2. Orange - Love Radiates

Love Radiates

Let's talk now about outreach or, as it is more com­monly called in some circles, apostolic activities.

The subject is vast. We will limit ourselves to gathering early ideas here and there from the writings of the early years. Reading through just a few pages on this aspect is enough to make us understand that what John Paul II said of our spirituality holds true also for our apostolic activities: "The first inspiring spark was love."'

Yes, it was love; a spark was enkindled; it spread light all around and burst into flames.

Love reaches out; love itself bears witness.

I know that in other environments it is said that, "Love is the soul of the apostolate." But it is much more. Love is the first form of apostolate, love of our neighbor as an expression of our love for God.

Each member of the Work of Mary is not called only to evangelize along the lines of "Go therefore and make dis­ciples of all nations . . ." (Mt 28:19). When the word enters into our actions, it should not be only an exposi­tion of the Catholic faith. It has to be undergirded by witness (the witness of love) and its meaning filled out by experience. This is the way it was with the first Chris­tians, and this is the way it is now.

Love, not Proselytism

A letter from 1948 helps us to see two things: how love is the driving force of outreach and how outreach is essen-

1. Insegnamenti di Giovanni Paolo II VII/2, pp. 223-225.

tial to the Christian life.

I wrote to some young people:

"May the whole city fall into the furnace of the Love of the Heart of Jesus.

"My sisters, Jesus rejoices to know that other sisters have joined you, but at the same time, he weeps because you have conquered few people to his Heart.

"Forgive me for saying this to you! I should first re­proach myself, but let me tell you what I think.

"Don't tell me that they (your fellow citizens) are hard to convince, etc., etc.

"It's not true. Love conquers all!

"It is love that is lacking in our hearts! Too often we believe that loving God means (only) going to religious meetings, praying a long time, doing hours of adoration.

"Religion is not only this! . . .

"It is (also) looking for the lost sheep, making ourselves all things to all people! It is loving in a practical, gentle, and strong way all the persons around us as we love our­selves, and wishing for them what we wish for our­selves. . . .

"The Lord urgently needs souls like this: souls on fire. . . .

"And how few he finds . . .

"Let's love. . . . Let's widen the circle of unity to in­clude the greatest number of souls possible.

"This is love of God!"²

In 1954, after having concentrated for a while on set­ting down the essential structure of the Focolare (with­drawing in the meantime a little from apostolic activities), this is what I wrote:

2. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, Trent, 4 November 1948.

"The hour is coming in which we must rekindle our Ideal in the world . . . like a fire.

"For this to happen, however, we must return to the fruitful life we had in the early days when we won over very many people to God simply because we wanted to express our love to the Lord.

"This lack of self-interest was like a magnet that at­tracted many, and the community grew up around us.

"Do you remember?"³

In 1956 we were already in correspondence with people in other nations where the Focolare was taking its first steps.

This letter is addressed to a group in France:

"Dearest friends in France, I read your letters and shared your happiness for the day-meeting that was held in Grenoble.

"[Our people] returned full of joy. . . . They told me that it was like re-living the early days of our Ideal when the first Focolarine lived in Piazza Cappuccini.

"This made me immensely happy. I thought, if ten years ago there was hardly anything in Italy, only a great 'fire' burning in Trent, and now Italy is (here and there) sowed with the Ideal ... in a few years (the same thing will happen) in ... France. . . .

"I'm sure of this, because the strength of our Move­ment is not you but Jesus among you, and he does great things.

"But Jesus, of course, uses you.

"And so I beg you with all my heart, love him madly! . . .

"France must fall into the net of Jesus. God wants it:

may his kingdom come, come, come!

3. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, Rome, 3 November 1954.

"You are small, poor, beset with problems. But for this very reason God will work. This is what he did with us;

this is what he will do with you."⁴

Love Anchored in Suffering

To spread our Ideal more effectively, we counted very much on suffering.

"Dear friend, I was very happy with your letter. It re­flected the soul of someone whom Jesus has called to fol­low him in his forsakenness.

