Opening our hearts

New City Magazine is the magazine published by the Focolare movement, and has a United Kingdom edition.

Opening our hearts is the title of a testimony offered by a couple to the part played in their family life by two young people with physical or learning difficulties, and appears in the August/September 2016 issue. It is a very moving read.

As the story of Cara and Mario unfolds, one can see something of the possibilities of the "accompaniment" of which Pope Francis speaks in Amoris Laetitia. There is a journey from a marital situation that is "irregular" towards a marriage in Church, by way of a choice to foster vulnerable young people. One cannot but see also an action of grace in the acceptance into their family of a baby who was otherwise going to be allowed to die. The story of their family also verifies something of the experience of L'Arche, that those who are the carers can receive much from the people for whom they care. The lives of those with physical or learning difficulties are not a waste of time.

Cara and Mario's story provides an example of how grace can still be seen and recognised to be at work in the circumstances of a marriage that the Church might rightly recognise as being "irregular", the idea that is the basis for the accompaniment that Pope Francis suggests.

Chiara Lubich: Why Christmas Never Grows Old

This meditation by Chiara Lubich appeared in the December 2010 edition of New City.

I think Christmas never grows old,

because it is a deeply human,

as well as a divine mystery.

God, in becoming a human being, raised humanity

to the dizzy heights of the divine,

but at the same time he made it manifest

disclosing its mystery to people in ecstacy.

Christmas means the warmth of the family,

the amazing phenomenon of motherhood,

the continuity of life through fatherhood.

Christmas means, for the Christian and for humanity -

besides the dawn of Redemption -

the day in which humanity rediscovers itself, its true self,

because it is grafted into God.

New City: Drying the cutlery

Over several years of trade union work I have met a number of situations where I think to myself afterwards: "If these people had been able to talk to each other properly about this ages ago, there wouldn't be a problem". Sometimes in relationships at work the sort of ordinary conversations that encourage positive working together, and avoid problems, just don't happen. Sometimes these good working relations do exist. What makes the difference?

In the spirituality of the Focolare, this sort of situation is addressed by the idea of trying to love other people in the ordinary circumstances of life: "be the first to love". Among themselves, and in their publications, those associated with the Focolare share stories of how they have tried to do this. The "Word in Action" feature of the August/September issue of their magazine New City contains this:

I'm studying in Budapest at the moment and live in a small flat let to me by a family. A friend of mine came to visit me recently and after lunch he did the washing up, leaving the knives and forks to dry with their handles facing upwards, different to how I would normally do it putting them with their handles down. I told him this, giving my reasons, and he explained why he did it his way.

As a result of this very simple experience it struck me that if I don't learn to be a little more flexible in my habits, I'll end up growing old with my head full of very good reasons for always doing things my way! From then on I started drying the cutlery with the handles facing upwards.

I came across something St Therese of  Lisieux said to her sister Celine: "Before dying by the sword, let us die by pinpricks". And a pinprick can be a point of view which differs from my own, an insult, a disappointment, an official who behaves more like a robot than a person, a colleague who makes life difficult for me ...

A short time later I went to dinner with my friend's family. They didn't allow me to wash the dishes, but I was very surprised to see that they put the cutlery to dry with the handles facing downwards. We had a real laugh when I told them that I had changed how I dry the cutlery ... they had done exactly the same for me! Every time I manage to "lose my life", I experience such joy, such a freedom that makes it much easier for me to love the others.

My first thought, accompanied by considerable laughter (LOL, is I think the modern term): how someone dries their cutlery really isn't that important!

Second thought, also accompanied by laughter: what can someone who gets a towel and dries their cutlery straight away, without leaving it to drain at all, learn from this story?

Third thought, more serious this time: a privilege of living on my own is that I can stick to my habits, or at least to some of them.

Fourth thought: reflecting on my trade union experience, that a practice of these small and, in themselves insiginificant, acts helps to create a situation in the workplace where potentially problematic situations are addressed in the ordinary intercourse of daily life, and so don't become problems at all.

The million dollar question: the next time I have visitor to my home, will I leave the washing up to drain or not?

New City Magazine: July 2010

It is a little while since I posted on the contents of one of the various publications that come through my letter box, but a couple of articles in the July issue of New City, the monthly magazine of the Focolare, caught my eye.

The first was a review of the book "A Whispered Name", by William Brodrick. I read this about a year ago, and found it most interesting. It is interesting from the point of view of the history of the execution of deserters during the First World War, from the point of view of Irish soldiers serving with the British Army during that War, and from the point of view of its Catholic background. I did find it a gripping story, which unfolds its mystery as you go along.

