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Mr.
Paul Lemarié, Imam David Shaheed, Mrs. Jo-Ellen Karstens Mr. PAUL LEMARIE’
The Focolare Movement1 As many of you know, Chiara Lubich began the Focolare Movement in Trent, Italy, in 1943. Its goal is to cooperate towards the realization of unity among Christians and to work for universal brotherhood in the whole human family.2 It is present in more than 180 countries and is made up of people of all ages, races and vocations. The majority of its members are Catholic, but it also includes Christians of more than 350 churches and ecclesial communities, as well as faithful of the great world religions and also persons who have no particular religious belief. The rapid spread of the movement is due to its spirituality of unity3 which emerged from its very beginning, also known as a "spirituality of communion", as Pope John Paul II recently called it in a Letter addressed to Bishops who are friends of the Focolare.4 In 1977, when Chiara Lubich received the Templeton Prize for Religion in London, she had the intuition that the spirit and the life of the movement were also made for the faithful of other religions. This marked a turning point for the whole movement. At present about 30,000 people of other religions participate in the life of the movement, of whom about 6,000 are Muslim. As much as they can, they share our spirituality and the goals of the movement. Over the years we have been privileged to share our spirit and collaborate with several large movements of other religions. They are the Rissho Kosei kai, a Japanese Buddhist movement with more than 6 million members, the American Society of Muslims, about which Imam David Shaheed will speak later, and more recently the Swadhyaya Movement, a Hindu movement based in India with more than 8 million members. From the very beginning, and now, too, after years of experience, we can say that the decisive element at the basis of this growth is love, the love that is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. It is a love that finds a spontaneous, immediate echo in other religions and cultures. This is because the Golden Rule is present in them. For Christians it is written: "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" (Lk 6:31). In the Muslim tradition, the Golden Rule is formulated as: "None of you is a believer until you desire for your brother what you desire for yourself".5 And so we say to one another: "We have to love and we want to love, you have to love and you want to love, and so we have to love one another, we have to treat each other as brothers and sisters, and together we can work for universal brotherhood". They are fascinated by this lifestyle and want to live it with us. At one of our meetings, an Iranian dentist, mother of a family, said: "I often ask myself how I can live an Ideal based on the Christian faith if I am a Muslim. The answer is evident. Chiara [Lubich] proposes to us a simple, concrete way of loving, which can be lived by any human being, no matter what their religion is, whether they are believers or not". And then she added: "The fact that my family has remained together is thanks to this movement that urges us to forgive always, to love always, to be the first to love without expecting anything in return. Believing in the infinite love of God for me, even when his plans are different from mine, I have discovered that I can live the present moment and start over again every day". Therefore, as Christians we realize that God wants us to be perfect in love, living every day what Chiara Lubich calls "the art of loving", which comes from the Gospel. Sometimes it costs us effort and fatigue, but it is always vital and fruitful. In fact, we are convinced, after these decades of dialogue, that what people of other religions expect of us is, above all, a concrete witness of love, which is drawn directly from the Gospel, and which everyone welcomes as the answer to the vocation of love inherent in every human being.6 What is this art of loving? Chiara Lubich explained it to a group of young people who wanted to know her experience in interreligious dialogue. "Above all, we have to love everyone without discrimination: Buddhists, Muslims, even atheists. Love everyone without distinction, whether they are black or white, men or women, young or old, Germans, Italians, Americans, South Americans. This is the first essential point. "Second: be the first to love without waiting to be loved. Try to do this during the day with everyone you meet — at home, in the family, with your husband or wife, with the children, in the office, at school, in Parliament; try to take the initiative in loving and see what happens. It brings about a Christian revolution! "Next, love is not a matter of words, just saying ‘I love you’ or ...