Commentary of the Word of Life:

To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away (Mt 13,12)

Jesus says these words in answer to his disciples who asked him why he speaks in parables. He explains that not everyone is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but only people who are open, only those who accept his words and live them.
In fact, some of those who hear him choose to close their eyes and ears so that “they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand” (Mt. 13:13). These are people who see and hear Jesus, but because they assume that they already know all the truth, they do not believe his words or the actions that confirm them. For this reason, they end up losing even the little they have.

From Chiara’s Diary

on March 7, 1967

I experience that it’s true that the Word of God is a presence of Christ and coincides with the Word Himself.
And so I think that this kind of communion with Jesus, in His Word, is something I can have at any moment; at any moment I can be nourished by Him and make Him grow in me as in a continuous communion.

From Chiara’s Diary

on 11/15/1968

Since getting to know in depth the Heart of Jesus which lives and beats in Heaven for us, one has – through God’s grace – new spiritual experiences.
When making a visit to church for example, when you are before Him and you say, ‘I love you,’ the words truly contain the reality, not only the reality of the will, but of the affection, that burning affection which is human and divine.

Thanks to God, this really can be experienced.
May the Heart of Jesus, the burning furnace of charity, maintain our heart at the same degree of warmth as his heart, and may our heart be the treasure chest which contains this unique precious nectar: love.

Commetary on the Word of Life:

Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. (Jn 6:27)

After having fed the crowds through the multiplication of loaves and fishes near the Sea of Galilee, Jesus slipped away to the other side of the lake, to Capernaum, in order to escape the crowd that wanted to make him king. There were many who looked and still found him.
Jesus, however, did not accept their enthusiastic, yet self-seeking plans. They had eaten the miraculous bread, but had seen in that event only their personal, material gain. They did not recognize the deep significance of that bread, which revealed Jesus as sent by the Father in order to give true life to the world.
To them Jesus was only a wonder-worker, an earthly messiah who could give them food cheaply and in abundance. It is in this context that Jesus tells them:

And when the disciples were reunited together with Mary, the Holy Spirit vehemently invested them and they spoke words of life with an incredible strength and convinced thousands of people to follow Jesus. And they baptized and built up the Church.

With Mary... it was the presence of love, of a new love.

June 1973

Young people want to be authentic; they feel the need to be free from everything that blocks them from being real. In Our Lady, there was only authenticity, because in her there was not « herself » in the negative sense, but only the plan of God on her, without any encrustations of the old self.

Then, almost everyone thinks, and young people in a special way, that man and woman, in order to be complete, necessarily need each other and that they cannot fulfil themselves if not in the completion with the opposite sex. Now Mary, who is alone, was totally devoid of this idea.

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Published in Italian in: Colloqui con i Gen, cit., pp. 178-182*.

Commetary on the Word of Life:

‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’ (Lk 12:49))

In the Old Testament fire symbolizes the word of God as spoken by a prophet. But it also signifies divine justice that purifies God’s people by passing among them.

The Word of Jesus is the same. It builds up, but while it does so it destroys whatever has no real substance, whatever must fall, whatever is vanity, and leaves standing only the truth.

To be available to God’s plans

Advent of the Kingdom of Love!

Dearest Duccia*,

Before I left you, and as I left you, I abandoned you to Love, so that you may become Saint Catherine of modern times.
I went into St. Mark’s Church and I prayed to Him, the Almighty for you.
I was close to Him in body and heart and He spoke to me of you. He told me that your wish is welcomed in Heaven and He, the Almighty One, is ready to carry it out.
But He told me to tell you this:
Wanting to be St. Catherine is a good thing.
Being able to be St. Catherine depends totally on God and it depends totally on you.

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* Duccia, a few years older than Chiara, was a social worker, a Red Cross nurse who lived in Piazza Cappuccini, in Trent, near the focolare where Chiara had moved to in September 1944.
Chiara gave her as a model Saint Catherine of Siena, who was very popular in Italy and whose spirituality was centred on the two terms «Blood and Fire.»
We can perceive that the Author starts being aware of being bearer of a gift, of having been chosen by Jesus to be his confidante regarding his wound. The word “key” appears, which indicates that the cross, and especially Jesus Forsaken, opens every heart and leads to holiness.

Rome, March 30, 1959

We certainly have a great responsibility. We Christians must give witness to Christ and from the way we act people should be able to grasp the message that Christ brought on earth.

But at times the witness we give of Christ is weak—if not non-existent— or deformed in one way or another.

Various personalities and minds averse to the action of grace project an image of Jesus that is often in their own image and likeness. Therefore, those looking on deduce what they can from the data they have: for example, that deep down, religion simply bends people’s necks but not their will. And this is because those Christians, who call themselves Christ’s disciples, since it is they who live and not Christ in them, cast a shadow that veils in their own person the religion they profess. As a result, the separation tragically continues and is perpetuated between those who are far from Christ and those who, if they were to relive the love that is God, should attract the world and bring it to the Lord.

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Rome, April 8, 2004

We are nearing Easter. While the world is breathing an atmosphere of fear because of the threat of terrorism, what answer may come from the mystery of Good Friday and the Easter Resurrection?

Chiara Lubich: Every day is Good Friday. Looking at the news, in front of the killings and assassination attempts, one after the other, in those pictures of inhuman violence, in the cry of those sufferings, resounds the cry of abandonment which Jesus cried out to the Father on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?, his greatest trial and the darkest shadow. But it’s a cry which didn’t remain without an answer.

Jesus did not remain in the abyss of that infinite pain, but, with a huge and unimaginable effort he re-abandoned himself to the Father, overcoming that immense suffering and in this way he brought people back in the bosom of the Father and in the reciprocal embrace.

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