Rome 1978
If you look around you in some cities you pass through, you are left dismayed and it seems to you that the realization of a Christian society is far off. The world with its vanity seems to dominate….
And you would call the testament of Jesus a utopia if you did not think of him. He saw a world like this too, and at the climax of his life he appeared to be overcome by it, defeated by evil.
He, too, looked at all that crowd which he loved as himself. He, God, who had created it. And he would have liked to build the bonds which were going to bring them together as sons of the Father, and unite brother with brother.
He came to bring the family together again: to make all one.
Instead, despite his words of fire and truth – that burned away the happiness of vanity, uncovering the eternal that is in man – the people, many people, even though they understood, did not want to know and remained with lifeless eyes because their soul was dark.
This was because he had made them free. Having come from heaven to earth, he could have saved them all with just a glance. But he had to leave to them, who were made in the image of God, the joy of freely winning salvation.
He looked on the world just as we see it, but did not doubt.
At night he prayed heaven above and heaven within himself: the Trinity that is true Being, the real All, while outside the nothingness that passes away moved through the streets. We, too, must do as he did and not be parted from the Eternal, from the Uncreated that is the root of the created, and we must believe in the final victory of light over darkness.
We must pass through the world and not wish to look at it. We must look at the heaven that is also in us and attach ourselves to what has being and value. We must make ourselves completely one with the Trinity who dwells in our soul, enlightening it with eternal light.
Then you will notice, with eyes which are no longer lifeless, that you look at the world and at things, but that it is no longer you looking at it: it is Christ who looks, and in you he sees again the blind needing sight, the dumb to be made to speak, the crippled to be made to walk, people who are blind to the vision of God inside and outside them, people who are immobile and crippled because they are unaware of the divine will which, from the bottom of their hearts spurs them on to the eternal movement that is eternal love.
You see and discover your own light in them: your true self, which is Christ, the true reality of you in them, and having found him, you unite with him in your neighbour. So you light a cell of the Body of Christ, a living cell, a hearth of God where there is fire to communicate to others and with it light. It is God who makes two one, and who places himself as a third, as the relation between them: Jesus among them.
In this way love circulates and spontaneously carries with it, like a river in flood, everything else the two own, both their spiritual and their material goods. This is the practical and outward witness of true, unifying love.
But we need to have the courage not to bother too much about other means if we want to revive a little bit of Christianity.
We must make God live in us and pour him out over others like a stream of life, reviving the lifeless.
And keep him alive among us by loving one another.
Then everything around is revolutionized: politics and art, school and work, private life and entertainment. Everything.
Jesus is the perfect man who contains all people and recapitulates every truth.Whoever has found this man has found the answer to every human and divine problem.
Chiara Lubich
(taken from: Chiara Lubich, Yes Yes No No, New City London, 1977 pp 69-72)