[other words], but it’s a matter of actions, of serving others, which can be summed up in three words: ‘make yourself one’ with the other person, understand the other person. If that person is suffering, suffer with him or her; if they are rejoicing, rejoice with them; [...] make yourself one with the other person. This is what St Paul 7 indicated when he said he made himself ‘all things to all men’. It takes an effort on our part, but it brings immense fruits. ‘Make yourself one’, just three simple words which are the secret for a dialogue capable of generating unity. Making yourself one is not just a technique or an external attitude, and not even just a feeling of good will or openness or respect, nor just the absence of judgement. It is not limited to bringing a package to a poor person, etc. It includes all of this, of course, but it is something more than this. "This practice of making ourselves one requires a complete emptying of ourselves — to set aside our thoughts, our affections, our intentions, all our plans in order to understand the other person. Those who are experts in dialogue say that we have to enter into the other person, and see the world as a Jew sees it, or as a Buddhist sees it, or as a Muslim sees it. To make yourself one requires that we be poor in spirit, that we be poor in spirit in order to be rich in love. "It’s a real exercise, a spiritual gymnastic! Try it! It brings great happiness!".8 This simple formula, called the "art of loving," which we give witness to with our lives, has been taken up by many people, including Muslims. We exchange experiences on how we have lived this in daily life, with a continual conversion to love, and this is the basis for our dialogue and is what gives it value. On this basis, then, we share the points of our spirituality, those that can be lived in some way by Muslims: the discovery of God who is Love, our response to God which is to do his will, love of neighbour, mutual love, unity and Mary. With our closer Muslim friends we can communicate, with our experiences, the basis for our dialogue, which is rooted in the moment when Jesus was nailed to the cross and cried out: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?".9 In that moment Jesus had made himself completely empty, he had lost everything: his life, his mother, his disciples. He had lost everything, even the feeling of being united to God. And he did this in order to make himself one with us, to understand us, to save us. It is by loving him and following him in this supreme trial of his that we can become instruments of peace in the world, instruments of brotherhood and even of the unity he prayed for and for which he gave his life. When people live this way, accepting one another and taking the commitment to love one another without prejudice or barriers, we can experience a special presence of the divine that Pope John Paul II underlined when he was in India and met the leaders of various religions: "The fruit of dialogue is the union people and union of people with God.... By dialogue we let God be present in our midst; because as we open ourselves in dialogue to one another, we also open ourselves to God".10 Our Muslim friends who are in contact with our spirituality deepen their own faith and discover the truths in their tradition that we have in common. This creates a very deep understanding among us. We have realized that this style of dialogue is also a way of proclaiming our faith, because with love we offer our experience of Christian life and in so doing we communicate the truths of our faith. At the same time it is a sincere way of respecting the "seeds of the Word", the seeds of the Truth, which are abundantly present in all religions. It is "respectful proclamation", as the Pope recently defined it. Every month we Christians in the movement live one sentence of the Gospel, which we call the "Word of Life". For the last few years, an Iranian Muslim theologian has been writing a commentary on this "Word of Life" based on the Qur’an. Her commentary is then translated and distributed to Muslims who are in contact with the Focolare Movement and who then try to put it into practice. There would be many experiences to share. In living this way of life with us, many Muslims say that they have re-discovered their religion and practice it in a new way. Here are two testimonies: 1. "It is thanks to this movement that I am going ahead day after day in the journey of my faith as a Muslim. And thanks to this way of seeing and understanding how to love in a concrete way, I began to read the Qur’an with my heart and vision filled with love. I believe that if I had read the Qur’an before meeting the way of life of Chiara, I would have understood or interpreted it differently. [...] And now my religion has become ‘life’ and the commitment to live it in my daily activities helps me to be a better Muslim. In fact, it is not a mixture of religions that we experience, but rather these meetings reinforce in each one of us our own religion". 2. [I discovered] something that I was missing, which is that God is love. This means that God is close to me, perhaps that God is in me, in my heart [...]