"Take advantage of the solitude he has left you in, so that you can be alone with him alone. But then go at once to carry out his will, which is to bring fire into the world. . . .

"If you are on the cross, you will draw everyone to you ... to Jesus. . . ."⁵

We recommended prayer and mortification as means for reaching our goal (which proves that ours is both a collective and personal spirituality).

"Dear people responsible for zones,⁶ at the Center of the Movement we have decided that you should visit your entire zone personally, bringing to each soul the fire of God's love. . . .

"While you do this work, be ardent in prayer and union with God, so that this very delicate task may be carried out in depth and with excellent results, and so that people

4. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, Rome, 13 December 1956.

5. Cf. Chiara Luhich, Unpublished Letter, Rome, 22 April 1 955.

6. "People responsible for zones" are persons who coordinate the life of the Focolare Movement in its various territories throughout the world, which are called "zones."

will give their best for the glory of God.

"Keep yourselves mortified and far from the world around you. We will never know so well what is happen­ing, and we have to know it, as when we are united to God alone and completely lost in our Ideal."⁷

The fire that Jesus brought is love, and love conquers. The following passage is from 1955:

" 'I came to bring fire to the earth . . .' (Lk 12:49). Why fire? Because he is fire; because Christ is God and God is love!

"[But] fire burns when it consumes something, when it conquers. A love that does not conquer, dies out! There­fore, we cannot fool ourselves thinking that we have Christ within us if this fire doesn't burn, if this fire doesn't con­quer."⁸

Apostolate Carried Out in Unity

The typical way for the Focolare to do its apostolic ac­tivity is above all to do it in unity: "May they all be one, so that the world may believe" (cf. Jn 17:21).

And the "something more" of our outreach, or, if you like, our apostolic activity, lies in this unity, which is nec­essary and obligatory for those who live this spirituality. We can say that it is "something more," because this is not generally required of those who want to do apostolic work.

Another writing says, "Identifying with Jesus, being another Jesus. . . . We must be so for all those around

7. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, Rome, 16 June 1955.

8. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Talk, "The Seven Colors, " Vigo di Fassa (Italy), 19 August 1955.

us, with no exceptions. . . . Then, as soon as this spirit of ours touches someone's soul, we should remain linked spiritually to him or her so that Jesus may live among us, and that in him we may find the strength to conquer other souls to the perfect love of God."⁹

The following episode has always remained fixed in the depth of our hearts. In it lies the secret of our outreach, its necessary departure point. It is in a talk from 1962:

'As I was walking along the streets of Einsiedein, in Switzerland, I saw many people of various religious or­ders passing by. The different habits of the sisters and priests were very beautiful against the background of such a splendid natural setting. I understood there that the founders were really inspired in dressing their followers in that particular way.

" [Among these], I was particularly impressed by Charles de Foucauld's Little Sisters of Jesus. They rode by on their bicycles, with very lively faces and peasant scarves on their heads. Their expressive faces reminded me of their founder, de Foucauld, who, they say, cried out the Gospel with the whole style of his life.

"In fact, those sisters seemed to say: 'Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are they who mourn, blessed . . .'

"These are not the beatitudes that the world would like to have but the scandal of the Gospel.

"Then, I too felt a great desire to be able to give my witness, also in an external way.

"[But] ... no solution came to me.

"At a certain point I said to one of my companions:

'You know ... I saw how those sisters had an effect on me not through their words but by the way they dressed . . .' and I said I wished we could do the same. But how

9. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, Ostia (Italy), 18 April 1950.

could we tell people about God? 'Ah,' I said, 'By this ev­eryone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another' ()n 13:35).

"Mutual love, therefore, was to be our distinctive sign. Dying to ourselves in mutual love is our (typical) apos­tolic activity."¹⁰

Then if we use the spoken word as well (and "woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!" 1 Cor 9:16), if throughout the years we have felt the urgency and, I would say, the calling to proclaim it even from the housetops, if we give talks and repeat them for the good of many, using modern means of communication, all this should come afterwards.

