Source:
New City
Question:
We
frequently come in contact with an anti-clerical culture. Although we try to
present our faith in a way understandable to everyone, in some environments
“attacks” come at the mere mention of religious membership. How can we go
beyond these walls and present the light from the charism of unity with the
full impact of its newness and universality?
However
difficult our situations may be – this is a widespread situation – there were
much worse situations during the times of the early Christians. There were
persecutions, people were killed, there were martyrs, and people were forced to
adore other gods. Today they might reject you, look down upon you, but they
don’t force you to adore another god.
That
was a terrible period, and yet the early Christians were able to live out their
beliefs. In fact, Tertullian, who lived during those early days, made that
famous statement, “We were born yesterday, and we are already all over the
world.” In one way or another, those soldiers, merchants and women… went out
and brought their religion into the known world at that time, into the
Mediterranean world.
So
let’s remember that some environments are even more difficult [than ours]. What
urged Christians to be so authentic, so radical and so capable of making a
breakthrough? First of all, the fact that Jesus had just recently lived on
Earth. Think what it was like: at a certain point, a man comes and says that he
is God, and it’s true – proven by miracles, by his resurrection.
It’s
not something that leaves you indifferent. It’s something enormous! So they
believed, they saw, observed, admired, and so on. The Gospel message was quite
new. Jesus had just spread the good news, and they understood that first of
all, they had to live what he said and then speak about it.
The
Gospel repeats: above all, mutual and constant charity, and they practiced it.
Above all, they loved one another and built Christian communities. They loved
one another to the point that the people around them would exclaim, “Look how
they love one another and how they are ready to die for one another.”
Their
love was not a matter of hugging one another, but of giving their life for each
other, of being united, of making themselves one with the other person. And
then they spoke. We too must be as courageous as the early Christians.
Once
we bear witness, once Christ is in our midst, we have to speak out, allow Jesus
in our midst to “speak.” They spoke, they spoke of the “good news” – that God
came, that he came to save us. They spoke, they evangelized. By evangelizing
and speaking, they converted people to God, and they built up the community.
All
of Paul’s story can be summed up by saying that he helped people to live this
new way of life. He loved, they loved one another; they spoke, he spoke, he
built up the communities.
What
did these communities do? They created another world, the world that Christians
need, because Jesus said, “You are in the world, but not of the world” (cf. Jn
17:14-15). So then where should we go? Up on a mountain all by ourselves? In
the clouds? Where should we go? There must be a world for us, too, because we
have our feet on the ground.
The
Gospel, the Christian revolution, created a world for us. Jesus in our midst
creates our environment, our community, our world, and we should realize that
this is our world, not some other world. The other world is the one to which we
should not belong.
We
are not of that world. We should be of this world. And when we are out in the
world and are disturbed by other people’s ideas about purity, for example, or
by other ideas, then we should return to our world. We’ll be reinforced in
faith, in strength. We’ll have the ardour to go ahead and spread our world more
and more. Then, little by little, that other world will change.
Yes,
we should never feel intimidated by anything or by anyone. Many times people
ask me, “Here in India there are millions of people. What can we possibly do?
There are only two small focolare communities here, one in Mumbai…” That should
not be our approach. Before starting to do his work, Jesus didn’t stop to
consider how many people were in the Roman Empire! He didn’t even look at the
number of people in Palestine. He simply began.
Statistics
can be our ruin, they can discourage us. If we have two people with Jesus in
our midst, we have the world with us, because we have Christ – we have the one
who conquered the world.
Chiara
Lubich
Excerpts
from an answer of Chiara Lubich to the Focolare community in Florence, Italy,
on September 17, 2000.
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