charismatic element is essentially new and always surprising. To be sure it stands in inner though hidden continuity with what came earlier in the Church and fits in with her spirit and with her institutional framework. Yet it is new and incalculable, and it is not immediately evident at first sight that everything is as it was in the enduring totality of the Church. For often it is only through what is new that it is realized that the range of the Church was greater from the outset than had previously been supposed.’31

Von Balthasar, on his part, emphasizes that an authentic charism is like a lightning flash from heaven, aimed at illuminating a unique and original point of God’s will for the Church at a given time. This lightning flash makes manifest a new way of following Christ inspired by the Holy Spirit, and also a new illustration of revelation.32

So, dynamism and newness are characteristic of the charismatic gifts ‘both as a manifestation of the absolute freedom of the Spirit who abundantly supplies them, and as a response to the varied needs of the history of the Church’ (Christifideles Laici, n. 24). They thus contribute in a definite way—as Dei Verbum teaches—towards the Church’s constant movement towards the fullness of divine truth, ‘until the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in her.’ (n. 8)

29 Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II. VIII/2, 1985, 660. 30 John Paul II, Discourse during the Vigil of Pentecost, 1998 in Movements in the Church, p. 223. 31 Karl Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church. New York: Herder and Herder, 1964, p. 83. 32 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Sorelle nello Spirito: Teresa di Lisieux e Elisabetta di Digione. Milan: Jaca Book, 1973, pp. 20–1.

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We’ve mentioned the dynamism, newness and eschatological tension the charismatic gifts bring to the life of the Church, and this leads us to the second moment in our reflection: the relevance of the rediscovery of the charismatic gifts to ecclesiology and to the life of the Church, at this dawn of the third millennium.

In the light of what we’ve been saying, and especially in the ecclesial period we’re experiencing at present, the question spontaneously arises: why is it that this rediscovery occurs precisely today? Why today precisely these charisms? In other words: what does the Spirit want to say to the Church? (cf. Apoc 2, 7)—not only through the various charisms, but also thanks to this new and unforeseeable charismatic period with the specific qualities that, even in the very diverse nature of the gifts, seem to characterize it?

Obviously it’s not easy to answer these questions, and it might even seem presumptuous, or at least a waste of time, to even ask them.

But I think it’s not only possible, but also important at least to try to begin to answer them.33

It seems to me that we can say there’s something providential in the fact that precisely today the Church is rediscovering her constitutive charismatic dimension and that the Holy Spirit should have distributed precisely these charisms to her. Maybe all this has happened so that the Church can become more fully, during this epochal transition in human history, what she is by grace and by vocation: ‘sacrament in Christ, and so, sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of unity with the human race’ (LG, 1). In a word: a credible sign of witness and a concretely effective instrument of God’s love and of universal communion.

If what the Spirit through the Second Vatican Council has wanted to say to the Church is the central idea of communion, then we can understand why—as John Paul II wrote in Novo millennio ineunte—a spirituality of communion would be indispensable for making the Church existentially what she is already sacramentally. In different yet convergent forms, it seems that the new ecclesial realities have arisen to actualize in a living form the ecclesiology proposed by the teaching of Vatican II.

Each of these realities cherishes and acknowledges this inspiration within itself, in its origin, and in the historic and practical forms in which it realizes itself. The new ecclesial movements and the experiences related to them constitute a preparation and a charismatic and dynamic reception, in some cases even prophetic of and exceeding the ecclesiological project outlined by the Council, but in reality we’re still only on the way towards theological and pastoral definition.34

It’s important to know that this kind of interpretation breaks completely with the prejudice, unfortunately still quite common, that the new ecclesial realities are expressions of a Catholic ‘conservativism’ or ‘neo-classicism’ opposed to the innovative and reformative spirit of Vatican II.35

I don’t deny that certain instances of intemperance, naivety and immaturity have given some justification to this prejudice. But we should take the ecclesial realities as a whole, and examine closely and without presuppositions the inspirations, fruits and overall aims of the various charisms. Then it can be argued that we find ourselves before providential and solid spiritual principles

33 I’ve tried to develop some reflections on this matter in: “The Ecclesial Movements, Gift of the Spirit: A Theological Reflection” in Movements in the Church, pp. 77-104; cf. also: “Movimenti ecclesiali e Chiesa in Italia,” Communio, [Italian edition] 149 (1996), pp. 64–73. 34 Cf. C. Hegge, Rezeption und Charisma: Der theologische und rechtliche Beitrag Kirchlicher Bewegungen zur Rezeption des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzil (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 1999)—an abbreviated version of this in Italian has been published by Città Nuova, Rome, 2002 35 Cf. H. Bourgeois’ recent article, “Le neo-classicisme catholique,” in Études, February 2001, 221–32.

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preparing for a leap ahead in the fulfilment of the Church’s nature and mission, in accord with the direction mapped out by Vatican II.

I’ll just give three features (certainly others could be added) of this icon of the Church’s future just sketched out, which the Spirit seems to be preparing.

The first has to do with the form of communion as realizing and manifesting what it is to be Church. Cardinal Ratzinger has emphasized that the threefold division of the people of God into priests, religious and laity, is fundamental,36 and has been put before us again as such by the Council. But—and this is really important—this occurred within a new ecclesiological context: namely that of the fundamentally equal Christian dignity both of communion and of reciprocal communication.

Now, I ask myself: have we experienced and reflected sufficiently on what it means to shift the viewpoint of the identity of the single states of life and of vocation towards the viewpoint of the relation between them? When St. Augustine discovered in De Trinitate that the grammar of relation is at least as important as the grammar of substance for expressing the Godhood of Jesus Christ, theology and philosophy went through a decisive change. Shouldn’t something similar happen at the ecclesiological level on the basis of the experience of communion?

Couldn’t it be said that the new ecclesial realities have already given an answer to what John Paul II has called ‘the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is now beginning, if we wish to be faithful to God’s plan and respond to the world’s deepest yearnings,’: ‘to make the Church the home and the school of communion?’ (§ 43)

In this context, Cardinal Ratzinger has noted that the bishop (and I’d add here, the priest) ‘while remaining representative of the sacrament and therefore responsible for the presence of the faith, will be less a monarch, more a brother in a school where there is only one Teacher and only one Father. I think that the expression of the “monarchic episcopate” has been misunderstood for a long time.’37

A second, decisive feature of the future Church, has to do with its lay expression. This doesn’t mean downgrading its sacramental and hierarchic structure. Rather, it focuses on the Church’s authentic significance and service, which is to offer the means of grace so that Christ, principle and form of the new humanity, makes Christians to be the salt and leaven of the world. It’s in this essential finality that the relation between the hierarchic and charismatic gifts to the people of God comes into play for the good and the salvation of all of humanity.

The Church’s image during the second millennium—in a form that, substantially, was certainly providential for that period—has been characterized, especially in the West, by its hierarchic, institutional, normative and rational dimensions, as Yves Congar’s and Henri de Lubac’s studies have shown. Without denying these aspects, Vatican II’s ecclesiology and the charismatic reception of the ecclesial movements brings us back to the communional, mysterial, pneumatic and agapic dimensions.

This is decisive not only for the life within the ecclesial community—called to convert itself to the trinitarian experience of the relations between its members—but also for how it proposes itself outside to society and culture. It’s a matter here of a kind of Copernican revolution for a laity seriously committed to the universal calling to holiness. Thanks to its mature communion with the Church’s pastors in the mature and joyful experience of the Word and of the divine Mysteries, it

36 “Dialogue with Cardinal Ratzinger”, in Ecclesial Movements, Vatican City, 2001, pp. 227–8. 37 Idem.

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can, in the complex multiplicity of the Areopagi of our times, give witness to Christ, the salvation and fulness of all that’s human.

And this requires, for our third feature, that the principle of its Marian identity should emerge.38 It’s striking and worth reflecting on how the Church’s image in terms of communion and of her task of the New Evangelization, along with Vatican II’s account of her original, charismatic stage, was prepared for and followed by the continual presentation of Mary. This presentation occurred through the proclamation of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of the Assumption, her many apparitions, and the great charisms with a strong Marian character. I think that all of this contains a specific ecclesiological indication which the experience of the ecclesial movements can help to interpret and incarnate.

De Montfort would say we should look at Mary, even relive Mary in ourselves so that the Risen Christ lives in and among us. This would involve the primacy—of being over doing, of the divine plan in relation to the human project, of life over thought, of service over the many obvious and hidden forms of power, of God’s Word and contemplation over action. Only in this way can mercy prevail over judgment, patient waiting over hasty imposition, a universal regard over nit-picking concentration on the particular, reciprocal love as premise for being and being recognized as disciples of Christ over everything else.

Is it not, perhaps, the Church of the fiat and of the magnificat, of the stabat at the foot of the Cross and of the fire of Pentecost, that the world, and we ourselves, are waiting for?

By way of conclusion, I can only note the third area I mentioned at the beginning: what are the practical consequences of the rediscovery of the co-essentiality of the hierarchic and charismatic gifts in the life and mission of the Church?

We can leave the answer to the Holy Spirit, but at the same time we have to respond to it with a rigorous and prophetic communitarian discernment, one which sees all the Church’s members as protagonists, attentive to the signs of the times. Pentecost 1998, the event of the Jubilee, and the wise, farseeing and incisive indications of John Paul II in Novo millennio ineunte show the way forward.

I’ll be satisfied here with articulating what seem to me three directions where the Church can exercise a complete openness to the action of the Holy Spirit. This is so that the great grace that has been given into our hands—not only the charisms of the individual movements but also the icon of the Church proposed by Vatican II and made clear, even if with its limits, during the Jubilee—can be actuated according to the manner, times, and aims thought up by the love of God. Pastors need to be open in relation to the new charisms today. It’s a real and sincere openness to what the Spirit wants to say to the Church, both profound and concrete, for her way of being and acting today. This would avoid instrumentalizing wrongly the new energies of these charisms through use of pre-existing categories of Church and pastoral planning. Such categories simply fall below what God is doing today.

Those involved in the new ecclesial realities need also to be open, both towards each other and, above all else, towards the Church, whose daughters they are. If the novelty of the Spirit is, today, communion as principle and end of the New Evangelization, it’d be an unforgivable sin if they didn’t live that communion each one is called to from the beginning, as a priority. To rediscover oneself outside oneself: this is the law of communion and of mission.

38 On the Church’s Marian profile or principle, referred to many times by John Paul II and von Balthasar, see Brendan Leahy, The Marian Profile of the Church (New York: New City Press, 2000).

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The third openness is to the action of the Spirit who moves all of us—if there’s need of this, and there is need of it—which will cause us to turn our gaze away from ourselves, our nice experiences and our own big problems, as well as from our own ideals and our frustrations with the Church. Then we’ll be able to ‘put out into the deep’ (Lk 5:4), so that we too can ‘go forth to Him outside the camp,’ who, ‘to sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gates of the city’ (cf. Heb 13:12–13).

Only if we, as Church and as individuals, go beyond the gates of the city where we live in comfort and security, will we discover with amazement the realities of the promise:

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert… The people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise. (Is 43: 19,21)

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Jesus Crucified and Forsaken, the God of our times, key to ecclesial communion

Natalia Dallapiccola

The author of this article is Chiara Lubich’s first companion. In her talk she reminded the participants at the congress of what the discovery of Jesus Crucified and Forsaken represented for the focolarine right from the very beginning of the Movement, not only for their Christian life but also for how to present God to today’s world in an effective manner.

This morning Chiara launched us towards the New Evangelization. She reminded us, following the thought of John Paul II, that all Christians, all the people of God are called to evangelize; and that we, members of ecclesial movements, are called to do so in a very special way.

Chiara opened to us this vast horizon of the New Evangelization and she continuously referred to the thoughts and words of the Pope. In this perspective then, she unfolded to us the life and spirituality of the Focolare Movement because -she said - “although I love and esteem many Movements, I can speak competently only about something whose birth and development I myself have witnessed”.39

I will now proceed following Chiara's “trail of light”. Since I Iived this extraordinary adventure with her ever since the early days, I can bear witness to the work of God, to the action of the Holy Spirit who transformed a mustard seed (that is, that small group that we were, first focolarine, with Chiara) into a big tree which today is made up of branches that spread out to all the world.

Through the experience of these years, I would like to make you discover the roots of this tree, the foundation on which this Movement lies, the key, the secret to building and rebuilding unity among us, in the Church and in all humankind. This is the key which we identify as the “source” of the New Evangelization.

It is the secret which made Chiara say one day: “If those who gave life to the Movement did not have him in the trials of life, this way of unity would not exist, unless God had wanted to raise it up in the same form in other places.”40

But who is this “him” Chiara speaks of, this One and Only who gave her and all of us the strength and light for our journey in this almost 60 years of life of the Movement? It is Jesus crucified and forsaken.

If we look at the beginnings of our story we will see that, even before the idea came to us on how to achieve unity, which is our ideal, the Magna Charta of the Movement, the Holy Spirit gave us a model, a figure, a life: Jesus crucified and forsaken.

This reality of his, our understanding of him preceded, also in time, every other consideration. In fact, if we rightly consider the 7th of December 1943 (the date of Chiara's consecration to God) as the beginning of our story, on the 24th of January, 1944 Jesus forsaken had already presented himself to our mind and heart.In order to understand this we must tell you of an episode from the early days of the Movement, which I will leave Chiara to tell, at least in part.

39 All un-referenced citations are texts from Chiara Lubich’s talks and writings. 40 C. Lubich, The Cry, London: New City,2001, p.53.

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We used to go to visit the poor. One day one of my companions -says Chiara -went to clean and put in order the poor, shabby room of an old lady, and she caught an infection on her face, which was now covered with sores. But she didn't mind, indeed she was happy to be a little similar to Jesus crucified.

I had gone to visit her on a very cold day and, because she wanted to receive Holy Communion, we thought of inviting a priest to her home so that he could bring it to her. The priest came, and before leaving he asked us: “Do you know when Jesus suffered the most?” We answered according to the common mentality of Christians at that time: in the Garden of Olives.

But the priest affirmed: “No, Jesus suffered the most when, on the cross, he cried out: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”. He said this and then he left. We were deeply impressed by these words of his, convinced that it was the truth because said by a minister of God. Because we were young, because we wanted to live a lively and authentic Christianity, but especially because of the grace of God, we felt a strong impetus to follow Jesus in that very moment of his abandonment for the rest of our lives.

So, as soon as we were alone—continues Chiara—I said to my companion: “We have only one life. Let's spend it in the best way possible! If Jesus suffered the most when he felt abandoned by the Father, we will follow him forsaken.”41

The meeting with that priest was God's reply to our prayer. Fascinated by the beauty of his Testament, we first focolarine asked Jesus, united in his name, to teach us how to achieve unity, that unity which he asked of the Father before dying. And in these 58 years of the Movement's life this has been our constant experience: what gives us the possibility of achieving unity is precisely love for Jesus crucified and forsaken.

From that day onwards the choice of God which had characterized the first step of our new life became precise: to choose God, whom we had discovered as Love, meant for us to choose Jesus forsaken, the living expression of God's love here on earth.

