More than 100 people representing several faith traditions gathered April 21 on the University of Southern California campus for a book launching of the collected writings of Chiara Lubich, foundress of the Focolare ecclesial movement.
Rome-based book editor, Dr. Michel Vandeleene, on the tail end of a U.S. speaking tour which began at Fordham University, said the English edition of "Essential Writings: Spirituality, Dialogue, Culture" provides a complete bibliography of Chiara's writings as well as a chronology of her life and her recent thoughts on contemporary societies, interreligious dialogue and culture.
Lubich, now 87, founded Focolare at age 23 in Trent, Italy, during the carnage of World War II. In response to the destruction around them, Lubich and her companions dedicated their lives to God and embraced Jesus' command to "Love one another as I have loved you."
Lubich's writings detail how the members' giving and receiving of Christ's love led them to experience the joy which Jesus promised to those who live in unity. The Focolare Movement, numbering 2.2 million members in over 180 countries, is based on fostering this charism of unity.
Focolare, which means "hearth" in Italian, seeks to promote unity in four different areas: within the church, among Christians of various denominations, with members of world faiths and with people who have no religious affiliation.
"Jesus forsaken is the secret of Chiara Lubich's charism, the key that makes the restoration of unity possible," said Vandeleene. "Focolare, [also called] the work of Mary, is nothing other than a movement of love and communion brought into being and continually nourished by the discovery of the immense love of God revealed in Jesus forsaken."
The image of Jesus forsaken is not only the key to unity and communion, but "it's also key to our sense of mission in the church today in our secular world," said Dr. Michael Downey, St. John Seminary theology professor and one of four panelists who spoke following Vandeleene's presentation.
"God," said Downey, "is the God of self-emptying love, the God whose very life is the love that pours itself out in Divine self-abandon --- unto death and into hell, abandoned and forsaken --- God is present even and especially amidst our failure, our weakness, our own sense of abandonment.
"How far do we follow? To the ends, to the edges, to the borders, to the limits of a church that is now being called to willingly consent to the self-emptying of God and the self-emptying of the church."
Panelist Imam Ronald El-Amin, resident Imam at the Islamic Center in Moreno Valley, characterized the interfaith gathering as a "miraculous event" since personal religious views of those present, including Christians, Muslims, Jews and Baha'is, were "not strong enough to preclude us from coming together.
"In reading [Lubich's] writings, it's the ideal that makes it possible for us to come together and create this bond. That ideal is the ideal, as she explained, of God, obedience to God and accepting the will and the plan of God as it has been mandated by him and given to certain individuals who, in turn, are exemplary models of that will and plan of God that serve as a collective direction and purpose for all of us."
El-Amin, who has heard Lubich speak, said it wasn't until recently "that I began reading her book that I finally see this universal plan and spirit and will of almighty God. I think it is something that the whole world needs to know about. Every leader, every person in the United States should have a copy of that book."
"Miss Lubich was a visionary woman," said Baha'i panelist Soodi Eshraghi, "foreseeing the necessity of building a universal brotherhood to bring healing to the suffering body of the human family through unity and love." |