Another article caught my eye, written by an Anglican priest about industrial chaplaincy on Tyneside. The idea of such chaplaincy is one that I find interesting. Parallels exist in some large shopping centres, such as Lakeside near me in Thurrock, where there are chaplaincy arrangements. The idea of industrial chaplaincy responds to some of the needs identified in the "Mission to France" worker-priests movement of the inter-war years. It also strikes me as being a profoundly diaconal ministry, so one that would be very appropriate as pastoral activity to be undertaken by permanent deacons, deacons who could easily have paid employment in industry. There are some specific professional areas where such chaplaincy is well established - hospital chaplaincy (though for institutional purposes this might be branded as a "pastoral and spiritual" care), port chaplaincy and university chaplaincy. In the former two of these, ecumenical chaplaincy arrangements are common.

In these types of chaplaincy arrangements, a lot of the time is spent simply being alongside people in their particular places in life. There are times when conversation might be explicitly religious - but many other times when it isn't and conversation is made up of the common place of every day life. In terms of evangelisation, activity is at the level of "presence in charity". In one sense the example that John Clasper gave in his article is untypical in this context; but I suspect that it is a question that comes up more often in Catholic life than one might realise.

Over lunch he told me that, as a practising Catholic, he had a problem he could not see a way around. His wife had died some years ago, and in recent years he had met a woman he was beginning to love and wanted to marry. The difficulty was that she was divorced, her first husband was still alive and he had been told that he would not be allowed to receive Communion when he attended Mass, if he went ahead with his proposal. What could he do? It seemed that God had brought the two of them together and the Church seemed to be standing in the way of a future happy relationship. His only option was to give up being a Roman Catholic and transfer to a church where his problem would be more sympathetically dealt with. Could he become an Anglican?

To his credit, and thanks to his experience of the spirituality of the Focolare movement, this Anglican priest recognised the significance of obedience to Church leaders, in this case the Pope, as guardians of God's love and grace, and this guided his support of this individual. But what theological/pastoral grounds can we use to indicate how someone in this situation should choose their course of action?

I would suggest two ideas here. One is to look at the sections of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola dedicated to choosing a way of life. As well as offering clear teaching, this also offers practical guidance about the process of making a choice. It's introduction suggests that in many cases people make choices that put the means first - marriage, priesthood, etc - and the end - the service of God - second, whereas these considerations should be reversed in the process of making the choice. An assumption underlying its pastoral approach is that the object about which a choice is being made should be in accord with the teaching of the Church. I think that the Spiritual Exercises provide a very useful way of approaching this situation where it is so easy to see "the Church" as standing in the way of a happy outcome, a way that combines pastoral care with faithfulness to the Church.

In the particular situation encountered by our Anglican chaplain, I think there is a second important consideration. It is the possibility of a good, Christian friendship that does not involve marriage. This is in itself a way of life in the Church, and can be the same kind of witness in a parish community as that of married people. An aspect of similar situations that might arise, though perhaps not directly in the case described in the New City article, is that of recognising when someone is "not available" because of permanent life choices that have already been made, and respecting that. This too can issue in friendships, appropriate to the particular circumstances.

"God loves you immensely"

This is the title of an article in the February 2010 issue of New City magazine. This is the magazine of the Focolare movement in this country.

In this article, the writer looks back to an encounter that forms a particular part of the founding charism of the Focolare, the understanding of God as love.

Speaking of the origins of the Focolare Movement, Chiara [Lubich] includes a well-known episode in which she describes her first encounter with God-Love. The story is set in 1943 when, as a very young teacher, she was approached by a priest who, according to the customs of the times, asked her if she would offer up an hour of her daily work for his inentions. "Why not the whole day?" replied Chiara. Touched by her great generosity, the priest blessed her, saying, "Remember that God loves you immensely".

Offering an hour of your days work for the intentions of your parish priest. A nice thought for the Year for Priests.

New City Magazine: August-September 2008

I have had the current issue of New City for about a week now, but the great "tidy up" of the office has hindered my commenting on it until now.

The first article to catch my attention is entitled "Many Voices, One Idea", and reports on a congress held in Liverpool in June.

The Big Hope was a unique congress for young peole from all over the world, held at Liverpool Hope University from 4-11 June. The objective was to bring together leaders of the future to consider the much needed inter-connection between personal integrity and public life and to consider how to develop a humane global society.

The Big Hope Declaration which was signed by the delegates at the end of the Congress recognised that "individual personal responsibility is a vital element of developing a more humane and sustainable global society". It also contained a commitment to both "personal and public integrity and accountability, honesty and transparency of motive, and ... to uphold the highest standards of probity and respect for others". In a week that has seen a certain Mr Mosley win a court case in which behaviour of a sexually licentious manner was considered his own private matter and of no import for his public life, this assertion of the need for a consonance of personal integrity with public integrity is not trivial.