Jesus forsaken “is the apex of love”42, wrote Chiara during the early years. In him “there is all the love of a God”43

“When Jesus forsaken suffered”, Chiara says, “he deprived himself of Love and gave it to us, making us children of God. (...) Jesus made himself Nothing, he gave everything and this everything was not lost since it entered into our souls”.44

Jesus forsaken “emptied himself” of God (See Phil 2:7), if we can say this, he deprived himself of his divinity and he gave it as a gift to man who, “made to partake in his divinity, made similar to him by his Love”, can speak of themselves as children of God, which they truly are.

Jesus forsaken soon became ours. His call was strong and decisive. Our love for him was exclusive, it did not allow compromises. Chiara wrote in a letter of that period:

“Forget everything...even the things which are most sublime; let yourself be dominated by only one Ideal, by only one God, who must penetrate every fiber of your being: by Jesus crucified (...) He must be everything for you”45

41 Ibid., See Unity and Jesus Foraken, to the large-scale day meeting, Bratislava, 12 May 2001. 42 Ibid., Letter, 30January 1944, in Why have you forsaken me, cit., p. 53. 43 Ibid., Letter 7 June 1944, in Why have you forsaken me, cit., p.56. 44 Ibid., Writing from 1949, in Nuova Umanità, 117-118, p. 405. 45 Ibid., Letter , 21.July 1945, in Why have you forsaken me, cit., p.52.

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“Oh! if that divine face contracted by a spasm of torment, those eyes reddened but which look at you with goodness, forgetting my sins and yours that have reduced him to this state, were always before your gaze!...”46

We began to see him everywhere: he presented himself in the most varied ways in all the painful aspects of life. Every suffering of ours appeared to be a countenance of his to love and to desire in order to be with him, to be like him; so that in union with him, with suffering loved, we too can give life to ourselves and to many people. We thought: since he was abandoned by everyone, each one of us can say: he is mine. He is mine because no one wants him: he was rejected by the world and by heaven.

And Jesus forsaken truly appeared as the precious pearl for all men and women who, after all, are all sinners.

We discovered him in the effort it takes to live the virtues; in the small or big disunities to recompose; in the non-perfect unity of the Church; in the fracture between religions; in non-belief, in sufferings of every kind, in adverse and unexpected circumstances..., everywhere.

The Movement brings with it a very rich experience which shows how the suffering of each one, especially spiritual sufferings, are summed up in this particular suffering of Jesus.

Isn't the person who is anxious, lonely, indifferent, disappointed, the failure, the weak, similar to him? Isn't every painful division among individuals, among the Churches, among parts of humanity with contrasting ideologies, a countenance of him? Isn't the atheistic, secular world a figure of him?

By loving Jesus forsaken we find the motive and strength for not evading these evils, but accepting them, consuming them and doing something personally to resolve them.

Jesus forsaken is also the model of those who must build unity with their brothers and sisters. In fact, I cannot enter into another if I am rich of myself. In order to love a brother or sister I must constantly make myself poor in spirit so as to have nothing else but love. And love is emptiness of self.

Jesus forsaken is the perfect model of the poor in spirit: he is so poor that he does not have even God, so to speak. He doesn't feel his presence.

Furthermore, he is the perfect model for those who must lose themselves in God; for example, those who must lose their ideas, or even the inspirations of grace, in order to submit themselves to their superiors. He is therefore the model of authentic unity with whoever represents God.

And I can go on and on.…

The more we loved Jesus forsaken, the more we understood something of the mystery of unity which Jesus worked on the cross. We put ourselves together like many pieces of wood to be lit and burned by Jesus present in our midst. The warmth of this fire grew and spread so that many people who came in contact with us were convinced that they had found God. More and more people converted.

That light, that joy, that particular peace, born out of suffering loved, struck and won over even the most difficult persons. We experienced that, nailed to the cross, we became mothers and fathers of souls. Therefore the life of unity with Jesus forsaken led to the most abundant fruits. In this way, from the very first months, a community was formed with Christ in the midst of all.

In the abandonment Jesus is the teacher of unity, of that unity He asked of the Father: “May they all be one” (Jn 17:21).

46 Ibid., Letter, 30 January 1944, in Why have you forsaken me, cit., p.53.

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The Pope, in his apostolic letter Novo millennio ineunte, defines the cry of Jesus on the cross as the prayer of the Son who suffers this tremendous sense of abandonment, of separation from the Father, in order to reunite all people to God, cut off as they were because of sin, and to reunite all people with one another.

In fact the Pope says: “We shall never exhaust the depths of this mystery. All the harshness of the paradox can be heard in Jesus' seemingly desperate cry of pain on the cross: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'. Is it possible to imagine a greater agony, a more impenetrable darkness?”47, the Pope asks himself. And further ahead, he gives the answer: “Jesus' cry on the cross is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, 'abandoned' by the Father, he 'abandons' himself into the hands of the Father”48.

Chiara writes: “Isn't that divine spiritual wound which opened in his heart when even heaven closed itself on him like a wide open door through which we can finally unite ourselves to God and God to us?”49

“Jesus is the Savior, the Redeemer, and he redeems when he pours out the divine on all mankind through the wound of the Abandoned Christ, who is the pupil of the eye of God on the world: an Infinite Emptiness through which God looks at us: the window of God that opens wide on the world and the window through which mankind sees God.”50

Therefore, Jesus Forsaken reunited what was separated.

This is why this mysterious suffering of his abandonment has always appeared to us as being linked precisely to unity.

Jesus had done all his part. He redeemed us and reunited us into one family. Now it is up to us to correspond to this grace and to do our part.

To some extent we have all experienced division, disharmony, abandonment in and outside of ourselves.

Is there anyone who does not in some way feel separated from God when a bit of darkness invades his soul? Is there anyone who has not experienced doubt, perplexity, anxiety, confusion? All these trials remind us of Jesus precisely in his abandonment. On the cross he doubted, he was puzzled, he asked “why?”.

So when we experience one of these sufferings, what should we do? We should think: “This suffering reminds me of him; I am a little like him. But I don't want to stop. Like him, I embrace this trial: I want it, I love him, Jesus forsaken, in this trial.”

And often we realize that in doing so and continuing to love, that suffering disappears and peace returns.

We can also experience small or big divisions in the small communities we live in - in our homes, centres, offices, schools, seminaries, parishes... and this causes suffering. There too we can recognize the presence of Jesus forsaken and our love for him makes us capable of personally overcoming suffering within us and doing all we can to recompose unity with the others.

For those who are called to achieve unity, as we are, Jesus forsaken who re-abandons himself to the Father is the One who helps us to rebuild it with our brothers and sisters each time it is 47 Novo millennio ineunte 25 48 Novo millennio ineunte 26 49 C. Lubich, “L'uomo del dialogo”, in Città Nuova, 26 (1982), 10, p.26. 50 Ibid., Writing from 1949, in Nuova Umanità 117-118, pp. 405-406.

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shattered. In fact it can happen that we have already experienced that full joy, that peace, that light, that ardour, all those fruits of the Spirit which are produced by the New Commandment when it is put into practice.

It may be that we already know what is meant by the presence of Jesus among two or more who are united in his name. And we may have experienced what tremendous meaning it has given to our existence, even in its details: how it has shed light on circumstances, things and people.

But all of a sudden, an act of pride, arrogance or a speck of selfishness on the part of one person or the other, makes us plunge back into an existence similar to that which we had before knowing Jesus more fully, an existence without warmth and colour, and even worse than that. An uneasiness invades the soul; everything loses meaning: we do not understand why we set out on this way. The most important element is missing: Jesus in our midst is missing, the One who made our life full, who had made us brim over with joy. It is as if a supernatural sun has set.

Chiara said, in answer to the question of a focolarino:

“In that moment in which you feel this torment, what must you do? You learned that this feeling which torments you is a suffering, and suffering is always something sacred, it is something precious, it is pleasing to God; only sin must be rejected.

So what must you do? You shouldn’t say: I will embrace Jesus forsaken quickly so the suffering will pass away and I'll go ahead, I'll continue to work, I won't speak with anyone…. You must go deep within you, put your soul in contact with God who is in the depths of your heart, and make a pact with him saying: Lord, this suffering is you, I'm happy. I want this because this is what I have chosen, this is You. You might not feel like it, but with your will you say “yes”.

“Then you must live the following moment, without necessarily offering your suffering several times; it's enough to offer it once, directly to him. You must work, pray, do an act of charity, something. That is, in the following moment you must do everything with all your heart, like for example, loving your neighbor.

“You will experience what is written in Scriptures: 'We have passed from death to life because we loved our neighbor.'51 “Jesus comes back into our midst and with him, strength and happiness.”52 It's the experience of the love of God, who is never outdone in generosity and who transforms, through a divine alchemy, suffering into love.

And “why does this happen?” Chiara asks. “You see,” she says, “in the passion of Jesus, when the Gospel says that on the cross Jesus breathed his last, this word does not only mean that Jesus died, but that he breathed the Holy Spirit. Therefore the Holy Spirit is linked to the death of Jesus, the death of Jesus brought forth the Holy Spirit.”

“So,” Chiara continues, “when we embrace the cross well, up to the very end, and then we plunge ourselves into loving, the Holy Spirit comes, he 'springs forth', so to speak, in our hearts.”53

“I have the impression”, says Chiara, “that having discovered Jesus forsaken is like having discovered an oil well. Jesus forsaken is a wellspring of the Holy Spirit. I don't know if I can make myself clear, but from what I know, from what I have experienced, from what I have understood, it seems to me that loving Jesus forsaken and being full of the Holy Spirit are one and the same thing.”

One day someone asked Chiara:

51 See 1Jn 3:14. 52 C. Lubich, Answers, Ala di Stura, 12 August 1963. 53 Talk, Santiago de Compostela, 22.8.89

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“But Chiara, how are you able to love Jesus forsaken always?” She answered: “I love him because I love him. That is, when he arrives, I love him. And you know what happens?—now I'm revealing a secret to you — what happens is that when we love him, when we truly and seriously love him ..., by dint of loving him, you are in love with him alone. But not because you love something abstract or you love suffering, which is not lovable. But because by dint of loving Jesus forsaken you acquire this habit, which is a virtue, and you pass on immediately to the act of accepting him, which is an act of the will, of love. Having transformed suffering into love, you find God in the depths of your heart, you find him-Love, and so you love Love.”

“So I love him because I love him. I love him because he has loved me, this is why I love him.

“But in order to reach this point, we must first love him with our will, so as to acquire the habit of seeing only him, of loving only him, of listening only to him. First of all we must break our will, accept all sufferings, especially those we might not have expected. They are all countenances of Jesus forsaken, the One we have chosen.

“Then,” Chiara continues, “when you have sacrificed everything, God recomposes every thing and you have the joy of finding him.”54

This is what Jesus forsaken was, and continues to be, for us. We can say that the story of our Movement is inseparably linked to him, one with him, almost like the love story of Chiara and of each one of us with him forsaken.

Jesus forsaken, the God of our times, is the essence of our collective, communitarian spirituality; he is the throbbing heart of ecclesial communion which, if put into practice, can bring about, as the Pope desires, the richest evangelization. Because to live in this way is to put into act that spirituality of communion which makes us witnesses of Christ, which shows what Christianity is. Among other things, if this spirituality is lived, it gives immense joy!

In his extraordinary and very precious gift which is the Novo millennio ineunte, after having presented the “cry” of Jesus forsaken as the source of communion between man and God and with one another, the Pope speaks precisely of the need for the Church today to live a “spirituality of communion”, and to live it on all levels.

He wants the “Church to be the home and the school of communion” in order to “be faithful to God's plan and to respond to the world's deepest yearnings.”

“What does this mean in practice?”, the Pope asks. And he answers: “Here too, our thoughts could run immediately to the action to be undertaken, but that would not be the right impulse to follow.… Before making practical plans, we need to promote a spirituality of communion, making it the guiding principle of education wherever individuals and Christians are formed. (...)

“A spirituality of communion means (...) an ability to think of our brothers and sisters in faith within the profound unity of the Mystical Body, (...) in order to be able to share their joys and sufferings (...). It is the ability to see what is positive in others, (...) to know how to make room for our brothers and sisters (...), resisting the selfish temptations which (...) provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy.

“Let us have no illusions”, continues the Pope, “unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, masks of communion (...).55

54 C. Lubich, Answers, Grottaferrata, 2 January 1960. 55 Novo millennio ineunte, 43.

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“Communion,” the Pope says further, “must be cultivated and extended day by day and at every level in the structures of each Church's life. There, relations between bishops, priests and deacons, between pastors and the entire People of God, between clergy and religious, between associations and ecclesial Movements, must all be clearly characterized by communion.”56

Dearest priests, this is what I wanted to tell you.

I can witness to the fact that Jesus forsaken works miracles of grace in those who decide to choose him in an exclusive way and he can make us “protagonists” of the Church of the third millenium.

Before leaving, I would like to read a greeting which Chiara gave recently to the members of our Movement in Bratislava, after answering their questions.

Chiara said:

“Look, if we were able to reach 182 nations, which practically means all, it is because we loved Jesus forsaken in all obstacles. When we came across an obstacle, when we came across a division, we did not retreat; for us it was a springboard, because we loved Jesus forsaken. Let's follow him, let's follow him! With him, we can hope for everything!”57

56 Novo millennio ineunte 45. 57 C. Lubich, Unity and Jesus Forsaken, Address to the Day meeting, Bratislava, 12 May 2001.

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It is not enough to “say” Christ it is necessary “show him”

Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos

Starting from the readings of the liturgy on the first day of the Congress, in his homily the Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy highlighted the mission of priests today. It is letting themselves be formed in the life of communion by the new charisms, they become more open in recognising and welcoming the constant action of the Holy Spirit in his Church and they become more courageous in taking up the great adventure of the new evangelization.

“As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one thing” (Jn 17:21).

Dear concelebrants, venerable brothers in the priesthood, dear brothers and sisters in the Lord!

It is with profound affection and living joy that I turn to you who take part in this international congress organized by the Priests Centre of the Focolare Movement at the dawn of the Third Millennium since the incarnation of the Word.

The theme of the Congress is focused on “The Ecclesial Movements and the New Evangelization.” This theme harmonizes well with the recent exhortations of the Holy Father who, as is well known, in his apostolic letter Novo millennio ineunte, has declared: “Duc in altum: launch out into the deep!” (Lk 5:4). He wants this imperative to ring out in the whole Church. It is an imperative that was spoken one day to Peter. Let us go forward with hope!

“At the beginning of this new century”, writes the Pope, “our steps must quicken as we travel the highways of the world…The risen Christ asks us to meet him as it were once more in the Upper Room where, on the evening of ‘the first day of the week’ (Jn 20:19) he appeared to his disciples in order to ‘breathe’ on them his life-giving Spirit and launch them on the great adventure of proclaiming the Gospel”.58

Dear brother priests, like the Apostles in the Upper Room we are invited to fix our gaze on the face of the risen Christ who assists us with the strength of his Spirit, making us holy and our pastoral ministry fruitful.

