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Interview with Chiara You've had several audiences with Pope Paul VI. What has been your strongest impression of these audi¬ences? The strongest impression that I had was certainly during the first audience. I felt I was in front of a person who loved in a very special way. The wisdom in the Pope's words was such that it overcame all the juridical obstacles still present; he understood; he received in his soul the whole content of the Movement that I was presenting to him. The Pope himself encouraged me to say everything, because there everything was possible. .I remember feeling a perfect harmony between what the Pope was say¬ing and what it seemed to me had come from God for the life of this Movement. My impression was so strong that I remember feeling almost as if the room where the Pope holds his audi¬ences was wide open and that heaven and earth touched right there. If they had led me in front of his person blindfolded and I had not

Commentary of the Word of Life: Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others I will deny before my heavenly Father (Mt 10,32-33). This word of life is a source of great joy and encouragement to all Christians.With this passage, Jesus calls us to be consistent in living out our faith in him, because our eternal destiny depends on the attitude we have assumed toward him during our lifetime. If we declare ourselves for him before others, he says, he will have reason to declare himself for us before his Father. If instead we have disowned him before others, he will disown us before his Father. Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others I will deny before my heavenly Father. Jesus reminds us of the reward or the punishment that awaits us after this life because he loves us. He knows, as one Father of the Church put

Today a lot is said about the role of the laity. And perhaps we would see more clearly who the lay person is and how the lay person is also 'Church', if a better and fuller explanation were given of certain aspects of the life of Mary. It seems to us that she is the model of the lay person, even though she is exceptional and unique.We Catholics do not make a God of Mary, as we are often accused of doing, but, since love and faith have led us to the discovery of all that makes her special, we often place her to one side, far away from us. We place her in a sphere which is hers, but it is not the only sphere in which she belongs. In her we praise the Mother of God, the Immaculate, the Assumed, the Queen, but not the perfect Christian, the fiancée, the bride, the mother, the widow, the virgin, the model of every Christian. She, like us lay people, cannot offer

Castel Gandolfo, February 16, 1987 (...) Mary was a gate that leads to God. A gate is not a gate unless it opens and allows free passage. A door that is always closed is really a wall. Those who stop at the gate do not reach God. The gate is for Jesus. “Hail, O Gate of the Sublime Mystery,” sounds the Akathistos hymn. The Virgin is the one who is empty of self, utterly self-forgetful. She is the created being who knows that she is created, even when filled with God. She was using the same method for our Movement that she had used for the Church: keeping herself in the shadows in order to highlight her Son, who is God. Text Video in italian

(...) During the pontificate of Paul VI, too, I had the adventure of becoming acquainted with and loving a very special countenance of Jesus forsaken, which brought not pain to be embraced but solely the most intense love: that which shone in the great Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. By the will of Providence I found myself an unofficial intermediary between the Patriarch and the Holy Father. I came to know Athenagoras’ thought, his all-consuming longing for the unity of the Orthodox Church with ours. For years I became the ambassador of his tender, delicate love for the pope and the bearer of the pope’s replies to him. Athenagoras was a deeply charismatic person, more endowed with the gifts of the Spirit than anyone I have known outside of the Catholic Church. As such, he was also a prophet, who saw the future and suffered the present as a time of waiting. He used to say to me: “The day shall come... the sun shall rise high, the angels will

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. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from