An interesting quote from one of the participants in the Congress was the following: "Also I realise it is not enough to only accept another religion, or culture, we have to embrace it as our own". At first sight, this appears to be religious indifferentism or syncretism writ large. However, I know that indifferentism does not sit well with the authentic living of Focolare's charism of unity. If we assume that this remark is not made with a religiously indifferent intent, then it does express the kind of empathy (in a technical, philosophical sense) with other religious beliefs that we would seek to achieve through inter-religious dialogue. Understood in this way, the phrase "embrace it as our own" does not mean that we accept the religion of the other as true in some way alongside our own; but it does mean that we try to "enter in to it" as we come to know it, rather than just knowing about it "from the outside", in a cold, unengaged sort of way.

New City Magazine: July 2008

Each month, the magazine New City prints the "Word of Life". This is the meditation on a short Scripture quotation prepared by the Focolare movement, and used by its members and friends throughout the world.

The Word of Life for July is the "golden rule": In everything do to others as you would have them do to you: for this is the law and the prophets (Mt 7:12). This rule is reflected in the thought of the other world religions, and can also be lived in a completely non-religious way.

On the page opposite Chiara Lubich's meditation on this Scripture text, New City reproduces a mosaic from the United Nations building in New York that expresses this "golden rule". It strikes me that this "golden rule" is an excellent and entirely appropriate motif for the idea and purpose of the United Nations as an organisation. It is a motif that has the possibility of uniting in common purpose those of different religious beliefs and those of no religious beliefs.

However, this uniting in common purpose of those of different beliefs cannot be successfully achieved on the basis of indifferentism. The essential motivation behind the mosaic at the United Nations should not be one that is indifferent to the differences between its members, treating those differences as if they do not matter. On the contrary, it should be a motivation that is anxious to find and build on what is common, among the differences (if that does not seem a contradiction).

When Pope Benedict XVI visited the United Nations in April 2008, I commented on the welcome given to him by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and contrasted this with the welcome given by President Bush. In this context I would suggest that there is a need to recall the United Nations, as represented by its Secretary General, to the original sense of the "golden rule" mosaic. Trying to attribute "faith" to those of no religious belief, and referring to religious "faith" as being something that a non-believer can have a share of - I really cannot grasp what the word "faith" means when it is used in this way. And this indifference between belief and non-belief undermines the idea of a commonality-across-difference (by doing away with any genuine idea of difference) that is essential to correctly understanding the universal appeal of the "golden rule".

New City Magazine - May 2008

The May 2008 issue of New City is the first since the death of Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement who publish the magazine. It is therefore dedicated to her, and to some of the key events in her life and the life of Focolare. Particular attention is given to Chiara's visits to England and Ireland.

One article is entitled "The Work of Mary". This is the official, canonical title of the movement - Focolare is a kind of nick-name. According to the article, it was Chiara's understanding of God's plan for the movement that it was to live "like Mary"; or, in fact, more than that to "relive Mary" in a certain sense. New City reproduces a meditation in which Chiara gives an account of how this intuition for the movement came into being. It has a striking resonance with a thought of Alina Reyes included in the post I did yesterday on the April-May issue of Lourdes Magazine. One might also want to suggest that apparitions of the Virgin Mary such as those at Lourdes do in some way make a presence of Mary in the Church.

I went into church one day, and with my heart full of trust, I asked: "Why did you wish to remain on earth, on every point of the earth, in the most sweet Eucharist, and you, you who are God, have not found a way to bring here and to leave here Mary, the mother of all of us who journey?"

In the silence he seemed to reply: "I have not left her because I want to see her again in you. Even if you are not immaculate, my love will virginize you, and you, all of you, will open your arms and hearts as mothers of humanity, which, as in times past, thirsts for God and for his mother. It is you who now must soothe pains, soothe wounds, dry tears. Sing her litanies and strive to mirror yourself in them".

[Chiara Lubich Mary the Transparency of God]

Miscellaneous thoughts on social cohesion

The April 2008 issue of New City carries a report from Kenya. This report gives an idea of how Catholic bishops and other religious leaders responded to the recent violence in their country. Seeing only the news reports outside the country, it was very easy for us to miss the way in which these tragic events represented a challenge to the ordinary people of Kenya.