We must go! We must set out without delay. We have an imperative which in the light of this Congress takes on a precise meaning. It is an imperative to renew our life in Christ (Gal 2:20) by means of a greater openness and readiness to welcome the action of the Holy Spirit in our priestly life. He is the true protagonist of our personal holiness, he is the principal agent of the New Evangelization!59

Jesus is the Sun who illumines and gives life to the world.60 The Paraclete, whom we have received in our priestly consecration and who conforms us ontologically to Christ, demands of us, especially today, a more vibrant fidelity in order to be the living and life-giving reflection of that Sun.

58 Novo millennio ineunte, 58. 59 Redemptoris Missio,30 60 St Augustine, Commentary on the Psalms, 10; Jn 8:12.

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We know, besides, that it is the Holy Spirit who provides in this particular moment of history through the Movements and the new ecclesial Communities the living signs of his enlivening creativity. This is “one of the most significant fruits of that springtime of the Church already foretold by the Second Vatican Council”.61

The deep towards which your Congress invites us to go is therefore a more intense and contemplative commitment and consequently a stronger apostolic and missionary dynamism.

With such thoughts I thank warmly the foundress and president of the Work of Mary, Chiara Lubich, for having invited me to meet you in this festive setting.

I greet all of you priests who are part in different ways of the Movements and the new Ecclesial Communities and who revitalize by your sacred ministry the freshness and the beauty of your priestly vocation, itself a gift and a mystery of inestimable value (2Tim 1:6). On your faces, some of which are youthful and others marked by time and fatigue, there shines out that proclamation of Peter and John to those who wanted to oppose their preaching, “We cannot not speak: we cannot be silent” (Acts 4:20). I say ‘thanks’ to you all, because your life is an incessant “proclamation of Jesus Christ” (Phil 2: 11).

My greeting extends through you besides to all the lay faithful who belong to the Movements spread out throughout the world. May you be blessed because, following Christ, you travel in the footsteps of the disciples of Emmaus along the roads of human suffering and of religious ignorance with a smile that emerges from the depths of the life of grace. You bring the light of Christ into the workplace, the family, schools, art and the media.

May you be blessed through your generous and un-wearying service of charity, and of that merciful love of the Lord by which each of you looks with the eyes of the good Samaritan at each neighbour who is materially and spiritually needy.

Service! You live it, not only in this splendid and exuberant Italy, but also in many and distant mission lands that are often hardened by division, hatred and violence. You do so in effective union with the Holy Father, for the good of the universal Church and of the particular Churches in which you work.

“When Pentecost day came around, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting” (Acts 2:1-2).

The first reading taken from the Acts of the Apostles reminds us of what happened in Jerusalem fifty days after Easter. In the prayerful presence of Mary in the Cenacle the apostles were gathered together in expectation of receiving “the power from on high”, that light and that strength needed to teach the Gospel of Christ to the nations and to proclaim this Gospel by means of the gift of tongues and witness of life. This Gospel which is always the same and always new, in every time, in the different cultures and in all places.

Like the apostles in “the large upper room” (Mk 14:15) you are also united today as in a new and great upper room around the altar of Sacrifice of this Mariapolis Centre in the company of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

“They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech” (Acts 2:4).

This eucharistic celebration, dearest priests, brings back to mind those poignant moments in the meeting of the ecclesial Movements and the new Communities with the Holy Father which took 61 See John Paul II, Message to the Fourth World Congress of the Ecclesial Movements, 27 May 1998.

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place, as you well remember, on the Vigil of Pentecost 1998 in St Peter’s Square where many of you were surely present.

On that occasion, John Paul II, in the presence of more than 350,000 of the gathered faithful, spoke this great prayer, “Come, Holy Spirit, come and renew the face of the earth…Come, Spirit of communion and of love…Come and make fruitful the charisms you have given. Give new strength and missionary zeal to your sons and daughters gathered here…Make them courageous messengers of the Gospel, witnesses of the Risen Christ!”

Today, dear priests of the new millennium, and now close to the solemnity of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, the Holy Spirit offers you a new light and a restoring strength. This enables you more fully to put on the mind of Christ in his one Church and to set out along the roads of the world in order to spread to all the lovable face of the incarnate Word right to the ends of the world.

The words of the Holy Father recently addressed to young people in the Greco-Melchite cathedral of Damascus on 7 May 2001 could also be addressed to you, “I invite you to proclaim Jesus Christ today with courage and fidelity to the young people of your generation. And I invite you, not only to proclaim Jesus Christ, but also and above all to show him. In looking at how you live, your colleagues should be led to inquire about what guides you and what constitutes your joy. Then you will reply to them: Come and see. And they will encounter Christ himself in you, lumen gentium [the Light of the Nations], the light of love, of hope and of truth!” (Eph 4:24).

Seeing your life in Christ, the faithful will be able to recognize in you the “manifestation of God as the hope of man, of God as the liberation of man, of God as the salvation of man”.62

Let us therefore respond to the action of the Paraclete with concrete resolutions. This is the gift of tongues: in the service of the faithful in your care you want to repeat for them with greater generosity the signs of forgiveness and the offer of salvation, above all in dispensing the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist.

Mindful that “we must begin by purifying ourselves before purifying others,…to be holy in order to make holy”, as St Gregory Nazianzen loved to repeat,63 we should ourselves approach with a faithful regularity the sacrament of forgiveness, which is the sacrament of joy rediscovered and of divine friendship regained. “Only the person who has experienced the tenderness of the embrace of the Father, as the Gospel describes it in the parable of the Prodigal Son – he clasped him in his arms and kissed him (Lk 15:20) – only such a person can transmit to others the same warmth when from being the recipient of forgiveness he becomes the minister of forgiveness”.64

And we will offer with ever greater willingness the incalculable treasure of sacramental reconciliation to all believers realizing that it is a sacrament of unity because it overcomes in man the fracture in the life of grace. It mends the tear of human pride found in the fabric of the mystical Body of Christ, making every son of man a son of God.

“I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (Jn 17: 21-23)

In the same parable of the Prodigal Son the festive banquet for the newfound son follows upon the embrace of the Father. In the same way sacramental forgiveness allows one to take part fruitfully in the Eucharist through communion with the Father and the Church that has been re-established.

62 John Paul II, Homily for the Epiphany of 1999 63 PG 35, 480 64 John Paul II, Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday 2001, n.10.

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Dear priests, be instruments of unity in the exercise of your ministry by bringing back the faithful to a meeting with Christ, above all by the celebration of the Eucharist, restoring all to the orthodoxy of doctrine and the reasoned observance of Church discipline.

We know that, above all in the Eucharist, we truly have that Door of salvation which the Great Jubilee has illumined and has left open, that living Door which is Christ himself. He said of himself, “I am the door. Anyone who enters through me will be safe; he will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture” (Jn 10:9).

It is towards those pastures that you should direct the flock in your care. With your best energies and sustained by the strength of the Holy Spirit continue to proclaim faithfully and to celebrate worthily the Eucharist which is the most effective evangelising and missionary event you could ever place in the history of the world!

It is from the Eucharist that every believer finds the strength to witness the Gospel of salvation to all. It is from the Eucharist that the abiding fountain flows which irrigates the earth with the fruitful water of the new life. The gift of broken bread opens up the life of lay faithful and the entire community to a sharing and gift of oneself “for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). From every tabernacle Jesus makes himself the travelling companion of our daily pilgrimage.

All the Movements and Ecclesial Communities ought to be able to say as did the Martyrs of Abitiné, “We cannot exist without the supper of the Lord”.65

Dear brother priests, we cannot be a wall blocking the way to the Door and the saving pasture. In fact, the apostolic zeal shown in your initiatives and pastoral activities are admirable. The pastoral initiatives you have drawn up are worthy of praise. Go forward with hope! The apostolic panorama that opens before your eyes is immense.

Like the disciples at the multiplication of the loaves you bring to all who follow the Lord the bread of the divine Master. May every Eucharist arouse the wonder of the faithful before the tremendum mysterium [‘awe-inspiring mystery’]. You in the Movements and in the Communities throw down the barriers of exclusion between persons who begin to realize they are members of the same body, all made “one in Christ” (Gal 3:28), in that sign of unity and bond of Charity of which the Eucharist is the source and summit.66

Have the joy of being the bridges that unite heaven to the earth, humankind with the divine, the Son of God with the son of man, continuing the work begun by the Redeemer, “the mediator of a new covenant” ( Heb 9:15), in order to bring everything together in Christ himself.

“May they all be one so that the world will believe” (Jn 17:21).

I want to conclude, dearest brothers, by exhorting you to remain united among yourselves. Together with your communities shaped in the pulsating life of the universal Church, be “one heart and one soul”, persevering “in the teaching of the apostles and in brotherhood, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers” (Acts 2:42; 4:32).

Unity! This unity is not emotive but effective. It grows only around the objective truth that touches the very heart of the Church.

Notwithstanding the difficulties, commit yourselves with all your energy in the dialogue with those who are far away from the faith and with those who are indifferent in the faith, so that the way towards full unity among the followers of Christ may continue to unfold. He is with us and he offers us the Holy Spirit to lead us towards that unity for which he prayed to the Father. “It is on Jesus’ 65 Dies Domini, 46. 66 Sacrosanctum Concilium 47; Lumen Gentium, 7.

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prayer and not on our own strength that we base the hope that even within history we shall be able to reach full and visible communion with all Christians”.67

In this perspective continue along the way of promoting a lay spirituality that would assist the lay faithful in living profoundly their vocation to holiness “dealing with temporal realities and ordering them according to God”,68 and which will assist your brother priests to live to the full their specific identity. It is necessary to cultivate a profound awareness that the challenge of an effective evangelization can be met only if one appeals to the prophetical task that is proper to all the baptized. The formation of the laity, then, which you, dear priests, together with your Ordinaries and respective presbyterates, undertake with great diligence and exemplary commitment is of great urgency. Behind every well formed lay person there is always a priest who is truly and totally a priest. Well do we know that it is the task of formed lay faithful to become a leaven in society in order to protect those values on which the future of man depends. I refer in a special way to respect for human life which today is ever more undermined by a utilitarian culture driven by efficiency and which masquerades as a culture of freedom. I think of the family, the alliance of an indissoluble love, and of the responsibilities of the lay faithful in the professional and political fields that demand full coherence with Christian values.

To Mary Most Holy, “the gate of the dawn”, I entrust this Congress and the journey that awaits you. May the Queen of the Apostles and the Mother of priests gain for you the gift of fidelity to the mission you have received, the courage to continue with daring and the spirit of initiative in the proclamation of the Gospel, and the joy of witnessing to your identity who is Jesus Christ, the only Saviour of the world, “the true star that guides the whole of humankind”.69

67 Novo millennio ineunte, 48. 68 Lumen Gentium, 31. 69 Dominus Jesus, 23

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Priestly Life: Between Anguish and Awe

Cardinal James Francis Stafford

The homily of Cardinal James Francis Stafford, Pontifical Council for the Laity The liturgical readings in recent days have come from the Book of Genesis. They speak of God the Creator who is recognised above all as the One who called the world into life. Today, God is described as He who issued another calling, one in which he pronounced his redemptive word. This calling was directed to two distinct people – to Abraham and to Sarah who was sterile. Through Abraham’s vocation a new people is formed, the chosen people of Israel.

Abraham was chosen by God in order to be father of this people and from this calling onwards his life was completely changed. Being called to leave Ur of the Chaldaeans did not mean, however, that Abraham had to live on his own resources, but rather he would have to live where God dwells.

This is how it all started: “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you”. And Abraham overcame this test. Then he was told: “It is to your descendents that I shall give this land”. All that Abraham acquired in that land as a first settlement was a grave.

The first reading today underlines once again Abraham’s absolute, blind obedience. It is about the establishment of the covenant. God passed over in silence the anguished and diffident question raised by the childless Abraham concerning the fulfilment of the promise: “how am I to know that I shall inherit it?”. In fact, after his unilateral action in the sacrificial pact, God makes drowsiness come over Abraham who falls into a deep sleep.

We find the same scheme of things elsewhere – in the first story about Hagar, in the case of Sarah who was sterile and in the context of Isaac’s sacrifice. In each of these episodes total obedience to the God of Abraham is really put to the test. In particular, the sacrifice of Isaac seems to destroy the entire promise of the Lord instead of its fulfilment that in fact is beginning.

The choice God makes of his own people through Abraham’s calling and his obedient response is repeated in two successive events – firstly with Moses and then with the return of the Jews from Assyria and Babylonia. The decisive feature in all three of these events is that Israel was never allowed to dwell in its land nor was it ever possible. Whether in the land or abroad, Abraham, and the people established by him, lived as a stranger in relationship to himself. Together with its father founder, Israel always existed in a state of being expropriated, of being torn away from itself. So Israel was a stranger vis-à-vis God and a resident stranger of God.

It is in the even deeper experience of the expulsion of Israel that we can find the strange act of transcendence that Paul describes as the transcendence of faith. In the letter to the Hebrews this is how he praises Abraham’s great spiritual leap: “By faith Abraham obeyed when called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance” (Heb 11:8). Israel lived in the context of a pact offered and initiated by God. During the establishment of this ancient pact, God passed alongside Abraham in total silence.

We are all spiritual descendents of Abraham and his pact. Our life as baptised Christians in the death of Jesus Christ is marked by the inexplicable presence of the Absent One. With the resurrection of Christ an hiatus between the past and future has been created. We proclaim the past

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and future of Jesus. When we proclaim this mystery his glory fills the present. Here is the source of the typical tension of those who are baptised because their interior form is the paschal mystery, the original form of the Church.

Just like Abraham, our father in faith, all of us baptised are torn away definitively from what was ours. And this is true for each one of us. Our glory is not ourselves, but in the paschal mystery we share in as baptised in Christ Jesus. And this mystery is humanly inexplicable and paradoxical. In proclaiming a past event and a future hope we recognise that the present is the work and self-attestation of the One whom Jesus called the Consoler. This is how Peter describes our joy at the presence of the Absent One: “Without having seen him you love him; though you do now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy” (1 Pet 1:8).

In the obedience of baptismal faith, we respond to the Spirit who is calling us. The death of Jesus, the Absent One to whom we bear witness, appears precisely in the obedience of our faith, a faith that is a self-emptying in imitation of Christ and lasts all our life. Our model is Jesus. Through baptism we are “always carrying in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10). Our daily obedience in faith manifests and reveals again the death of Jesus.

The glory of God becomes accessible in the surrounding darkness only in the “light of the knowledge of the divine glory”. This glory is made manifest to others “in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4:11). Obedience to our baptismal promises reflects the glory of the Father shining in the face of Christ. True, we are no more than earthenware vases. But through our obedience we bear the glory of God. The identity and mission of the Word of God made flesh are revealed in Jesus’ obedience. He said: “My will is to do the will of him who sent me” (Jn 4:34). Whatever is discovered in the face of the One who “was crucified in weakness” is hidden once more in our obedience in order to be revealed through our weakness.

Our weakness is not ours – it’s the weakness of Christ. With St. Paul each of us – whether we be married or observing virginity – can say to others in the family or community: “So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor 4:12). God does not put our strength to the test but rather our weakness. Our weakness in obedience to the love of Christ means that we discover all our poverty and uselessness.

Discomfort is not an experience unknown to those who are baptised. Restlessness and suffering are not outside our experience because we have been baptised so that in the Eucharistic sacrifice all our works are “most fittingly offered to the Father along with the body of the Lord” (Lumen Gentium, 34).

