In 1947, Chiara Lubich wrote: “A neighbour passes by us in each moment! It’s Jesus. Measure your love for God by the love that you bring to that neighbour. Remain “in them,” in their sufferings, their needs, in their fears, concerns and doubts, in their occasional joys”(2).
The renewed discovery of God who is love, which arouses a response in adhering to His will, by living the Word, led Chiara Lubich, from the very dawn of her experience in Trent, to focus on the new commandment of the Gospel, recalling that, “It is important to have only one idea about who our neighbour is: every person that passes by us in the present moment of our life” (3).

The first inspirations from the 1940s, in which the typical traits of Chiara Lubich’s spirituality were outlined, continued, over the years, to suggest concrete outcomes: “To love everyone with that merciful love which was characteristic of the early days of the Movement, when we decided to see every morning, throughout the day, each neighbour we met, in the family, at school, at work, etc., everywhere, seeing them as new, brand new, not remembering at all their faults, their flaws, but covering everything with love”(4).

It is therefore possible to live this aspect of spirituality, not so much with a pietistic attitude, nor with feelings alone, but with concrete actions: “If we look to Jesus, we can see that he loved his neighbours by relieving their hunger, curing them, forgiving them, etc.” (5). Love became a real art. How can such an “art” be put into practice? What kind of love is it? “It is a love that makes us consider the other person as ourselves, that makes us see our very own selves in the other person. In the words of Gandhi: “You and I are but one. I cannot injure you without harming myself.”(Quoted in W. Muhs, Words of the Heart, Milan 1996, p82) (6)
Leaving no one out: “We do not choose between who is nice or unpleasant, old or young, someone from our own nation or a foreigner, black, white or yellow, European or American, African or Asian, Christian or Jew, Muslim or Hindu.…” (7).
No one can be excluded as an object of our love and no one is excluded as a subject. This opens up a perspective that Chiara shared in a concise and incisive way with an international group of young people gathered in Rome in May 2002: “If you, a Muslim, love; and you, a Christian, love; and you, a Jew, love; and you, a Hindu, love, you will certainly reach the point of loving one another. If we all do this, universal fraternity will spread”(8).