"Belonging to a certain ethnic group is an inherent part of individual and cultural identity and, in itself, is not wrong. But on more than one occasion, historic and political events have warped feelings of belonging, creating myths and generating fear and mistrust between ethnic groups. These days Kenya has been posing a true challenge to its citizens... As the bishops of Kenya stated in their letter signed on 2 January: 'We have lived together for all these years as brothers and sisters. There is therefore no reason for us to raise our hand against our neighbour because he or she belongs to a different ethnic group or political affiliation. We appeal specifically to the political leaders ... to reach out to one another through dialogue in order to seek a solution to the present situation.'... In addition to the Catholic bishops, leaders of different Christian denominations and other religions have called all peoples to peace, organising moments of prayer throughout the country and encouraging solidarity above-all with those who suffer."

The report goes on to describe national prayers for peace being broadcast on radio and television, and Sunday Masses attended by far larger congregations than normal. It ends with a short account of a young father who, having discovered a group in his own neighbourhood who were planning to burn down a house in revenge, intervened with those involved and succeeded in preventing this atrocity.

What the report highlighted for me was the fact that, within a a situation of conflict based on national political events and a situation that was often reported in the media in these terms alone, there remained a moral challenge for individuals in their own neighbourhoods. Certainly, the national situation fuelled events at the neighbourhood level and so it was quite necessary to appeal for reconciliation at the national level, but at the same time responses were needed - and achieved - by people acting in their own neighbourhoods to resist violence. Sadly, in many neighbourhoods, it was the violence that held sway; but, as the New City report concludes, the positive episodes help us to believe that a better future can be achieved.

Since the events in Kenya, Tibet has seen violent protests against its Chinese rulers. An aspect of the protests in Tibet that I found most disturbing was the way in which some members of the ethnically Tibetan population appear to have targeted the local Chinese population, people who must in a real sense be their ordinary, every day neighbours. The news coverage that I saw suggested that, not only were Chinese businesses attacked, but invidual Chinese people were themselves subjected to brutality. In this context, I did not feel that an unqualified support for the Tibetan demonstrators was an appropriate response of Western governments. Again, there is an interplay between the national/international political situation and the local, neighbourhood one - but the same challenge to "love your neighbour" must surely still apply.

This may seem a long way from life in the UK, but it is perhaps not as far distant as might appear. Showing care for the neighbour who is different than yourself can take very simple forms, which nevertheless help to build trust. One of my ways of trying to do this is to give way to drivers of different ethnicity than myself on the roads (not trivial, when traffic queues up quite a long way on my road during rush hours!). I am sure there are other simple ways of trying to do this, too.

New City Magazine: March 2008

The March issue of New City carries a report of the 2007 Pope Paul VI lecture. This was given last November, by Vera Araujo. What I did not realise at the time of the lecture was that Vera Araujo had a background in Focolare's "Abba School" (their academic think tank!) and in the "Economy of Communion", a movement for econcomic development arising from Focolare's spirituality of unity. Her lecture can be seen as a reading of Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio in the light of Focolare's spirituality of unity.

I was able to find a transcript of Vera Araujo's address on the CAFOD website, but only after "googling" for "Paul VI lecture 2007". From the transcript, I take the following question and answer. My comments in red.

Q6: Thank you for a beautiful presentation in the style of Dom Helder (Camara). Vera Araujo had favourably described something of Dom Helder Camara's pastoral approach during her lecture. She described, for example, how he used to travel around Recife on buses rather than by car, how he used to eat in cafes or bars rather than in expensive restaurants. As Dom Helder would recognise, this globalised world is marked by structures of injustice and structures of sin; poor people don’t just suffer, poor people are exploited by rich nations. Where does ‘transforming solidarity advocacy’ - to turn this world upside down - fit into the picture of building a universal cohesion between rich and poor, between exploited and those who exploit? One can perhaps see where this question was coming from!

Good and evil have always co-existed. We have always have had to take account of the situation in which we live. But the greatness of every human person lies in the possibility of being able to change the situation they find themselves in. Many times when I am with young people, the most important thing I want to get across to them, is how much they can bring about change. Institutions, structures are built by individuals. As there are structures of sin there are also structures for good, structures of solidarity, structures of love and it is always we as human beings who create these structures. So this capacity for change exists within us. It is together we can build and bring about a difference.

The situation in which we find ourselves today demands of us more than ever before that we start to build human relationships, build communities. It will be these communities which are true, made up of deep relationships which will then in turn be able to express themselves in terms of laws, in terms of new structures. It’s something that will take a long time. It will take decades, maybe even hundreds of years. But if we don’t start, it will take thousands of years. Someone has to start.