The Eucharist is the break between past and future. We incarnate the death of Christ above all so that we can profess the mystery of faith. “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory”. Through the power of the Spirit, the Eucharistic proclamation is our deepest prayer.

Today’s Gospel about the trees that bear much fruit reminds me of another parable that indicates well what I have just said – the parable of the grain of wheat (Jn 12:24). The seed gives life through its death out of which comes the flower that gives life and the fruit that nourishes it.

From the beginning Christians have seen the creation of the seed of wheat and the ear of grain as an extraordinary sign that points to the full, definitive, unique and universal salvific mystery of Jesus Christ. His life in which he made himself obedient through a total self-abandonment is the Trinitarian seal stamped upon all of creation. It is not too daring to believe that the seed of grain exists only because the Son of God from all eternity wanted it to be a sign of the death of the Son of

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Man. Through Jesus, the parable of the grain of wheat has been destined for us who have been baptised into his death.

In summary, being baptised means being thrown outside, deprived of all protection. It’s a radical and unexpected experience or at least so it was for me. My experience of faith as a bishop has been a mixture of miracle and anguish. The anguish comes from the fact that a bishop knows he’s part of the shame of the whole universe that has sinned. He too is marked by darkness. In the hope of redemption a bishop lives hidden in Christ for the good of sinners and in their place. And what about the miracle? The miracle comes about for the bishop by always keeping his hands uplifted, knowing that his anguish has become one with the anguish of the Crucified One. The life of a bishop and priest is destined to do nothing other than live the paschal mystery for the good of humanity.

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“Love Conquers All”

Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan  

During the Mass celebrated at the conclusion of the conference on “Ecclesial Movements and the New Evangelization” Cardinal François Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, addressed the following words to the assembled priests.

As you know, just when I was nominated Archbishop of Saigon, the Communists had seized

power, and I ended up in prison even before I could be installed as bishop in the diocese. In all sincerity, I have to say that knowing Chiara Lubich and her charism of unity, saved me during those long years. You already know of the book70 where I tell many things about my own prison experience. Here I would like to speak to you about some aspects of those experiences that seem particularly relevant with regard to the theme of this conference on evangelization.

One of the most difficult moments that I ever lived in my life was when they chained me in order to transport me by ship, along with 1,500 other prisoners, towards North Vietnam. You can just imagine what the psychological atmosphere was like among those people! Every one of them was deeply traumatized and depressed. One night, in the dark, we went down into the hull of the ship. In that moment, I also felt confused.

I asked myself: “Why does the Lord leave me here? I am a young bishop. I’ve had eight years pastoral experience as bishop. Now the Lord, through Paul VI, nominates me Archbishop. And here I am in prison! Why does the Lord permit this disaster?” I could not understand.

The next day the other prisoners saw me. The non-Catholics did not recognize me, but the Catholics did and they immediately said to the others: “Bishop Van Thuan is among us!” Then all the non-Catholics – the Buddhists, the Kadists, followers of Hoa Hao, Muslims, and evangelical Christians of various dominations – came to me. They were as if in mourning. All thought that we were on our way to die in North Vietnam. There it would be so much colder and, at a distance of almost 1700 km, we were so far from home. Who could visit us there? They thought that death was inevitable. So they all stayed close by me.

In that moment the Lord gave me the grace I needed. He revolutionized my priestly life. It was as if he said to me: “I call you to a new ministry of evangelization. Up to now you have been a pastor in your diocese. You celebrated great ceremonies, you had structures, organized pastoral activity. But it’s here you are a missionary, and evangelizer… Here, these prisoners are the people entrusted to you. Don’t think any longer about your cathedral. This ship, this prison, is your most beautiful cathedral.”

So I had a whole change of heart. I understood that this was the new pastoral ministry asked of me. Every day I felt united to these people also in suffering and hunger, searching for the presence of Jesus in our midst that was born from reciprocal love. I had to serve those who needed God.

It’s in this way that we started. During the night fifty people slept on a common bed. We lay head to head and feet facing outward. I asked six Catholics to stay near me and when it was dark I celebrated mass. I celebrated it with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of my hand. They were the most beautiful masses of my life. After I passed the communion under the

70 Testimony of Hope. Boston: St. Paul’s Press, 2001.

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mosquito nets for the others, I reserved the Blessed Sacrament. The following day we collected some cardboard cigarette boxes from the other prisoners in order to make pouches and reserve the Eucharist in them.

Every Friday the whole prison was gathered together for a “re-education” process in which the Communist perspective was communicated. When there was a break, the Catholics with me used the time to bring these pouches and distribute communion to the Catholics who were in each group of prisoners.

Helped by the Eucharistic presence they prayed during the night. This happened during work too, because each of them in the camps took it in turns to carry the Eucharist under their clothing, and this presence of Jesus gave them strength and encouragement. This transformed their life.

Slowly many non-Catholics came and asked to become Christian. And so these prisoners became catechists for the others. In a hidden way, they baptized them and became their sponsors. The prison soon become for them and me the most beautiful catechetical school.

During that time I understood why Saint Paul had gone to die, like Jesus, outside the walls. Outside the walls of Jerusalem. Outside the walls of Rome. Because we have to go ‘out’ towards the non-Catholics, the abandoned Christians, those who don’t know God or even those who consider themselves enemies of God. All are entrusted to us; no one is estranged from our concern, our service, and our practical love. From that moment this became a true reality in my life.

John Paul II has encouraged us to engage in a “new evangelization”, new in content, methods and ardour. We lived “ardour” during that terrible period. One point struck me strongly. All the correspondence I could receive was just two letters a year from my mother. But one day a letter arrived for me from Chiara Lubich. I don’t know how, but it arrived, the police passed it on to me. It was a great source of joy and sustenance for me, because I felt in communion with you all, notwithstanding the isolation and distance.

Catholics gave a great witness in prison. At a certain point, the number of priests in prisons throughout Vietnam numbered 300. The most amazing and incomprehensible feature for the prison guards and Communist police was the love they found in these people.

My own prison warders, after they became my friends, told me how their superiors had said to them when they were sent to guard us: “This bishop Van Thuan is very dangerous. We will send you to guard him, but only for two weeks at a time. We will change guard every fortnight with another group of five policemen. Otherwise, if you stay longer with him, he will contaminate you. The superiors soon noticed that more and more of the guards became my friends. The prison warders were summoned and were told:: “We will not change you anymore, because if we change you every two weeks he will infect the whole police force!”

How could I “contaminate” them? I did not posses any means; I was in a limited and humiliating situation. Humanly speaking I had nothing in my favour. But there was always the heart! For this reason, I always asked myself what I could do for them, for the two warders who were constantly with me. For the first nine years, in fact, during which I was in solitary confinement, there were only the two guards with me and nobody else.

I tried to speak with them, but they avoided responding to me. Little by little, I told them interesting stories of my journeys in Europe, Asia, and in Australia. They were excited and curious and started asking me questions. They also became my “alumni,” as they wanted me to teach them French and English. This helped build between us a relationship of friendship.

One day I had to chop a considerable amount of wood. So I asked one of the guards: Would you allow me to cut up a piece of wood into the form of a cross?

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But why? I simply said: As a keepsake. It is forbidden! – was the stark reply. Yes, I know. But you are my friend. But if I’m discovered, I will be punished. It’s true I can’t do it before your very eyes, but if you close your eyes, you won’t see me.

So he went away, and I was able to cut the piece of wood into the form of a cross that I hid in a bar of soap all during my captivity. When I regained my freedom, I had it covered in some metal and it became my Episcopal cross. Later on, in another prison near Hanoi, I asked another prison guard:

Can you help me? To do what? I want to cut off a piece of electric wire. Rather concerned, he asked: Do you want to commit suicide? No. I have to live in order to bring ahead Christian values. But what do you want to do? I want to make a chain to hold my cross. But how can you make a chain out of an electric cable? I can do it. Lend me two small pliers and I will show you.

He went away without saying anything to me. A few days later he returned: I cannot refuse what you have asked, because you are too good of a friend. Tomorrow is my turn on duty from seven until eleven. I’ll bring you the electric cable. However, we have only these four hours. If someone comes afterwards and sees it, they could denounce me, so we must finish it in time.

We completed it in the four hours and it is the chain that holds my pectoral cross. But we are not just speaking just of a keepsake. Both then and now this cross and chain make the call of Jesus real for me, the call we have just heard in the gospel that has been proclaimed to us: “Love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends.” It is a sign of the greater love.

Many times my captors asked me: But you love us? Yes, I love you. But how can you love your enemies? We have kept you in prison for more then ten years, and you love us? Yes, I continue to love you. And even if it entered your minds to kill me, I would continue to love you. And one of them said: When you leave prison, will you not send your followers to set fire to my house, and massacre my family and me? No! But why? Because Jesus has taught us to love in this way. If I don’t live this out, I’m not worthy of the name Christian. And you know that it is possible, because I have been so long with you, and we have lived always as true friends.

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This is very beautiful, but incomprehensible. We have learned to hate enemies and to seek revenge when we suffer an injustice. It’s hard for me to understand how you can live as you Christians do. At the same time it’s very beautiful…

Dearest friends: I cannot speak for much longer. But I celebrate today’s Mass for all of you, with you and for you, with the Lord present amongst us.

Through the intercession of our mother Mary, may the Lord shower you with every blessing since we are priests of his heart and want to bring the love of Jesus. Saint Irenaeus, whose feastday we celebrate today, wanted unity and harmony, as the opening prayer of the Mass states,. Only in this way are we true sons of the Church, faithful servants of humanity, and heralds to all of his love. As Chiara said this morning, “Love conquers all.” I have experienced this and so too have you. Amen.

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The Work of Schönstatt

Michael Johannes Marmann

The author of this article is the Superior General of the Schönstatt Fathers and at the same time Moderator of the Presiding Council of the entire Schönstatt Movement. He outlines significant aspects of this ecclesial Movement which was born at the beginning of the twentieth century with a strong prophetic spirit, and which is still very relevant.

Schönstatt is the oldest of the Movements. Its beginnings go back to 1912. When the First World War broke out in 1914 it had already become a work which only today, in the context of the new Movements, can be understood and classified adequately as a new influx of life. Things were very different then, before the Council, and therefore very difficult to understand according to modern parameters. However, Fr. Kentenich forecast many subsequent developments and worked to build his foundation in preparation for them. Many statements made by Popes in recent times are to be found in prophetic texts from Kentenich which go back to the ‘20’s and ‘30’s.

In a lifetime of misunderstanding, Kentenich once declared: no one ever really understood me. He often spoke of his lot, of the destiny of the prophets. Against this background, his three and a half years in Dachau concentration camp and the fourteen years he was separated from his foundation is emblematic of this destiny. The latter of these was requested by the Church authority and accepted by him with faith and in obedience.

It was from his hands as an educator that a work or better still a full-grown organism was born that spread all over the world. At the moment it is present in over 80 countries and embraces 20 new communities, among which is the Institute of the Sisters of Mary, various branches for priests and a good number of groups of women, men, young people and above all a movement for families which is growing all the time. Everything that had proven valid in the history of the Church would find its right of citizenship in this foundation of immense dimensions.

The Focolare Movement is Opus Mariae, the Work of Mary. Fr. Kentenich very early defined the Schönstatt Movement as a Work and Instrument in the hands of Mary. In 1935, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, he said that all his work was due to the Mother of the Lord.

Through his foundation he wanted to show for the future of the Church just how much Mary can do for the world. Mary, the servant of the Lord knew how to lose and offer much, indeed everything, in order to win many, to win all. Here, I present Schönstatt, especially in the context of the theme of this Congress: evangelization.

Schönstatt was born through working with young people. In the minor seminary of the Pallotine Fathers of Vallendar along the Reno river, not far from Koblenz, the spiritual director, Fr. Joseph Kentenich, educated young people in a spirit of initiative and autonomy. Among other things he founded a missionary association to achieve this. He wanted to nurture and direct the missionary zeal of those who were entrusted to him, towards a concrete goal. These were all young people who wanted to become priests and presumably missionaries in the African Cameroon. This is why the Schönstatt programme has been linked with evangelization from the beginning. The founder of Schönstatt was, however, very much aware that this could be realized only through an adequate formation especially since they, like him, were faced with the upheaval which characterised that era.

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So Schönstatt was an apostolic Movement from the very beginning, indeed, a Movement of educators and education. An important talk, the so-called foundation document, helps us understand the extent to which the young members wanted to be formed as instruments of God and instruments of Mary, who has always been seen in the dynamic role as educator and in a missionary prospective. As Pope Paul VI said later, and as the present Pope continues to emphasise, also recently again in the apostolic letter, Novo millennio ineunte: for Schönstatt Mary has always been the “star of the new evangelization”.

The Mother of God is the true founder of Schönstatt . What Fr. Kentenich achieved as educator, father and founder, was always carried out in profound union with her, as her docile instrument, in a very profound union. So we shouldn’t be surprised if the act of founding, which took place through Fr. Kentenich, is in reality the action of Mary. She consented to make her home in that little chapel [the Schönstatt sanctuary], uniting her intercession with that place and making it a point of departure for her action, drawing people to herself to educate them and send them out on mission as authentic instruments.

As a result an essential element of the Schönstatt spirituality (throughout history the only one born in Germany) consists in what the founder called – even in the difficult situation in the concentration camp in Dachau – “the piety of the instrument”. This is a spirituality in which the human person, the individual in community – a person formed in a mature community – grows at the same pace as their commitment to the evangelical renewal of the Church in the world.

In this second point we reflect on the originality of the apostolate, as it is understood by Schönstatt : it gives a central place, as I have already mentioned, to people who are formed and inserted in a profound communion. It is clear that mature Christians can have a great apostolic influence by the way they live, by their ‘good example’, as we used to say in the past. Fr. Kentenich understood very early that, in our society where the mass phenomenon is growing, an individual can be a missionary cell only if they are mature and formed, and united to a community in the most perfect unity possible. Otherwise our action will not enjoy enduring results.

For this reason the finality of the charism of Schönstatt as a movement for education is evengelization. It is here perhaps that the Schönstatt Movement differs from other movements – one doesn’t focus on the merely religious or Christian dimension but we always aim at linking the development of our gifts and natural talents with the action of grace. So we focus on how earthly-natural-human realities are linked to the divine. Likewise, this little chapel [the sanctuary of Schönstatt ] – to which Mary is united and which, through her covenant with people, becomes a point of departure to form suitable instruments – has become a place of mission, a Cenacle.

The apostolate of human beings has an historical dimension. The way that things developed in Schönstatt has had a strong influence on the form its evangelization has taken. This has had much to do with the spirituality of faith in divine providence. The God of life indicates open doors to us. He helps us understand where we should commit ourselves concretely. Those who are linked with Schönstatt through the covenant of love with Mary, look with great openness at their own time and through the events and transformations taking place, they are enabled to recognise the voice of God. In this way they are open to be continually inspired, in their apostolic commitments, by God himself. Though not subject to time, the Gospel must be translated and proclaimed in every age, and that is possible through real and living contact with the events of one’s own time in which the God of life and history acts.

