CHRIST, THE "ALL" OF LOVE AND JOY

Claire Lubich

I am grateful to be able to witness, even though with just a few words, who Jesus represents for me, even though I will do it with some difficulty. Indeed, opening up one's heart to anyone, on a magazine, does not come spontaneously. But I have learnt that: «It is good to guard the secret of a king hidden, but glorious to reveal the works of God» (Tb 12,7).

I will thus make an effort to do it for the glory of God and in homage to the Third Christian Millennium which is nearing and which we are preparing this year precisely in the company of Jesus, as the Holy Father asked of us. For me, Jesus is, or I fervently desire that he may be, "all".

"All" because for me there is nothing outside of Him, in that everything is in Him. «All are yours! And you are Christ's and Christ is God's» (1 Cor 3, 22-23). For me, Jesus is also "Love". He was and is the manifestation, the personification, the incarnation of God which is Love. I discovered him such, because, thank heavens, in some way he stole my heart. Years ago I wrote these words which I could repeat today:

«I love you / not because I have learnt to say this to you, / not because my heart suggests this word to me, / not so much because faith makes me believe that you are love, / not even only because you died for me.

I love you / because you came into my life / more than the air in my lungs, / more than the blood in my veins. / You entered where no one could enter / when no one could help me / every time no one could console me.

Every day I spoke to you. / Every hour I looked at you / and in your face I read the answer, / in your words the explanation, / in your love the solution.

I love you / because for so many years you lived with me / and I lived of You. / I drank of your law / and I hadn't noticed.

I fed of it, became stronger / I got better, / but I was unaware / like a child who drink from his mother / and still doesn't know how to call her / by that sweet name.

Let me be grateful / -at least for a while- / in the time that I have left, / of this love that you poured over me, / and forced me to tell you: / I love you».

«I read... in your words the explanation».

Yes, the words of Jesus revealed me to myself with all that concerns me and to reveal Him to me, to making me penetrate in His mystery. All the words of Jesus fascinated me, I felt them as mine.

But two, in particular, marked my life and that of those who followed it in the movement of the Focolari which was then was born of it: «That all may be one» and «my God, my God, hast thou forsaken me?»

Gathered one day in a cellar, to take refuge from the dangers of war, having opened the bible by chance, we found ourselves in front of the solemn prayer of Jesus to the Father. «Holy Father - we started reading - keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one» (Jn 17,119) and we had the impression of penetrating that difficult verse for our preparation. But above all we noticed the certainty that we were born for that page of the Gospel. We felt it was the "magna carta" of the new Movement.

We were, thus, called to carry out the testament of Jesus, the unity. But how? Already at the beginning of this adventure of ours and mine, in a planned circumstance - I think - by God, we came to understand that Jesus had suffered the harshest pain, an infinite anguish, when on the cross, feeling abandoned by the Father, he had shouted «My God, my God, hast thou forsaken me?» (Mt 27,46).

We were deeply touched by this fact. And due to the young age, in the enthusiasm, but above all out of God's grace, we, first focolarines, decided to follow Him in that precise way, in his abandonment on the cross. From then we discovered in the various pains present in the world, but above all in those caused by the various disunities, separations, traumas, the face of Him Abandoned. From the intimate disunity of our soul with God, from that of others with God, of brothers between each other; to those which trouble our not always compact communities, to the divisions within the church, to all of Christianity, to the religious world, to the whole world.

Our commitment was that of working to resolve all these disunities... As far as the little unity of our soul with God is concerned, with various painful states of mind, we made an effort and we make an effort to go deep into out hearts to discover and love in them the abandoned Crucifix. And the majority of times in our meeting with Him, the pain goes away and joy returns.

And that is the joy of unity. A joy which I and the others have experienced and are experiencing abundantly, also in recomposing so many other disunities. Thus I can say, we can say, that Jesus, for us, is more than "all", more than "love", also the "joy", the joy of our life. A joy which, through the movement, is now fully sown in the world.

Today millions of people know it, but are not in peace until it is given to many and many more. Men always searched for happiness and are still searching for it, but often in the few and poor joys of life, if not in the consumerism which envelops them, even in drugs and alcohol which destroys them, in hedonism which disfigures them, in television, in doubtful company... And all this because, usually, they don't know that real happiness exists. And it is the one of Jesus, the one which He promised and for which He prayed: «That they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves» (Jn 17,13), he said. That Jesus may become "all", "love", "joy", of all!