Let’s be optimistic and optimism is also realism . It means believing in our capability of being open to others, of being open to the action of God in the course of history. If we don’t have this optimism we will become depressed; we will be incapable of taking our world in hand and making it a better world for ourselves and for our children and all those who come after us. We don’t want to be marked down in history as a lost generation because I fear that our ‘modern’ times will be judged harshly by history. So we have to change the direction and turn the situation around. But the answer does not go there!

There is also an interesting interview with Professor Gerald John Pillay, Vice Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. The interview was occasioned by the award of an honorary degree by Liverpool Hope to Chiara Lubich, founder and President of Focolare. Liverpool Hope University is a joint Anglican-Roman Catholic foundation, being formed from previously existing Anglican and Roman Catholic colleges. Two things caught my attention in this interview.

The first was Professor Pillay's view that "secularisation" of the universities had not come about at the time of the Enlightenment (many of the leading lights of the enlightenment were, in his view, people of deep faith). Professor Pillay believes this secularisation to be a largely post-world war phenomenon, citing the existence of theology departments all over the Western world in the 19th century as evidence for this view (how many of those departments are now "religious studies" departments, I wonder?).

"But I think now that a post-secular culture is emerging. We had a post-religious culture and now we have a post-secular culture. People are much more comfortable speaking about spirituality today and one senses a deep spiritual longing in people."

Whilst one can see signs that support Professor Pillay's view, I suspect that many of us engaged in public debate would be much less optimistic about the extent of the emerging post-secular culture.

The second was the strength of Professor Pillay's vision for Liverpool Hope University. According to the interview, he hopes that the University can reintroduce the study of theology as a way of humanising society and restore it to its original position as "Queen of the Sciences". One can see here echoes of Pope Benedict XVI's concern at the loss of the sense of God from society. This vision has been enriched by Professor Pillay's encounter with Focolare, an encounter which has occurred as a result of the award of an honorary degree to Chiara Lubich. He noted that Focolare is due to open its own university, with the name Sophia University, in November this year.

"Of course, our universities must be about knowledge, but they must also be about wisdom, because scientia has dominated the model of the modern university, science and technology, but sapientia, which is what the Scriptures speak about, is to do with meaning and purpose and about the humane and the deeper things in life which go beyond science and technology. This is why I was very attracted by the idea of the university with the title Sophia, wisdom".

The risk of an ecumenical institution like Liverpool Hope University is that it just adopts, in a downward moving sort of way, the "lowest common denominator" of the participating denominations. This interview suggests that the opposite may be happening - that there is instead a kind of upward moving adherence to a "highest common factor". I would expect that this can only be enriched by the engagement with Focolare.

February Magazines: "New City", "Lourdes Magazine"

The current issues of two magazines have arrived in the last couple of days.
"New City" is the magazine of Focolare in the UK. The cover article for February is about the Vatican's mission at the United Nations. The article is largely an interview with Archbishop Migliore, who heads the mission of the Holy See at the United Nations. He tells an interesting story of how the Holy See's representation was able to facilitate meetings between a delegation from the Great Lakes area of Africa and different offices and officials of the UN. The delegation were particularly anxious for the UN to take steps to reduce the flow of armaments into their home region, armaments which were fuelling violence. A couple of weeks after the visit of the delegation, the UN adopted a strong resolution on the issue, which paved the way for an international protocol among the local nations to control the traffic in armaments in the region. A second article in "New City" is a presentation of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical "Spes Salvi".
The January-February issue of "Lourdes Magazine" has a focus on the new mosaics that were unveiled on the 8th December 2007. These have been placed in the facade of the Rosary Basilica, facing out onto the piazza in front of the Basilica. They will therefore form a backdrop to the conclusion of the Rosary procession each evening of the pilgrimage season. The mosaics represent the five Mysteries of Light. I suspect that the style of the mosaics will appeal to some and not to others. The photographs in the magazine have not really given me any feel for what it will be like to see the mosaics in situ. Two things have caught my attention, though. The mosaic of the Wedding Feast at Cana portrays two "couples": the bride and groom of the wedding, and, portrayed side by side as if they are also bride and groom, Jesus and his Mother. I think that this richly expresses the connections from Cana, to the sacrifice of the Lamb on Calvary, to the Church-Mary born on Calvary, and on to the nuptial relationship of Christ and the Church-Mary represented in the Eucharist and on Calvary. The second thing that caught my attention was the choice of images to represent the third Mystery of Light, the proclamation of the Gospel and the call to repentance. These two images are the lowering of the paralytic through the ceiling of the house (Jesus instructs the paralytic to rise and walk, as his sins are forgiven) and Jesus giving the Apostles the power to forgive sins after His Resurrection.
Take, and read.