I would also like to underline two other characteristics. It wasn’t that Fr. Kentenich had an idea and created an organisation, but rather he wanted to be at the service of life. And so he focussed on experiences in the concrete reality of the foundation. So an organism was born, in which the members developed in close links to persons, places and ideas. This organism today too has an

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apostolic irradiation. If you want to understand what Schönstatt is, or for what Schönstatt wants to be, you have to look beyond written or spoken words and see the life as it is lived. Mary is like the soul of this organism: we promote a Marian church by trying ourselves to be this church ourselves.

And the second point I want to mention here is our relationship with the Church. Fr Kentenich, as architect of his Work embedded the Movement in the Church in various ways and with different levels of commitment of the members. So much so that the individual groups in parishes where they live and work are called to consider themselves as an organ, as an instrument in the hands of the parish pastor. I underline this aspect in a particular way here, before so many priests. In conformity with the missionary ethos of the founder, they are ready to respond generously to the requests and invitations of the parish pastor to whom is entrusted the apostolate of the parish.

What is the message that Schönstatt brings as its characteristic perspective in the proclamation of the Gospel? I would like to name three aspects. The first is covenant. Schönstatt underlines the whole reality of covenant in the Old and the New Testaments before everything else. God is the God of the Covenant, the merciful Father, who cares for his children. This corresponds to the primary content of evangelization which the Holy Father – as Chiara has reminded us – pointed out when he said: “Man is loved by God”. The covenant of love with Mary is the beginning: Mary brings us eminently to Christ, who is the face of the Father turned towards us. The ‘cross of unity’ is a symbol of this, which represents the Good Shepherd who offers his life together with Mary to God the Father. Mary, with the active role she had in the plan of salvation, is always the companion and help of Christ in every time, in every place, in every expression of life. A second element – as I have already said – is faith in the plan of divine providence, the God of life. We are convinced that God intervenes, he indicates missionary directions to us, but he also guides and accompanies us. With the passage of time, through the reality of our life and the inspirations of our soul we become apostles who find open doors to enter (like Paul before he visited Europe), through which God himself brings us into contact with people.

Finally, the image of God which Schönstatt underlines. United with Mary, we see and experience God as very close and personal to us. He is truly Father, who cares for his children – as the Lord affirms in the Sermon on the Mount. He has traced the plan of my life according to his wisdom and love, he provides for everything with love, even the dark and painful moments of my destiny, and realises everything with love.

These always consist of a double reality. On the one hand, they are a place of grace, that is, a sanctuary where God and the Mother of God act and, on the other hand, they are a place of education, a house of retreat for the Movement, where the human instruments work. These houses are very important to us as they offer a home to people. We are convinced that in order to proclaim our faith, for every effort in evangelisation, it is necessary to have a place, a place where we feel linked together, where we feel at home, where we are happy like the apostles on Tabor, but also a place from which we are sent out again like the apostles from the Cenacle. For this reason we speak of the grace of having a home, given to us by our Mother and Educator. Another gift of the sanctuary is the grace of interior transformation, which forms and transforms people into authentic mature Christians. After all I have said it’s possible to understand the meaning of this second grace linked to our chapels, our sanctuaries. There is a special grace there, which Fr. Kentenich, from his concrete experience as founder, called the grace of apostolic fruitfulness. Practically speaking this means something like the success of our missionary efforts, a gift which is particularly promising, given the present situation of the disintegration of the Church in Europe.

God acts. Fr. Kentenich speaks of the irruption of divine power. But people must also act – as partners in covenant with God. In our covenant spirituality we say: nothing without you, God; nothing without us. Everyone is a missionary, even the sick and the old who are unable to move.

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By offering prayer and sacrifice they participate in the apostolic work of the whole movement, working with Mary. Using a phrase that might easily be misunderstood, but which is very popular among us we speak of “a contribution to the capital of grace”. Everyone works together so that a river of grace will flow from the sanctuary.

Fr. Kentenich (1885-1968), let himself be guided during his long life. He didn’t have an a priori defined plan. The mission and responsibility that God had entrusted to him had to develop over time and in history. He always recognised the dependence of his foundation on Mary, as an instrument in the hands of Mary, the Mother Thrice Admirable. He saw it as the fulfilment of the mission that She had entrusted to him. Mary, with her way of thinking, her attitude and her potentialities must give her yes again today. In this age of crisis we need to think again and make a new beginning, at every level and in every environment. For this reason Schönstatt evangelises as a whole, as a Movement of ideas, of life and of grace.

Fr. Kentenich became very aware of many principles which have universal value and concrete relevance. One of the most important was: “the greatest possible freedom – bind oneself only as far as it is necessary – with the most greatest degree of spiritual formation.” To reach the greatest freedom by linking oneself voluntarily with places, persons and ideas, demands a lot of sensitivity. It is necessary to work as a movement at creating “atmosphere”. It also involves knowing how to motivate (formation of the spirit). Only in this way can a living organism take shape as a community with many branches, which does not have a central authority and where the members are linked at most through a contract.

In each country the Movement needs the inspiration of a central group of animators, the so called “centres”. These groups are made up of members of the institute and of the federative communities, that prepare them for the various commitments and assist in carrying them out. The commitment of the internal staff for formation is linked, according to a creative polarity, with the needs of the apostolate on the ground as it is developed and called for by Bishops (and parish pastors) (see 2nd point above). Naturally, a fruitful polarity derives from this with Catholic Action in its different expressions in the universal Church. Fr. Kentenich saw three ways in which this polarity could be realised. Depending on the situation, the members of the Movement could act within Catholic Action, or, in a relationship of reciprocal communion alongside Catholic Action, or, in its place - where Catholic Action doesn’t exist.

One of the most important principles of life is the so called principle of polarity. Our founder derived this from his vision of the God’s government of the world. According to this principle, Fr. Kentenich wanted communities and institutions to develop in a reciprocal proximity that would be charged with energy. Schönstatt can continue to be living and creative only if this occurs.

The Movement cannot exist and bear fruit, if it is not God who “does everything”. In their striving towards sanctity and the adventure of faith both the individual members and the community experience the providential power of the living God who strengthens and sustains them. If on the one hand God goes in search of the human person and needs their co-operation as a free partner; on the other hand He guides and fills each one with his gifts. This abandonment to God and to his loving guidance is concretised in the places around which the Movement gathers: the Sanctuaries, which are therefore Schönstatt’s distinctive characteristic.

To conclude I would like to speak of an action, which has given great joy everywhere and which has spread widely: the so called “Pilgrim Madonna”. Joāo Pozzobom, father of seven children in Sancta Maria in the south of Brazil, felt impelled and called, in 1950. to bring the image of the Madonna into people’s houses. From this was born a movement which at present involves more than two million people in various countries and continents. This is its significance: Mary, Mother and Educator of individuals and families, visits the homes and meets the people who gather there,

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with their social and religious problems, and awakens in them a new openness to the will of God. It works very simply: someone takes responsibility for bringing the image of the Madonna to 15 or 30 houses, so that it’s brought to a different house each day or second day. And this is repeated month by month. Mary is shown to all and as a result she brings people to Christ and also, in a new way, to one another. A glimpse of the birth of a Marian Church which is being growing from below.

This missionary initiative adapts in different ways to the various places and links with the way of life, the habits and the customs of the individual cultures. In this way a basic educative principle is stressed: it’s a question of linking nature and grace, of reaching a polar and yet harmonious relationship between natural, cultural and family conditions and the action of grace in the covenant of love with Mary, who brings us in Christ to experience God the Father, full of love, who wants to make us instruments of his plans. Schönstatt ’s difficult but ever new task is to help the Church take on a Marian face. This involves giving primacy to being over action, to life and service over every form of power, to mercy over judgement, and to love over everything else. All of this is part of the reality of the Church of the future so that the Church will become the place of Mary’s fiat, of her Magnificat, of her stabat under the cross and of the Pentecost event.

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The Neo-Catechumenal Way

Stefano Gennarini

Since he was unable to come personally because of unforeseen important commitments, Kiko Argüello sent one of his closest collaborators, Stefano Gennarini, the author of this article. A PhD in theoretical physics, Stefano has journeyed on the Way for the past thirty years. He has carried out and continues to carry out a wide range of activities on an international level.

I would like to start by introducing myself to show what the Neo-Catechumenal Way meant for me. I was born in Milan into a Catholic family. My father was a journalist who for many years worked as a producer on Italian television. After school I studied theoretical physics. After the publication of my thesis, while working as a researcher at University, I went through a deep crisis. I realised that the faith my parents had handed on to me had left deep within me a profound stamp of the person of Jesus Christ but it wasn’t enough for me in terms of living as a Christian.

In other words, I realised that to be a Christian meant to love God with all one’s heart, mind, strength and love your neighbour as yourself, but I realised I was bourgeois and selfish with all the jealousies that are found within academic circles. A family friend and spiritual director, Fr. Giuseppe Dosetti, suggested to me to leave my university job and go to study theology in Germany.

I lived in Tübingen during the years of contestation around 1968. It was the time that Prof. Küng was expressing his dissent from the Catholic Church. Prof. Ratzinger became a reference point for a group of which I was a member. Immediately after my licence in New Testament studies under Prof. Schnackenburg, I started on doctoral studies. But a deeper crisis than the one I experienced after studying physics awaited me.

Through the grace of God I remained orthodox from an intellectual point of view, but my life was not grounded in Jesus Christ. I had set out to look for a more adult faith in theology but I ended up finding another university career! So I became deeply frustrated and I almost resented the Church because of what I perceived to be her inability to transmit faith into my life. It was in this context that I met the catechesis of the Neo-Catechumenal Way.

When I returned to Rome at Christmas ’69, all my family was following the catechesis lead by Kiko Argüello and Carmen Hernandez – they initiated the Way – together with Fr. Francesco Cuppini in the parish of St. Luigi Gonzaga.

I was quite sceptical and hesitant about it but I went along. And it was a surprise for me because what I encountered was a preaching that was prophesising about my life and revealing it to me. It showed me why I was incapable of giving myself truly to God and doing his will – it was because I was circled by fear of losing my life, fear of death. The letter to the Hebrews says: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb 2:14-15). There is an enemy that holds us in slavery and this is the slavery of sin, that being closed in on our selfishness, our incapacity to love, obey God and do his will and lose our lives.

But at the same time the preaching was proclaiming to me that Christ came to break this circle through his death and resurrection. Through this preaching the face of Christ that I had known in my childhood and adolescence was recomposed. Perhaps it was because I had suffered much in

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Germany during my theology studies that I said “Amen”. I said “yes” to this word – that it would happen in me.

That’s how God began to work in my life. I found myself in a community that I had not chosen, made up of people who were very different from me in terms of culture, age, social class and way of thinking, but they had all adhered to this preaching. After about two years the Lord called me to put myself at the service of the Gospel as an itinerant preacher of the Way. Seeing the fruits of conversion in the life of my brothers and sisters in the community and the communion that God created between people who were so different, I left everything and set out to evangelised wherever the bishops required. This brought me to Austria, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia. For some 25 years now I have been in Poland from where I also co-ordinate the teams that work in the countries of the ex-Soviet Union.

It was born among the poor in the shanty dwellings around Madrid at the time of the Second Vatican Council. Through two individuals whom, through different ways, God had brought to live among the poor – Kiko Argüello, an artist who had converted from atheistic existentialism and Carmen Hernandez, a missionary who had a licence in chemistry and theology – God wanted to give the Church an instrument of evangelisation in order to contribute to the renewal wished for by the Council.

In these very poor and often degrading surroundings where all abstract language fell flat, Kiko and Carmen found they had to give reasons for their faith because people were asking them. The Lord helped them to rediscover a living word, a kerygma that was linked directly to life. Welcoming the proclamation of the gratuitous love of God by these people who were full of sins, brought about a change of life and created communion. A community came to life in which you could touch the power of the Holy Spirit. A first seed was born – the proclamation of the kerygma, a living liturgy in which the Word celebrated was realised in a direct and surprising way in the life of individuals and the community.

On his return from the Council, the then Archbishop of Madrid, Casimiro Morcillo came into contact with this small community in the shanty dwellings (made up of gypsies, thieves, ex-prisoners…) and was deeply moved. He wanted this seed to be brought into the parishes recommending this be done by putting the parish pastor at the centre. The experience spread in Madrid and other dioceses in Spain. In 1968 they were invited to Rome and with a letter from the Archbishop of Madrid for the Cardinal Vicar Dell’Acqua, they began the Way in a few parishes. From there it spread in all the dioceses through catechists chosen from the first communities and in many other dioceses, countries and continents through teams of itinerant catechists.

It is in the parishes that this Way took the form of an itinerary “of catholic formation valid for our society and humanity today”.71 Some changed. The proclamation was welcomed; it aroused a great response of joy; a community was born.

But many of our parishioners did not know one another. We are so used to wearing masks in order to be accepted. We pretend to be better that what we are. But we don’t really know what’s within us, our deepest reality. Kiko and Carmen came to realised that the proclamation of the kergyma was not sufficient. The tripod – Word, liturgy and community – experienced in the shanty dwellings was not enough. There was also a need for a journey in order to reach an adult faith, a journey of kenosis, descending right down into one’s reality in order to know oneself and experience the power of the gratuitous love of God. This journey would help people to see with their own eyes that Christ really descended with us right down to the depths of our poverty and enabled us to recognise the old man that is in us in order to put him to death in the waters of our

71 Letter from John Paul II to Bishop Cordes in AAS 82 (1990), 1513-1515.

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baptism with the help of the Holy Spirit. And to do this every day as the Church invites us to do at the Easter Vigil.

In other words, they realised that a journey/Way of rediscovery of Baptism was necessary, one that would be like the catechumenate in the early Church. It would be gradual, made up of various stages. It was also necessary to keep in mind that people had already been baptised and so there was a need to nourish this new creature that had re-awakened through proclamation of the kerygma. It was necessary to help the grace of Baptism to grow through the food of the Word and the Eucharist. It was a question of preparing a womb into which the seed of Baptism could develop to the point of an adult faith that is needed to carry out the mission of the Church today. The Way was shaped like a post-baptism catechumenate lived out in a system of small communities.

The relationship with the Roman Congregations and the Pope was of decisive importance. They supported and helped us. In 1971-72 when Kiko and Carmen had their first meeting with the Congregation for Worship both sides were surprised. Kiko and Carmen learned that the Church, following the wishes of Vatican II, was about to publish the Ordo Initiationis Christianae Adultorum. The fourth chapter of this document also envisaged the possibility of adapting this Ordo to people who were already baptised. The surprise on the part of the Congregation was seeing how God had given life in the Church to a reality that was already putting all this into practice.

In 1974, after receiving sufficient documentation, this Congregation published a note in which it said that just as after the Council of Trent God had brought about charisms in order to bring it to fulfilment, so too today after Vatican II.

