Riccardi

Castel Gandolfo 18th June 1988 Chiara Lubich's answer to a child Chiara, sometimes when I fight with my brothers, after one or two days, I can't get along with them, and it is hard for me to forgive them. What do you think I should do, Chiara, so that I can get along with them? I know that I have to love them, but I'm not able to.... Chiara: I understand! Sometimes he fights with his brothers. He would like to stop doing this because he knows he should love, but he isn't able to, and so he asks, "What can I do?" Well, this is what I have tried to do: when I feel a little angry, a little bit of anger (and this is the "old self" who surfaces; it is the "old self" who wants to win) I have tried to tell myself, "Stop it!" I say this to the "old self" in me   and I start loving. We must always do this. The "old self" wants to take

Rieti, June 4, 1996 The experience of the Focolare Movement in interreligious dialogue. Taken from Chiara Lubich’s talk on the occasion of the “Civilization of Love” Prize. Your Excellencies, Mr. Mayor, Religious and Civil Authorities, Ladies, Gentlemen, friends, Thank you, first of all, for the award you have given me. I was especially pleased because it is called the “Civilization of Love” Prize. These words immediately strike a note of harmony between the international Forum and the Focolare Movement which I represent here, along with others - as we heard - and which is simply one of the instruments in the Church which spread the love of Christ everywhere.  Here dialogue is part of life and especially interreligious dialogue. Is it an impossible undertaking? No, on the contrary, it is an obligatory and timely endeavor. Today, in fact, the world and humankind is going towards a lofty and necessary objective: bringing together all people into one family, achieving universal brotherhood. Despite the tensions of the modern world (those between North and

Lublin (Poland), June 19, 1996 Extract from the address given by Chiara Lubich at the conferral of the honorary doctorate in Social Sciences by the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland. The Focolare Movement. It is not easy to describe it in a few minutes. However, we can clearly see the purpose for which we believe God brought it about. It came to life within the Church in the 1940s. In those days an ideology that did not acknowledge God was spreading throughout the world. It wanted to banish God from society. Hatred had acquired an important role in the fulfillment of a society which nonetheless wanted to present itself as progressive. Unity, the unity of peoples without God, was the utopia presented as credible, as one for which it was worth spending most of one’s energy. In was within this context that the Focolare Movement began. This is a Movement whose main objectives and goals are these: God chosen in fact as an Ideal; love chosen as a lifestyle; unity which