"Structures" Evangelize Too

However, witness and outreach are the duty not only ofpersons who are united but also of structures, beginning with the focolare. From this outreach, then, the focolare itself acquires new meaning.

In a writing from 1950, we read, "The focolare is made up of people who live a life in common solely in order to realize among themselves and around them the testament of Jesus, 'Father, may they all be one.'

"Through their mutual love . . . they are transformed into Jesus, into love, and their focolare truly becomes Fire, all Fire."

"Thus if someone visits the focolare . . . and is not

10. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Tall: to the Focolarine, "The First Two Aspects of Our Spirituality," Grottaferrata (Rome), 25 December 1962.

11. There is an underlying wordplay in the Italian. The word "Focolare" means hearth or fireplace and comes from the same root as the "fuoco" which means fire. For a focolare to be on fire is to say that the fire place is ablaze.

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inflamed to the point that he or she goes away lit up, ablaze and in peace just as the Focolarini are, then the fire in that focolare has gone out.

"[And] a cold focolare does harm, it's not that it does nothing, it actually does harm. Whereas a focolare that is ablaze does what it should: it does good."¹²

Therefore, the focolare is a powerful means ofout-reach. And this holds true today for all our forms of commu­nity: from the nuclei of the Volunteers to Gen units, from our headquarters to our little towns, from clergy houses to convents to environmental cells, and so on.¹³

In 1956 another part of our structure, a temporary one, was taking place: one of our Mariapolises in the Dolomite mountains of the Alps. It was a jewel, a divine diamond, a heavenly means of outreach. But it was also a place to strengthen oneself spiritually, so as to continue one's ap­ostolic witness to others.

As we read in something written at that time, we can already foresee a Mariapolis¹⁴ that was to be permanent:

"Many have spoken of the Mariapolis and they've spo­ken well of it. It's logical, because the City of Mary . . . could not help but have a special fascination and, at times, extraordinary effects.

"Catherine of Siena, however, says that you know some­thing well by studying it, but even better by studying its opposite."¹⁵

This is what I wrote, "When most of the citizens of the Mariapolis had left . . . everything up there seemed to have ended. There was still that blue sky, those green mead-

12. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Writing, "The Focolare," 1950.

13. The reference is to different types of groupings within the various branches of the Work of Mary.

14. See note 16, p. 125

15. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 22 September 1956.

ows, those majestic Saint Martin mountain slopes, those pathways, that church: everything was still beautiful, yes, but Mary was missing; her city, her family was missing. A family made up of all kinds of children ... of people who were very united to God — some who had always lived an innocent life, others who had just returned be­neath the gaze of the Mother, long-awaited, now happy like all the others.

"I assure you that ever since I came to know our Ideal, I tried never to look back in life, but those empty roads, that sun-filled valley, now had the appearance of a corpse and made me think again of those two enchanting months filled with the presence of Mary. Perhaps more than look­ing back I was looking up and, without realizing it, I was asking Mary to perpetuate this city of hers here on earth.

"Certainly, we must make every city another Mariapolis, yet (it may be that the Lord wants) a place to give con­tinual glory to Mary through an ever- enkindled life of the Ideal. It would be a place where one can take refuge and be renewed like a soldier returning home from the barracks, a foretaste of heaven while still on earth in the Church militant, a place to acquire new strength and re­turn to battle so that the kingdom of God and his Church may advance in the world: a permanent Mariapolis.

"May Our Lady grant us this gift."¹⁶

A foretaste of heaven. . . . Perhaps it is true; the per­manent Mariapolis of Loppiano has been described as a "videoclip" of paradise.

Now Mary has already built, or is in the process of building, about twenty of these videoclips of paradise.¹⁷

16. Cf. Chiara Lubich, Unpublished Letter, 22 September 1956.

17. Loppiano, the first of the Focolare's model towns, located near Flo­rence, Italy. Founded in 1965, today it has more than 800 inhabit­ants. See note 16, p. 125.