‘An excellent model of this renewal is to be found in the “Neo-Catechumanal Way”… The goal of the communities is to render visible in the parish the sign of the Missionary Church and they make the effort to open up the way towards evangelisation of those who have almost abandoned Christian life. To this end, the members of the communities seek to live more intensely the Christian liturgical life by starting from a new catechesis and catechumenal preparation. They follow along a spiritual journey (way) all those phases that in the early Church the catechumens followed before receiving the sacrament of Baptism. Since they are dealing not with people who are to be baptised but with baptised, the catechesis is the same bu thte liturgical rites are adapted to the state of baptised Christians according to the directives already given by the Congregation of divine Worship”.72

The experience of more than 30 years has shown that the Way, as a post-baptismal catechumanate, opens up a missionary pastoral in parishes that calls those who are far from the faith to faith. That’s why it’s necessary in parishes to bear witness to an adult faith in a community that constitutes a sure reference point as the General Directory of Catechesis puts it. Today many traditional Christians live out their faith in a childish manner as the divorce between religion and life shows. It’s necessary to have a process of true conversion, a journey of growth in faith in order to give those signs of which Jesus Christ speaks in the Gospel: love, shaped on the dimension of the cross (“Love one another has I have love you; by this all will know you are my disciples” Jn 13: 34-35) and the sign of unity” (“May you be one, so that the world will believe that God sent me” cf. Jn 17:21).

In order to give these signs, there’s a need for a life that has conquered death. In order to love the enemy, to love the sick wife, to live in the measure of the cross, it’s necessary that this gift given to us in baptism–this new creature–becomes adult. In order “to be one” it is necessary that all the barriers that divide us (age, culture, social class) be knocked down so that in the community the Church as the Body of the Risen One may appear. And why are love and unity a sign that can also

72 In “notitiae”, n. 95-96 (1974).

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call those far away? Because they make present the victory over death, Christ’s resurrection. For me to give my life for a person I don’t like, for a person who does not give me life, it is necessary that I have eternal life in me, that life which has conquered death. We can bear witness that thanks to those signs it is possible to transmit faith to children (something that’s so difficult today!) and gradually as the brothers and sisters grow in faith, the communities draw many other people and the net fills.

The Neo-Catechemenate Way is offered to the diocese and parish as an itinerary of formation in the faith, a post-baptismal catechumenate. Upon request from a bishop or parish pastor, a team of catechists made up of a presbyter and some lay people begin the catechesis that opens up an itinerary of formation. All the Way is based on the tripod that I’ve already mentioned – the Word, Liturgy, Community and it develops in four phases:

Firstly, the proclamation of the kerygma in various forms is essential in the initial catechesis that leads to the setting up of a community. In this phase the hermeneutical, Christological and existential keys are given so that the Word celebrated can become flesh in the life of the persons. People are helped to discover the Paschal Mystery as the centre of the sacraments (penance and Eucharist). After the community is set up, the catechists move on and the community is entrusted to the pastoral care of the parish pastor. The community meets twice a week in order to celebrate the liturgy of the Word and the Sunday Eucharist on Saturday evening. It also meets once a month on Sunday for a retreat. The catechists return about once a year in order to meet the community and continue the stages of the post-baptismal catechumenate.

The pre-Catechumenate is a period of kenosi in order to reach the humility, that is truth, in order to help the brothers and sisters to renounce idols of the world (money, sex, power…), in order to begin to understand the meaning of the cross in their history and put God at the centre of their lives.

The Catechumenate is a period of interior simplification to reach the point of abandoning yourself to the will of God. Brothers and sisters are helped during this period by being presented with the prayer of the Office, the Creed and the Our Father.

The period of election is the time of preparation for a solemn renewal of baptismal promises during the Easter Vigil, a time of illumination and gratitude of the work of salvation wrought by God in life. During this whole process which lasts for about ten years, there is a gradual deepening of one’s knowledge of Scripture, Tradition and the Church’s Magisterium as well as the moral life and life of prayer.

I’ll conclude with two citations from the Pope that highlight the fruits of the Way: “After more than twenty years of life of the communities spread in the five continents,

° taking into account the new vitality that animates parishes, the missionary impulse, and the fruits of conversion that arise out of the itinerants’ commitment and, lastly, the work of families who evangelise in de-Christianised zones of Europe and the whole world;

° in considering the vocations that have arisen from this Movement to religious life and the presbyterate and the birth of diocesan colleges for the formation of priests for the New Evangelization such as the Redemptoris Mater college in Rome;

° having reviewed the documentation that you presented to me and in taking up the request made of me.

I recognise the Neo-Catechumenal Way as an itinerary of Catholic formation that is valid for society and modern times”.73 ‘Your “Way”…is carried out in small communities in which “reflection on the Word of God and participation in the Eucharist…form living cells of the Church,

73 Letter to Bishop Cordes.

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renew the vitality of the Parish through mature Christians capable of bearing witness to the truth with a radically lived faith”.74 These communities help people to experience the Church as the Body of Christ in which, through sacramental signs, God extends his salvific action to people of every generation. It is not difficult to see the fruits of the Neo-Catechumenal Way: reconciled families who are open to life and grateful to the Church and who offer themselves to bring the proclamation of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. I myself have had occasion to present the Crucifix to families who are leaving for the poorest and most de-Christianised areas. Many vocations are now arising from these areas. Young women embrace the religious and contemplative life. Young men set out towards priesthood in local seminaries and in the missionary diocesan Redemptoris Mater seminaries that help churches where, because of the scarcity of clergy, there are serious difficulties. In this way the wish of Vatican II is fulfilled: “Priests, therefore, should recall that the solicitude of all the churches ought to be their intimate concern…. For this purpose there can with advantages be set up some international seminaries….” (PO, 10). 75 I exhort you to remain faithful to the charism that God has entrusted to you for the good of the whole ecclesial community by contributing, through your work, to a deeper rediscovery of the Christian initiation of adults’.

Today the Neo-Catechumenal Way has spread to 900 dioceses in 104 countries with 16.000 communities. The Pope has sent out 300 families to 50 nations. 1500 seminarians are preparing in 43 diocesan missionary Redemptoris Mater seminaries in various parts of the world. There are very many vocations to the religious life.

74 Pope’s message to the bishops of Europe, 12.04.1993. 75 John Paul II to Itinerants of the Neo-Catechumenal Way in L’Osservatore Romano [Italian ed.] 17-18.01.1994.

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Renewal in the Spirit

Salvatore Martinez

The author of this article is the co-ordinator of Renewal in the Spirit in Italy. If the essence of God is “love”, then the mission of the Church is to evangelise and to communicate this “good news”. Jesus came for this and the Church exists to continue this mission. It follows that all Christians find in the “obligation to evangelise” their truest form of obedience to the Father’s will, which is that every human being be saved through Jesus.

In view of the Church’s evangelising mission, what is the specific role of Renewal in the Spirit (Renewal) which Paul VI defined as a “chance for the Church” and John Paul II described as a “hope for the world”? Although Renewal is an ecclesial instrument for a new spiritual communication of the faith, in itself it does not represent a new spirituality. Renewal wishes to contribute to reviving the shape of Christian existence, which is, by its nature, an existence “in the Spirit”.

This was why Cardinal J. L. Suenens defined Renewal as “a current of grace which is capable of giving a shake-up to the post-conciliar Church…a movement of the Spirit which helps the Church to become totally charismatic in line with the expectations and proposals of the Second Vatican Council…”.

Renewal is characterised by “being made up of groups and communities which pray together and which ask for a new outpouring of the Spirit for each of their members. Their intention here is to add the following to the grace of Christian initiation: a new awareness of the Lordship of Christ, a new experience of the gifts and charisms of the Spirit and a new readiness to place every talent and charism given by God at the service of their brothers and sisters in the Church”.

The assembly of the community which prays and celebrates is the fundamental event of Renewal. This recalls that which is famously described in Acts 2: 42-48 and in I Cor 12 and 14.

Through charismatic prayer and recourse to the Word of God, the members of Renewal commit themselves to living an authentic spirituality, that is, a way of living which embraces every dimension of human life: the physical body, affections, emotions, reason, creativity, the social aspect of the human person. It’s about a spirituality that is not just a part of life but, rather, life itself being driven by the Spirit. It’s a spirituality that doesn’t estrange people from their daily life but rather demolishes any discrepancy which may exist between life and faith. It follows, therefore, that evangelization is not a gesture, a momentary thing, some kind of methodology to be worked out within the life of the community, but rather a natural and continuous expression of the new life which has been embraced.

The preparation for evangelization begins in prayer groups (the “upper rooms” of prayer) where brothers and sisters experience faithful and submissive abandonment to the Spirit. In these they witness a new flowering of the gifts of God that comes about as a result of this new way of life and of the permanent conversion which it demands. The heart of this new spiritual dynamism originates in the experience of prayer as a new “outpouring of the Spirit or baptism in the Spirit”.

In a meeting with the Italian groups and communities of Renewal in 1980, John Paul II said, “we know that we are indebted to this outpouring of the Holy Spirit which has brought us a deeper experience of the presence of Christ.”

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Certainly we are not dealing with a new baptism or a repetition of the sacrament, but with the relationship we have with the sacraments of initiation (this is why in English speaking countries it is referred to as “baptism in the Spirit”). The outpouring of the Spirit fulfils and renews our baptism for it engenders a clearer awareness of its purpose with regard to the evangelising mission to which all Christians are called.

With regard to the effectiveness of the outpouring of the Spirit in revitalising baptism, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa states: “The person finally does his part, that is, he makes a responsible and personal choice of faith, prepared by repentance, which enables the work of God to be freed and unlock its power. The gift of God finally becomes ‘unleashed’, faith becomes alive again and the opus operantis is made visible”. The outpouring of the Spirit is the cause of a spiritual “rebirth”, the same as that proposed by Jesus to Nicodemus, with the result that people are now able to be struck by the marvels and newness brought about by the Spirit.

In Renewal, evangelization is the basis, the heart and the source of health for community life. One cannot be part of Renewal if there is not a choice to “depend upon the Word” and to become evangelisers.

Our charismatic and ecclesial identity can be expressed in five vital ways of relating to the Word. These are an expression of the ways in which groups and communities commit themselves to the continual process of evangelization and from which they draw their source and strength on their journey.

The foundation of groups and communities derives from a “pronouncement of God”. It is through a discerning process, by means of the Word, the elders and those responsible for the group or community understand the will of God and assume responsibility to “hand over what is contained within” that pronouncement – the tradition of our charismatic experience – to other brothers and sisters. Thus a journey of “spiritual illumination” begins. And this is a call to conversion through a suitable “study of new life in the Spirit” in which the announcing of the work of “renewal in the Spirit” is made fruitful by the Word of God proclaimed and accepted by the brothers and sisters.

A lack of the Word, of prophecy, in community prayer meetings is a “lack of inspiration”. Through the Word, the Spirit “inspires” our prayer so that it does not remain simply “spontaneous”. Without the Word, prayer does not have a charismatic tone to it. Those who trust in the Word of God in their personal prayer let themselves be much more easily involved in the prayer of the community and experience a greater intimacy with God and their brothers and sisters. Every gesture, every exhortation, every commitment which the leaders ask of the assembly during community prayer must be “moved” by the Word.

Liturgical life is the basis of being the Church. It is that which “makes us the Church”. Groups and communities are called to communally celebrate the Word through well prepared liturgical events for the growth of the brothers and sisters. The eucharistic celebration and the communal celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation are the two occasions in particular in which Renewal sees its own catholic, ecclesial and ecumenical identity being re-established. It is in these celebrations that groups and communities experience the fullness of brotherhood and community life. The Renewal’s “celebrating the Word” is offered to God as an instrument of salvation for many and it feels compelled by the Spirit to widen the frontiers of the Church.

Without the study of the Word, without the applying of the heart and mind to that which God wishes for our good, the journey of growth for groups and communities would be impossible. To “remember the promises the Lord has made” is a way to help our brothers and sisters feel the faithfulness of God throughout the years of their journey. This, therefore, is why groups and communities who “live by the Word” “journey with the Word”. This is a commitment which cannot

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be put off, an undeniable opportunity to face ourselves with the will of God by responsibly taking up tasks at various levels of the community’s life.

If the Word becomes our life itself, that is, the expression of the “new life” according to the Spirit, it follows that “to witness the Word” is already to“give life”. The Spirit sends us to be “servants of the Word”, witnesses to that which we have accepted and come to believe in communal life. The Word is Jesus himself: it cannot be “jealously guarded”, but must be “shared” in order to become salvation for those who either do not believe or refuse to believe. Without evangelization, faith will tend to become extinguished: every group is called to “give meaning” to the hope which is answered in Jesus, the living Word in our midst. Groups and communities that do not evangelise are destined to become extinct, to extinguish the fire of Pentecost, that is, the passion for the Word which the Holy Spirit ignites in the hearts of believers.

We need to return to the guidance of the Spirit and recover the prophetic and interior guide in prayer. This is the only true method that an evangeliser should desire. The techniques and methods of evangelization are good, but none of them, nor all of them together can substitute for the discreet, surprising and ever new and totally divine activity within us of the Spirit whom we can only find in prayer.

Without the Spirit even the most refined education achieves nothing. Without the Spirit even the most convincing dialectics are ineffective. Without the Spirit all our catechetical strategies based on sociology or psychology turn out to be empty. What helps is more abandonment to the Spirit and less trust in human securities; more evangelical simplicity and less dependence on learning in order to evangelise.

The Gospel is a communication from heart to heart. It is an immediate announcement with no mediation or superstructure. We should reveal Jesus and not ourselves. It is Christ that should appear and not the novelties of our communication skills. We should go back to speaking about Jesus, because faith comes from listening: “How can they believe if they have not heard? And how can they hear if no one announces? Faith depends on preaching Christ’s word.” (Rom 10: 4.17), not forgetting however that “the witness of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” (Apoc 19:10)

Without a working faith our Christian life remains mediocre, lacking in God’s glory; it is no use talking about faith if it is not an active one, if it is not put into practice. We cannot proclaim something our heart lacks; we cannot talk about what we have not experienced: this is where the secret of effective evangelization lies. The word that we proclaim is a word of faith, it is a profession of faith, it is recognising Jesus always. Only the word truly believed can be proclaimed, in order for it to be true, believable and attractive to whoever receives it.

The Gospel is the word of truth: to receive the Gospel is to do truth; to proclaim the Gospel is to teach how you can be truly happy in Jesus, if one is truthful. In the talk he gave last October on the occasion of the “Jubilee for Catechists”, Cardinal Ratzinger resolutely affirmed: “Evangelization is teaching the art of living.”

Jesus said: “If you remain faithful to my word you will truly be my disciples” (Jn 8: 31). To remain in him (this is prayer) in order to get to know him (this is where listening to his word comes in) and in this way to become his disciples. Without prayer and the word we only think we are disciples of Jesus but, in fact, we are still distant even estranged from the Father despite professing ourselves to be his children.

Prayer and evangelization are important in order to become saints and to help the world and the Church to become more holy. Prayer and evangelization are essential to find the breath of Pentecost strongly and intensely. Pentecost is an “Upper Room” and a “town square”, it takes place in two distinct and complementary places: an “Upper Room” for praying and waiting for the Spirit

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and His prophetic charisms; a “town square” to speak of Jesus in order to let the Gospel of salvation issue from our lips, from our gaze, and from our life.

Renewal wants to give once more prophetic strength to the cause of evangelization, beginning with prayer, with the Word. It wants to promote an evangelization supported by a prophetic spirituality that reaffirms the sovereignty of Jesus in the power of the Spirit, in all the situations we feel we are stuck in, those situations where the world has given up.