. Before this I would say my prayer because of a religious obligation and this really bothered me. I would tell myself that for a free man, this is a contradiction [...] And I also saw God as an implacable judge. All of this has profoundly changed since I began to live this spirit. Now I feel real pleasure in saying the prayer without thinking of the judgement of God, because prayer has become for me a natural expression of this relationship of love". You may ask: how do you come into contact with Muslims and where did this dialogue develop? Generally our contacts are with people at work, for example, or in the neighbourhood, or wherever daily life puts us into contact with others. As a movement we also have the opportunity to meet people of other religions at large meetings such as the one in Assisi, or through the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, or at the World Conference of Religions for Peace, where we have worked for the past twenty years, and of which Chiara Lubich is one of the honorary Presidents. This is how we met Imam W.D. Mohammed, leader of the American Society of Muslims. The first place that the dialogue with Muslims developed was in Algeria where we have had Focolare centers since 1966. Since 1985 we have an annual meeting of five days, called the "Mariapolis", which is especially for Muslims. Of the 120 participants, there are only about 15 Christians, most of whom are the Focolare members living there. Our dialogue has now developed in various other Muslim countries, and also in Europe and in the United States. The most recent development is in Pakistan where we are building a "mini-city"11 around a school for the children of a totally Muslim village. In collaboration with all our Muslim friends in Pakistan, we want to make it a place of peaceful co-existence and a witness of unity between Muslims and Christians. In the United States we have started "The Encounters in the Spirit of Universal Brotherhood" which the other two speakers will explain. Another point that I wanted to emphasize is that our entire movement is involved in interreligious dialogue, in all its branches, including youth, adults and families. For example, last year a large international manifestation was held by teenagers in Rome, including young people representing various world religions.12 We also consider together the problems facing family life today, in the New Families Movement,13 which is a branch within the Focolare. For the past three years, Muslims in Algeria have participated in a "school" for families with a couple from our centre in Rome who are experts in family life. For the past two years there have been contacts between the New Families Movement and other organizations that work with the families in Iran through the National Department of Education. Recently we were called to share our vision and our work in the field of family and education with groups of 800 and 300 people who are experts in this field: University Professors, Heads of educational agencies, experts in family counselling and directors of various associations. Future joint efforts are being planned. What we have in common and what we are trying to reach with them are family formation and child education founded on the [Gospel] values. Meetings that have been particularly beneficial are the international meetings for Muslim friends of the Focolare at our centre in Castel Gandolfo outside of Rome. Last November we held the 5th such meeting with more than 220 Muslims from 24 countries, spanning the globe from America to Asia, from Europe to Africa. The theme was a fundamental point of our spirituality: love of neighbour.14 In these meetings we share our experiences of how we have lived the art of loving in our families, at work or at school, since love is the central point of our spirituality. What characterizes these meetings is especially the presence of the divine as one student from Morocco said: "If someone were to ask me what I did in Rome, I would say that I met God". The theme of this latest congress, "love of neighbor," was developed by Chiara Lubich in her talk on our spirituality, and also by an Imam from Algeria, a Muslim professor from Jordan and a Muslim leader from Pakistan. It was an extraordinary encounter that made many people say: "Here we are no longer only friends, we are brothers and sisters". On the last day, many people spontaneously shared their impressions of the meeting. A Muslim from the United States: "It was as if I had done the pilgrimage to Mecca". An Imam from Algeria: "I see that Chiara is renewing the life of people today, she is renewing the spirit of the people. She leads people to truly love God and to love one another… The effort of the Focolare to reach as many places and people as possible, all over the earth, is not aimed at spreading the movement as such, but at bringing all of humanity to God. Now I direct a word to the Muslims here and say: we shouldn’t be afraid of this movement. The Focolare needs our support and our prayers". A professor from Jordan: "For me it has been a very powerful change in the way of relating between Christians and Muslims. The Second Vatican Council in the 60’s recognized Islam as one of the great Abramic religions — and that was a big transformation — and I think that today we are taking a big leap forward, in the sense that what was written then is being put into practice now. Finally, I would like to say that I feel the love of Mary who makes herself present and embraces all of us in this very difficult moment in the history of the world".
