Riccardi

Rome, 1973 In the Pope’s 1 message for the World Day of Peace, to 'all peoples living in 1972', there is a passage near the end addressed to ‘sons and daughters of the Catholic Church’. In it the Pope invites us to 'bring to humanity a message of hope through a fraternity which is truly lived and through an honest and persevering effort for greater, true justice'. I want to consider for a moment this request of the Pope to his sons and daughters to offer the world a lived fraternity, in order to see how we can put it into practice and give humanity a message of hope. First of all, we can ask ourselves: is there among us Catholics a basis for creating a more heartfelt fraternity? And further: is today's world open to this? If we look at the Church and humanity, we'll see how both are subject to two contrasting tensions. The Church today, too, as in every age, walks along a way of the cross since

December 25, 1972 A strong, adventurous Christmas that is not lukewarm, in a “family” as big as humanity. All one! It’s a goal to reach. It’s a mandate: a mandate from the One to whom every person should joyfully surrender oneself, God who is our Father. If the heavens were to open and he were to speak, looking at each of us, he would tell us: “Be one! You are brothers and sisters, therefore, be united!” One day heaven did open up, because the Word became flesh and grew up. He taught, performed miracles, gathered disciples, founded the Church and, before dying on the Cross, said to the Father: “May they all be one.” He did not address human beings: perhaps they would not have understood. He turned to the Father, because God is the bond of this unity, and he obtained the grace for us to be one among us. Now we Christians talk a lot about the unity of the mystical Body and of the Church, but we often

25 December 1973 In an article of December 25, 1973 published in the Italian magazine, Città Nuova, the journalist Spartaco Lucarini asks fourteen personalities of the most different environments: What is Christmas for you? This is Chiara Lubich’s answer Christmas, feast of the birth of Jesus, is for me the reply of God and the Church to a need of the soul: to hear repeated to me every year, through the commemoration of that fact so sweet, so sublime, so simple and so deep, that God loves me.Yes, if in my existence, I am able to fulfil my deepest aspirations, it is only because God has looked also upon me, as he has upon everyone, and has become man to give me the laws of life that, like light on the road, help me walk safely towards our common destiny. But Christmas for me is not just a commemoration, however meaningful. It is a spur for me to work to restore the presence of Christ in the midst of the society