“And we heard them announce God’s great works in our own language. Everyone was amazed and puzzled asking each other what does this mean?” Others however, made fun of them and said: “They are drunk on wine.”(Acts 2: 11-13). To proclaim God’s great works, to give glory to the almighty name of God – this is the fruit of Pentecost; this is the secret of evangelization. The apostles do not want to make a name for themselves, but for God; they no longer discuss who will be the greatest among them, they are overcome by the Spirit, blinded by God’s glory. Within them the greatest revolution since the day of dispersion at Babel takes place: the Spirit shifts the centre of our attention from ourselves and focus us again on God.

The prayer of praise is one of the specific charisms of the Renewal, I would say, almost a secret weapon in evangelization. It is the most effective instrument for re-centring ourselves on God and living a permanent conversion, in the personal journey of evangelization. In praise, God’s holiness and our poverty are made manifest. In praise we give glory to God, recognising what he is despite ourselves, without looking at ourselves, as happens when we turn to God because of what he has done (prayer of thanksgiving) or for what he can do (prayer of supplication).

Through the Spirit praise means entering into God’s repose; praise means immersing oneself in God’s mysteries; it means loving God’s will for us.

Praise is a pure oblation to God, which does not increase God’s greatness, but obtains for us the grace which saves us. Praise suits the lowly and the sinner who trust in God’s mercy as believers not as clients, proclaiming faith in God. As scripture says: “If you proclaim that Jesus is the Lord and you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom. 10:9)

Those who do not pray remain alone. They lose themselves and they lose God. Prayer is the only ability we have of being open to the transcendent and to others, to meet God and to meet Him in every neighbour we meet, to recognize God in heaven and to always recognize him alive in our brothers and sisters.

“A Christian is worth as much as he prays.”(Personal letter from John Paul II to Renewal, 2001). Only by praying will we value others even up to the point of giving our life for them.

To pray then, is not abdicating your responsibilities to others. On the contrary, only those who pray know how to get their hands dirty because they feel the urgency of God, the fire, the passion of God for us and cannot help getting involved, taking part in history, and giving their life for God’s kingdom.

It is in communitarian life that the members of Renewal experience obedience to the Spirit, the strength of charismatic prayer, and discernment based on the word of God. So they get involved in re-living the experience of the Upper Room at Pentecost.

When it is not possible to speak to the world of God, we never stop speaking to God about the world in prayer and intercession. This is so that through the Spirit, Jesus may ever be alive in His Church and the Church may never cease to desire that the kingdom of God progresses on earth.

Rather than worrying about giving a talk about God, our brothers and sisters are taught to bear witness to their spiritual experience and their journey of conversion that came about through their

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prayer for a new outpouring of the Spirit. Rather than being “experts about God” we say we are “lovers of God’s glory”, our witnesses of the culture of Pentecost that the world sadly lacks.

It is an incredible miracle to be able to admire within the Church the rebirth of people who – before their conversion – led an apathetic existence, indifferent to any form of involvement in the Church and who today take on a responsibility for improving their personal, family community and social life.

So, silent people become eloquent proclaimers of God’s Word; ignorant people reveal surprising forms of spiritual knowledge and wisdom: really a new Pentecost. Many sons and daughters of God who have not had any access to institutes or ordained ministries in the church have receive ecclesial dignity from the Spirit becoming guides and animators of active ministries, even taking on pastoral responsibilities.

Another characteristic of evangelization in Renewal is to strongly believe that it must be marked by charisms of the Spirit and by the signs and wonders which –as in the early Church – always accompanied the preaching of the Gospel. In fact, we believe that the Spirit of Christ has not finished the mission proclaimed by Jesus two thousand years ago and that the Church has lost nothing of its original power in spreading the Kingdom of God. God is almighty and through the Spirit He re-awakens “charismatic faith”, the invocation of God’s marvels, so that the world may believe and be converted to him. The charismatic intervention of the Spirit directs our attention towards the Risen Lord, allowing us to merit His glorious victory over death and sin.

From the very first persecutions of the apostles for the sake of the Gospel (Acts 4: 29-31) the Church has always called upon God’s help and marvellous intervention, so that – just as in the time when Jesus passed among his own “healing and blessing those who were under the power of the devil”(Acts 10: 38) – healing, liberation and miracles would occur for the greater glory of God and for the benefit of those who are hard of heart.

Paul, the apostle, reminds us how the Gospel was spread “not just by means of the Word but also with power and with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction”(1Tim 1: 5). The Church today possesses the same power to heal and free which belonged to Jesus because it is – in space and time – the sacrament of Jesus’ saving power in history, and Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, today and always.”(Heb 13:8). To preach the message of salvation without calling for the gifts of the Spirit that allow the Word to bear greater fruit, is the equivalent of not complying with Jesus’ last teaching on building the kingdom of God. Likewise, it would not be walking in harmony with the Magisterium of Vatican II and the teaching of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church which encourages us to avail of charisms for evangelization which are “useful for the renewal and greater expansion of the Church”(Lumen Gentium, 12)

Jesus did not invite his disciples to teach theories or abstract ideas, but to witness to what they had heard and seen. It often seems that we are more concerned with teaching a doctrine rather than communicating life. In order to grow in the life of God, in the new life, you must first be born from the power of the Holy Spirit. An evangeliser is first of all a witness who has a personal experience of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a witness who transmits more than a doctrine to others, a living person who gives life in abundance. Only afterwards must one carry out catechesis and transmit moral teaching.

The commandments were given after the theophany of God on Mount Sinai. That the commandments given by the Lord to Moses were divine and not a human work was clear to the people from the radiant face of Moses, a consequence of the mysterious meeting of the prophet with the Word come down from heaven. God shows himself, he does not put himself on display. We are

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often concerned with making people understand the commandments of God but the same people don’t know the God of the commandments.

It is essential that the Gospel of salvation, Jesus Himself, can act and work among us in this pagan and de-christianised era. Many people are satisfied simply with the fact of Jesus being present without being concerned to verify whether He is actively alive among His own. Faith is God’s dynamism, it recalls God’s activity among us. I always tell my own people: it is not enough to know that Jesus is in our midst if you cannot see, feel or touch His presence, if the Spirit cannot produce Pentecost in us.

If we re-read the Gospel accounts of the meetings Jesus had with others, we see him repeat, “What do you want me to do for you?”. As well as by word, he often says this through a simple glance of love. At every ‘coming’ of Jesus, His presence among us is an event that we can “feel.” This appeal to the spiritual senses is quite important for understanding the apostle John’s affirmation in the prologue of his first letter: “That which was there from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have contemplated and which we have touched with our hands, the Word of Life…we also announce to you.” (1 Jn 1: 1-3). It follows that, rather than speaking about Jesus, we should pray that Jesus acts with all the power of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel is not made of words; even the Kingdom of God is not built on words, but is founded on the Word, on the living God, on the power that comes from above.

In the third part of Novo millennio ineunte, the Holy Father exhorts us to “to set out again from Christ.” “To set out again from Christ” means before anything else, “returning to Christ in the Spirit”. You can speak of Christ, you can boast a good knowledge of him without being with him. We must let ourselves be convinced by the Spirit. Perhaps we have forgotten Christ or overlooked his presence in our life. This is the true evil that can befall us: everything which happens is a consequence of this.

So many people today seem to have forgotten God and this is why they are at the mercy of the world. We have overlooked the Holy Spirit because we have not welcomed and believed deep down in Jesus’ words. Every lack of faith is a dark space, a space forbidden to God, a terrible loneliness.

Paul VI said: “Instead of converting the world to Christ, many have converted themselves to the world.” We are not called to conform ourselves to the world but to transform the world.

Jesus’ disciples not only “spoke of Jesus” but also found the strength to witness to the Gospel to the point of giving their life for the Lord. Witnessing is a speaking that you can see; it is speaking with life that allows an invisible force which is inside us to become visible: the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Mary is the one who bears witness to all of this. She is the one who proclaims it with her whole life.

The Upper Room is a house of prayer and Mary helps the apostles in this space to build an interior ‘Upper Room’ in their hearts where the Holy Spirit can always be called upon, waited for, and welcomed. We need to rebuild the Upper Room and to put Mary in it in order to renew Pentecost, the starting point for the Church’s evangelical mission.

She teaches that there is no more important prayer in our life than that of making of our life a firm dwelling place of God, such that the Lord, through His Spirit, is able to sanctify us in the most intimate fibre of our existence. Like Mary, we must feel “chosen by God” in order to become, both in and for the Church, the house, the Upper Room where we can draw on thought, word and strength to be diligent witnesses of new life.

I will finish with a word directed to you, dear priests.

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One of the greatest discoveries that a priest can make in the midst of his apostolic battles is that of confidence in the Holy Spirit. In Pastores dabo vobis, n.33, the Pope, addressing himself to, priests, affirms: “Yes, the Spirit of the Lord is the great protagonist of our spiritual life …. How can we not reflect on the essential role that the Holy Spirit performs in the specific call to holiness that is the priestly ministry?”

The priest is the “man of the Spirit”, clothed in the power of the Spirit; he is the “dynamic man”, that is, God’s power in the world, because he lights fires of love and holiness in the world which are so much desired on earth by Jesus.

Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in you, you can always have “fire in your heart”, the Word on your lips, prophecy in your gaze.”(Paul VI audience on the last Wednesday of November 1972).

May you be ever more aware of the Spirit who is Holy and who wants you as “an advance guard of holiness” in a world that does not shine with God’s glory. The promise carried out at Pentecost is not a fact of the past which we realize nostalgically once a year: the growth, purification, sanctification of your priesthood happens each day by welcoming Jesus’ words: “I will ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor so that I may remain with you always…the Spirit will live with you and will be within you.”(Jn 14: 16-18)

May the Lord receive the prayer which finally I offer to him in your name and together with you in the words of Paul to Timothy (1Tm 1: 12-17): “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, and who judged me faithful enough to call me into his service even though I used to be a blasphemer and did all I could to injure and discredit the faith. Mercy, however, was shown me, because until I became a believer I had been acting in ignorance; and the grace of our Lord filled me with faith and with the love that is in Christ Jesus…that Jesus meant to make of me the greatest evidence of his inexhaustible patience for all the other people who would later have to trust in him to come to eternal life. To the eternal King, the undying, invisible and only God, be honour and glory forever and ever! Amen.”

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Communion and Liberation

Gerolamo Castiglioni

The author of this article is a priest of the Archdiocese of Milan and serves as Diocesan Assistant to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Charles Borromeo of the Movement of Communion and Liberation. Beginning from his own experience, he presents the principal points of the evangelization which this Movement accomplishes.

Evangelization is a fundamental issue for the life of the Church in as much as it is her very raison d’être. So for some time now we have heard a lot about a “new” evangelization. Some prefer to speak of a “first evangelization” meaning by that, starting again from proclamation of fundamental truths. But I think it’s necessary to re-affirm that evangelization has to respect God’s method – the encounter with humanity begun with Abraham’s calling. Today too before demanding moral behaviour, we need to show the face of God in the Advent of Christ.

‘Like those pilgrims of two thousand years ago, the men and women of our own day — often perhaps unconsciously — ask believers not only to "speak" of Christ, but in a certain sense to "show" him to them. And is it not the Church's task to reflect the light of Christ in every historical period, to make his face shine also before the generations of the new millennium?’.76

Theophilus of Alexandria said: “Show me your humanity and I’ll tell you who your God is.” When I look back over my thirty years of priesthood I remember how I used to preach in the first years after ordination. It was much more moral preaching than proclamation of the Event of Christ. I used to “wear out” my listeners, but I didn’t describe for them the contents, the method with which God saved the world. I presupposed and took for granted, at least methodologically, the dogmatic contents of Christianity, its ontology. I presupposed the event of faith.

Today too in the Church there’s a prevalence of ethics over ontology and this leads to a confusion between religion and faith. This ambiguity touches also the question of the New Evangelization. In some ways, the modern consciousness is more open to the question of meaning and this prepares the ground for the “New” Evangelization. But this position is still not Christian faith.

Christian faith is an act of the reason moved by the Spirit and it accompanies us in recognising and adhering to Christ who is present in history as the redeemer of all. Redemptor Hominis says: “The Redeemer of mankind, Jesus Christ, is the centre of the cosmos and history”.

Christ is the new principle of knowledge and action. The contents of evangelization is an issue of knowledge. The Gospel speaks of conversion of the heart in a biblical sense. Too much preaching dwells on ethical appeals to duty, looking for convergences on values held in common. But Christianity cannot be reduced to a programme of moral living.

The beauty that’ll save the world – to use the famous expression of the Russian writer – is the novelty of the Event of Christ. Evangelization, understood as the proclamation of this Event, renders human life new. And this is the sense in which I speak of “New” Evangelization.

76 Novo millennio ineunte, 16

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The Roman rector, Mario Vittorino, used to say: “When I met Christ I discovered my humanity”. “To say that man is saved means that he recognises who he is; he recognises his destiny and he knows how to take steps towards this” (Giussani).

This is also the basis for true ecumenism. Nothing is excluded from this positive embrace of Christ the Redeemer. Ecumenism is the Christian view of all of reality. It’s a life for the truth that is present, perhaps even fragmentarily, in anyone.

More than 25 years ago I met the Communion and Liberation Movement. I felt I was “re-baptised”. Personally I had been quite opposed to the Movement because I was quite attracted by Liberation Theology. But what I had fought against became my people.

Although expelled from school for being a subversive, and although having been invited to resign from directorship of a diocesan weekly newspaper, the Good Lord, through Cardinal Martini and Don Giussani, has wanted me to become diocesan assistant to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation while also being parish pastor in a parish in the suburbs of Milan.

This encounter continues in the form of belonging to a fraternity which for me is the bosom of authentic freedom. It’s not some kind of belonging to a group, but rather a home where it is possible to welcome and share each one’s journey. And every day I repeat with the psalmist: “Reveal to us the mystery of man and fill his desire for liberation”.

It’s a cry that remains; it’s a question that keeps us awake. Meeting with the Movement has changed my own self-consciousness more than my idea of God. The goal of our Movement is that of helping each other to mature in faith so that we become active collaborators in the will of God, faithful to the task to which he has called us.

Through grace we become communicators of this Event that has touched us, creating a Movement that displays the usefulness and creativity of faith in daily living. Faith tends to enter all of life since it is the form of the person, the form of his self-expression. And this for me is the New Evangelization!

On the unforgettable day of May 30, 1998, the Pope pointed to the Movements as the providential response to the dramatic challenges of the new millennium. The response came from the Holy Spirit.

Ecclesial Movements represent visible expressions of the Church’s New Evangelization because they are the fruit of the untiring genius of the Spirit of God. They appear as a charismatic outpouring that, together with many other ecclesial experiences, respond to the need, very much felt today, of a re-centering, a re-foundation and re-vitalisation of the Christian experience.

“I think it is marvellous – as Card. Ratzinger has written in reference of the Ecclesial Movements – that the Spirit is once again stronger than our programmes and puts value on things that are very different to what we had imagined.”

