November 22, 1980

From Chiara’s Diary {rokbox title=|Dal diario di Chiara :: 22/11/1980| size=|fullscreen| thumb=|images/scritti/19801122-diario-p.gif|}downloads/chi_19801123_en.pdf{/rokbox} 22 November 1980 It’s more than a month before Christmas and the city streets of Zurich are already covered in lights. Bahnhofstrasse and parallel streets. A never-ending row of shops, a sophisticated but exorbitant richness.We are in what is perhaps the richest country of the world.To the left of our car a row of shop windows catches our attention. Through the window it is snowing gently: an optical illusion. Boys and girls on sledges pulled by reindeer and Disney animals. Still more sledges and Father Christmas and little deer, piglets, hares, frogs, puppets and red dwarfs. Everything is moving gracefully. Oh! There are the angels… But no! They are fairies, recently invented to adorn the snow-white scene.A child with his parents stands on tiptoe and watches, fascinated.But in my heart is disbelief and then, almost rebellion: this rich world has trapped Christmas and all that goes with it, and has evicted Jesus!It loves the poetry, the atmosphere, the friendship

2021-08-15T23:30:05+02:0022 Dicembre 2009|

I love you

Rome, Second Sunday of Easter, April 24, 1960 downloads/mp3/chi_19761230_en.mp3 {rokbox title=|Scritto di Chiara :: 24/04/1960| size=|fullscreen| thumb=|images/scritti/19600424-scritto-p.gif|}images/scritti/19600424-scritto_en.pdf{/rokbox} I love you I love younot because I have learned to tell you so;not because my heartsuggests these words,not even because faith has made me believethat you are love;and not even because you died for me.I love youbecause you have entered into my lifemore than the air in my lungs,more than the blood in my veins. You have come and enteredwhere no one could enter;when no one could help me,each time no one could console me.Every day I have spoken with you.At every moment I have looked at youand in your countenanceI have found the answer;in your words the explanation;in your love the solution.I love youbecause for many yearsyou have lived with meand I have lived with you.I drank from your law,and did not know it.I was nourished with it,became strong in itI found new courage,but I was unaware of itlike a child who drinks its mother's milkand still does not knowhow to call

2021-08-15T23:30:04+02:0018 Dicembre 2009|

December 13,1968

Taken from Chiara’s diary {rokbox title=|from Chiara’s diary :: 13/12/68| size=|fullscreen| thumb=|images/scritti/19681213-diario-p.gif|}images/scritti/19681213-diario_en.pdf{/rokbox} 12 / 13 /1968A love that continuesWhen friends or relatives leave for the hereafter, we say they have passed away, we think they are gone.But it is not true. If we think like this, where is our faith in the communion of saints? ... ... No one who enters into God is lost: because if anything remains in a brother or sister for whom “life is changed not taken away,” it is charity.Yes, because everything passes. Even faith and hope pass away with the rest of the world as we know it. Only charity remains (see 1 Cor 13:8).Now, what remains is the love that our brother or sister had for us, if it was a true love, rooted in God. And God is not so miserly with us that he takes away what he has given us in them.But now he gives it to us in another way. Our departed brother or sister continues to love us in

2021-08-15T23:30:05+02:001 Novembre 2009|

October 12, 1968

From Chiara’s Diary 12/10 /1968 At times, a certain preoccupation comes to the soul. How do I appear to God? What and how much dust covers my soul? Even though it seemed to me that I had not committed any deliberate sins, neither mortal nor venial, how ugly I must be? And to say the truth, we wouldn’t know how to give a judgment on this.It seems to me that in this case, the only thing to do is to immediately stop looking at ourselves, to “forget ourselves” in order to look only at God, at His will, at Jesus in our neighbors. To be constantly “outside of ourselves.” To seek not our own sanctity, but the Saint. Herein lies charity and authentic holiness.

2021-08-15T23:30:04+02:0021 Agosto 2009|

April 8, 1968

Chiara’s diary {rokbox title=|Chiara’s diary :: 9/4/68| size=|fullscreen| thumb=|images/scritti/19680409-diario-p.gif|}downloads/chi_19680409_en.pdf{/rokbox} 9 / 4 /1968At times we are filled with nostalgia for heaven. At times we feel the weight of life here on earth and of the waiting.But then Someone immediately calls us from within to recollect ourselves and be alone with the Eternal One; He calls us to be consoled and to be resigned to continuing like this for as long as He wants... ... In these moments you feel like a child who is picked up and hugged in his mother’s arms. Nothing is now missing. And while being refreshed you recover strength and feel that no, it is not good to go straight to the eternal enjoyment of what God’s goodness has prepared for us, and besides that would not be justice, because eternal happiness must be merited. So you make decisions to live the Christian life well, true resolutions of daily heroism, in order to reach perfection during all the days that are left of your life. It is

2021-08-15T23:30:04+02:0022 Luglio 2009|

March 3, 1967

An excerpt from Chiara’s Diary {rokbox title=|An excerpt from Chiara’s Diary :: 3/3/67| size=|561 350| thumb=|images/scritti/19670303-diario-p.gif|}images/scritti/19670303-diario.jpg{/rokbox} 3 / 3 /1967I am discovering that “hope” is a great virtue. Why are we not fully happy at times? Why do sufferings, tears and sorrows blind us? It’s because we are lacking the “hope” that, thinking about it...   ...and glancing over the Gospel, seems to be its style – as Paul VI would say – in trustful (hopeful) anticipation of the divine promises of which the Gospel is the treasurer.In order to renew our Christian life, to give it that limpid smile of the children of the Gospel, we now need this virtue, lived with perseverance. The God of hope! Yes, it’s like this, may the true and one God “fill you with all joy and peace” (Rm 15:13): the two things that are missing in the world, the gift that the focolarino must bring to it. (click on the image to enlarge it)

2021-08-15T23:29:55+02:0012 Giugno 2009|
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