Hans Urs von Balthasar spoke of charisms given in the form of a “bunch.” In using this image he wanted to highlight the inter-communication of graces. This doesn’t mean forming some kind of “movement-like block” in the Church. Rather it means recognising what the Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms: “In their diversity and complementarity, charisms co-operate for the common good.” The common good is expressed in unity around the Pope and Bishops in communion with the Pope.

For this to happen we need to mature in the spirituality of communion as Novo millennio ineunte (n.43) points out. It means desiring to bring about Jesus’ prayer for unity of all his disciples: “that all may be one, so that the world may believe” (Jn 17: 15-18).

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What happened on 30 May, 1998 in St. Peter’s Square has remained very much in our memory and the witness to unity, the unity of all the Church, has been entrusted to the care of each one of us.

After that unforgettable day, Don Giussani said: “We exist for the Church. We are builders of the Church… and this responsibility is carried out inasmuch as we communicate with others as responsibility. This is true with regard to the whole Church and so for the whole Movement”.

The world can always attack the behaviour of Christians, especially when marked by fragility and weakness. Let us not forget, however, that the world often attacks error, but in truth it cannot bear the origin of our presence in the world, an origin that cannot be reduced to any form of power.

I would like to conclude with some words from Don Giussani. They are full of realism and hope: “Without recognising the presence of the Mystery, the night advances, confusion advances and – at the level of freedom – rebellion advances. Disillusion reaches such a point that it is as if nothing more is expected and so people live without wanting anything more. But from the mystery of the resurrection of Christ a new light invades the world and contends inch by inch with the darkened earth.”

“Come, Holy Spirit. Come through Mary. Our Lady is the most powerfully human and persuasive touch of all God’s action on man” (L. Giussani).

May she help us, as mother of the Church, to have an experience of a deep communion, one that generates a new missionary impetus, in other words, a New Evangelization.

At the beginning of this new millennium, the Ecclesial Movements are not called to an almost self pre-occupation with the Church, but rather to render present in all aspects of human life the presence of the Lord who saves. This evangelization will then be seen as the truest and most perfect human development.

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The community of St. Egidio

Bishop Vincenzo Paglia Bishop Vincenzo Paglia is bishop of Terni in Italy. A member of the St. Egidio community right from its beginnings, in this article he provides a brief but penetrating presentation of the Community’s history and their method of evangelization.

I am particularly happy to be able to share this moment of fraternity and of communion. It is a moment that is without doubt extraordinary. I see it in the context of the Pope’s exhortation to “put out into the deep” (Novo millennio ineunte). I think that this too is a way of accomplishing it. Indeed, you could even go so far as to say that some navigation has already begun.

When John Paul II, on the Vigil of Pentecost 1998, underlined the birth of the Movements as a new spring in the Church, he was drawing attention to the fact that the “put out into the deep” (“duc in altum”) had already begun, that a new season in the communication of the Gospel was already emerging. I won't say much on this point, but I believe that the fact of contemporary ecclesial Movements must be understood from within the horizon of the new evangelisation which is already taking place.

Certainly, it is also necessary for the Movements to listen to the duc in altum!, because the millennium that has just begun demands a greater love, an all-embracing solidarity. And the Movements must respond with greater urgency to this call. The new millennium is not simply a temporal passage, but a call to be more generous in loving, more daring in the communication of the Gospel. The Pope is right when he affirms that we have the programme already. And he is saying it also to us bishops and priests who are often obsessed with programmes and pastoral plans. But the programme is the Gospel, which must be rediscovered, re-understood and announced, from generation to generation. And this is something of the story of the contemporary Movements, including the Community of St. Egidio.

Our experience is a humble effort to discover something of the Christian message in a time of transition like our own. In this context I would like to offer some reflections on the life of the Community of St. Egidio. I will present it in four sections: the first concerns its origins, the second refers to the poor of Rome, the third looks at the life of St. Egidio and the fourth deals with its impact on the world.

Through Andrea Riccardi’s work, the community took its first steps in 1968. You met him when he addressed you the other day. He was then a youth of 17 years old who lived in the particular climate of those years marked by an attitude of protest among young people with their demand for authenticity. I’d like to quote Andrea’s words for you: “for us who were students of Rome, young people from good families attending High School, the 1968 spirit of contestation crossed paths with something very important: the discovery of the Gospel. I would say that the Gospel saved us from the merely destructive tendencies of ’68. How did our desire for authenticity bring us into contact with the Gospel? I remember the first meetings, the first steps, the first experiences and recall the great significance the encounter with the Gospel had for us, understood as an authentic and not mystified word. It was the discovery of the Book. And the meeting with the Gospel also became a meeting with the Christian world, with the Church which was the bearer of the same Gospel. I must say that the institutions, the largely traditional associations at that time’ were like a background;

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they didn’t interest us very much. What interested us and continues to interest us is the word of the Gospel”.

One thing was clear: the desire for change would be genuine if it faced the great problem of changing oneself, the ancient and ever new difficulty of conversion of the heart. Well, it seemed to us that the Gospel, that ancient book, could change us. Our faith was to entrust ourselves to the Word of God and begin to follow it, even without understanding very much about what it had to say about the Christian life, but with faith: “On your word, Lord, I will pay out the nets.”

Andrea continues: “with simplicity, but with conviction, I believed: if we can change ourselves, we can change the world. Only new persons can create a new world. The catholic institutions seemed distant from us. I felt I should do something for my high school world, and so we set up a group of high school students who began to meet in the first months of 1968”.

The background to all of this wasn’t just the ’68 student protest movement but also the Second Vatican Council. Its message to young people declared: “we urge you, young people, to enlarge your hearts to embrace the world, to listen to the appeal of your brothers and sisters, and put your energies eagerly at their service”.

We were deeply struck by the spirit of the Council, above all in the sense that it helped us understand that the Church was everyone's home. But not a home in which everyone claimed their piece, but rather a home to be constructed.

By visiting the poor of Rome and its periphery, we realised that the Church was a reality to be built up in the heart of the people, because they felt estranged from it, they saw the Church as a charitable body, but the Word of God did not speak to them through her. Often she was mute in the lives of many women and men. So we realised we had to change our heart in the light of the Gospel, while, at the same time, beginning to build a community at school, in the periphery of the city, where the word of God was rarely heard. Yes, people knew the Church, but not the Gospel.

Our meeting with the Gospel saved us from the great risk of ideologies that was spreading throughout Italy and the West at that time. One of the strengths of the St. Egidio community was putting the Word of God at the centre of its life. This meeting with the Word more and more became a listening to the Word and prayer.

One of the characteristics of the community of St. Egidio in Rome, is the communal daily prayer every evening at Santa Maria’s in Trastevere, in the Trinitá dei Pellegrini Church, in St. Bartholomew’s and other locations. But almost everyone of our community, from Havana to Antwerp, and from Maputo to every corner of the planet where they are to be found, gather in the evening with their friends. Listening to the Word of God each day has accompanied us as the golden thread of our life down the years from our first gatherings in 1968 to our evening prayers in Rome and all over the world.

We gradually came to understand that in the Church it is more important to be disciples than activists or protagonists. If I had to say what theme we would insist on most it would be discipleship. Christians were given that name at Antioch, but disciples were born in Galilee. And that’s the kernel of the issue. In a community which has now become adult the dimension of discipleship is fundamental, each one of us is always a disciple and needs to listen always, because faith comes from listening. This explains the reason for continuity and survival of St. Egidio because St. Egidio didn’t want to be merely some social experience for young people getting together, nor merely an association of adult volunteers (which I don’t disparage) but a community of women and men who meet to listen to the Word of the Lord.

I would like to say that prayer is the first work of the community. Soloviev writes “faith without works is dead, and prayer is the first work and the basis for every genuine action”. It is a work for

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the whole of one’s life; we see it in the aged when they can’t do anything else, they cannot help, so prayer remains that work which no one can take from them. The first step of the disciple – at the beginning and then every day – is to pray to the Lord: from the first meeting the disciple begins to ask something of the Lord and to listen to what He says, even without understanding very much. Everyone in our community prays with great simplicity and faithfulness, even from the beginning. In this way they express what they truly are: not members of a Christian tribe or of St. Egidio but disciples.

From the beginning the poor have been our companions. At least we have tried to be their friends. It is an aspect which characterises St. Egidio, which I would call, in the words of the prophet, “the alliance between the humble and the poor”.

The parable of the Good Samaritan, the one who felt called to spend time with the man who was half dead along the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, represents one of the basic demands for every Christian, and therefore for us too. The poor then were firstly the children in the slums out in the periphery of Rome, then they became the old, then the foreigners, the down and outs, those sick with AIDS, those in prison (especially in Africa), and those physically and psychologically disabled.

I could list the works of St. Egidio but what matters most for us is our friendship with the poor. In fact, I would like to characterise our relationship with the poor as a personal friendship. Friendship is a fundamental aspect; we feel that in our care of the poor and in our relationship with them the problem is not only assistance, solidarity, but it is also friendship. It is a silent protest against a service of the poor that is merely functional or assistance-based. The poor, those I know and keep in touch with, are my friends; they are my relations. When friendship is achieved, a true exchange occurs. Because of this every St. Egidio community, even the smallest, is characterised by communal prayer and friendship with the poor.

The third part: what does it mean to become an enduring or stable community? The community of St. Egidio has always wanted to be a lay community of men and women who live the same kind of life as everyone else. They work, they marry, they have their problems, but at the same time they feel that their Christian life is a ‘paradoxical life’, as one reads in the letter to Diognetus.

Today, we are present in about forty countries with communities that are generally small, but which live fully their relationship with the local Church and with the city where they exist. To be a community is to be like everyone in the Church. This gives us a desire to collaborate, to meet with others, to see ourselves as Christians like everyone else, no better no worse.

In the early years we had a very strong sense of living through an intense experience that was breaking ground. But through listening to the gospel and meeting other people fostered a greater sense of friendship.

As Andrea says, “If I have one boast, it is to claim that the St. Egidio community does not take pride in its own identity. If there is one thing that I consider immature in the experience of the Church it is the messianism of groups, movements and institutions. There’s only one Messiah and that is enough. Every ecclesial reality represents a ferment, a way, a help, and it is a way and a help not only for those who are its members. It has a message for the whole Church and it is something that enriches the ecclesial family.

The maturity of an ecclesial experience should be not feeling you are in some messianic sense unique, but rather a charism for the Church. Thanks be to God, there are many rooms in the Father’s house! The one-room church has never existed. Our contribution to the whole church, the universal church, did not come about through institutional solutions – which we did also find in becoming a public association of the Church with a statute – but through an interior choice”.

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In this way, though the passage of time, we received the gift of being a little people, spread out and based in many churches. We were born as a movement of young people, as a community in which one knew where one was; but today we are a body of people of every age and with different levels of participation. Though not coming from within it, priests and religious are united to our community in one spiritual fraternity. Naturally this fraternity does not undermine the local church in any way, but rather enriches it.

This is how the Pope speaks about his links with us: “I remember the many meetings with the community at the beginning of my episcopacy, meeeting you at the Garbatello in Rome. In December 1978 I came across your Work of charity and I visited it. After that first time I often met you on the outskirts of the diocese, during my visits, but also in the church of St. Egidio, in the Basilica of Santa Maria’s in Trastevere, and at Castelgandolfo. Then I also met the community of St. Egidio throughout Italy and other countries of the world. I had many opportunities during those years to be in contact and listen to you. It was for you a period of interior growth and development, both within and outside Rome. Your community born in ’68 by a group of students grew in this church of Rome which presides in charity. You then developed elsewhere taking part in the local church, but you have always had a distinct sense of you Roman-ness because wherever there are communities of St. Egidio even if not in Rome they are always Roman. The St. Egidio community has lived the spirit of Rome in the world…”

Our community has its own story and its own geography, but at the same time we feel we are a small community without borders, open to spiritual adventures and links that are unusual no what matter the distances are.

Even though our experience is small I would still have many things to say. I’ll try to gather everything into the final section: the world. In recent years much has been spoken about the St. Egidio peace initiatives.

On the fourth of October 1992 a peace agreement was signed between the government of Mozambique and the guerrillas, putting an end to a forgotten war, with a million and a half dead over fifteen years. The newspaper Le Monde made a joke of it saying that the treaties were negotiated by ‘amateurs’. But the agreement has lasted. Italy, France, the USA and the UN took part in the negotiations and they have continued to monitor the implementation in Mozambique of the agreement that was signed in Rome. Since then no one has died from war in that African country.

When the peace treaty was being signed a journalist from the Washington Post asked Andrea, “since when have you given up caring for the poor to break out into diplomacy?”

He had not understood that to work for peace wasn’t different from working for the poor, because war is the mother of all poverty. Our commitment to peace is not the establishment of a St. Egidio ‘diplomacy’, even though that is one of the aspects most noted in the media. The work for peace began through co-operation with Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in Africa, discovering that co-operation was blocked by the war, the principal cause of poverty. We understood that christians, as well as having appeals for peace, peace marches and educating for peace, can also work for peace. Naturally we do this without having the benefit of diplomatic instruments like pressure or money that states have. Christians have their own peace force which is not a substitute for what states do; rather, ours is characterized by weakness. Above all, since ’89 everyone in the world can work for peace. Today wars can be caused by everyone, however, it is also true that all can do more for peace.

For us Christians of this new century, the theme of peace is more and more the order of the day in the life of our communities. Not only for Christians but also people of every religion. This is

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clear since Assisi in ’86, when Pope John Paul II invited the religious leaders of the world to pray for peace together.

We have noticed that prayer releases profound peace energies. The meetings of members of religions frees them from the great temptation which their leaders often succumb to – all leaders but especially Christians, Jews and Muslims – of remaining entrapped in their own ethnic and national horizons. Nationalism and ethno-centricism constitute a great disease that affects every culture even religious culture. In this sense we felt we should continue the prayer of Assisi year after year as a serious commitment. The image of Assisi is a prophetic one in this era when peoples of different religions live together.

The co-habitation of peoples who are ethnically and religiously different is the great challenge of the next century. It is the reality of the world, which is also contradictory if one looks at Sarajevo, the Lebanon, Jerusalem, Indonesia or at the great cities of the West which are already multiethnic.

Inter-religious dialogue wants to give meaning to this coming together; it wants to go beyond the pre-conceived identities, and speak to the heart in order to find a profound basis for living together. Inter-religious dialogue began enthusiastically after the Council, but that was followed by a period of disillusionment. The great world religions, in fact, are not all synchronic. Think of Islam for example which particularly during the '80's went through a period of rediscovery of pride in itself and this coincided with a re-flowering of itself. So also for Judaism.

Dialogue demands a 'geological' patience, a few years are not enough, because it's not a question of diplomacy but of a change in mentality. Dialogue is an education in understanding the other without losing yourself. Dialogue does not weaken but makes you more aware of your originality, identity and vocation. Those who are afraid of dialogue because of wanting to defend their own identity and faith are hiding a weakness.

The spirit of Assisi is not a call to syncretism or unification. Differences should be respected but dialogue must continue. Dialogue is like love, it does aim to convince or achieve immediate results. Otherwise I would only love my friends and not my enemies. Dialogue is a life offered on the strength of one's own convictions but with the understanding of others. In this sense I believe we must continue our inter-religious dialogue. Difficulties should not frighten us.