Imam DAVID SHAHEED
The vision for our unity with the Focolare was presented in 1975 when Imam W. Deen Mohammed became the leader of the largest community of Muslims in America. He inherited the leadership of this black-consciousness movement called the "Nation of Islam" (NOI), which was started by his father, Elijah Muhammad. For those who are not familiar with the ugly history of America and its experiment with the slave trade, race relations between blacks and whites have always tainted all aspects of American life — politics, education, industry, business and even religion. The NOI was born as a response to oppressive white supremacy and to a church that was viewed as a silent partner. When Imam W. Deen Mohammed became the leader in 1975, members of the NOI knew little about the religion of Islam, but they were vocally anti-Government, anti-White and anti-Christian. With only the universal truths found in the Holy Qur’an, the book of guidance for over one billion Muslims, Imam Mohammed guided this community of counter-culture Black militants into the world community of Muslims. Now there are nearly 1.5 million American Muslims who consider themselves members of the American Society of Muslims (ASM), which is led by Imam Mohammed. The ASM has mosques and schools in nearly every major city of the United States, including Bermuda; it publishes an international weekly newspaper, The Muslim Journal; its members include professional sports celebrities, business leaders, educators and elected and appointed officials in national, State and local government. Most of all, Imam Mohammed and his community, ASM, has earned the respect of U.S. presidents, governors, numerous city executives, business leaders and religious leaders around the world.
Mrs. JO-ELLEN KARSTENS
Ours is an experience of life. Everything developed according to what we feel is a plan of God and even now we are amazed at how God has led us in this relationship. In 1995 we had the honour and privilege of meeting Imam W.D. Mohammed. He came to our Focolare Center in Chicago to learn something about our way of life. We told him the simple story of how it began during World War II when Chiara Lubich and her companions realized that all things pass away in this life. We told him of their decision to put God in the first place of their lives, doing his will moment by moment, living out the sentences of the Gospel, particularly those that speak of love — love your neighbor as yourself, love one another, love your enemy. At this point Imam Mohammed who had been listening intently, told us: "I want my people to know about this!" When we offered him a book about the life of Chiara Lubich, he told us: "I will read this whole book before going to sleep tonight". Imam Mohammed is an exceptional person; we realized that from that first meeting. He has an acute understanding of the need for spirituality, and he is willing to go anywhere, and cross over any barrier, to find authentic ways to live for God and to draw closer to God. And it was because of his leadership that hundreds of African American Muslims came into contact with members of the Focolare Movement over the past seven years. Imam Mohammed has travelled to Rome three times to meet Chiara Lubich and each time he brought with him a delegation of his leadership, Imams and educators, because as he said: "We need to learn from the Focolare how to love one another". Imam Mohammed also invited Chiara to come to New York, where in May 1997, she was the first white Catholic woman to speak in the famous Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem, to an audience of 3000 African American Muslims. Chiara spoke of her Christian experience and of the goal of the Focolare. Several times she was interrupted with cheers and shouts of "God is great!" in Arabic. The enthusiasm was explosive. That day Imam Mohammed and Chiara Lubich promised one another to work for universal brotherhood together. They each proposed to their followers to continue this relationship and spread it to others, by trying to live together the spirituality of unity, which is based on love of neighbour and mutual love. This daily effort to love others is the basis of the very strong bond between us. The unity that was generated that day in Harlem reverberated all over the United States, so that Muslims in many cities invited Focolare people into their mosques, into their homes and, indeed, into their hearts. We spoke in more than forty mosques about the art of loving, suggesting that we live it together, and this message was welcomed with joy and commitment. All kinds of ways were invented to get together and to share with one another. We had dinners together, attended each other’s banquets, and met together in mosques or church halls. One community runs a Muslim School, entitled Clara Mohammed School after the mother of Imam Mohammed who was a tireless teacher of Islam for years. At their first annual award dinner, they presented the "Clara Mohammed Award" to Chiara Lubich for her way of teaching them how to "love one another". In another city, which is about a ten-hour drive from Chicago, the Imam reserves one of the bedrooms in his house for myself and other Focolare members who travel there several times a year. His six young children treat us as part of their family and we really do feel like one family. On a recent trip there, I was extremely edified to come down early Sunday morning to find the four oldest children studying the Qur’an in the living- room. And at the early morning prayer all the children, even the four-year old, responded to the call to prayer, as they did during the day at the appointed times. Their example increased my desire to live my prayer life well – in fact, we realize how much this relationship tends to make the Christians better Christians and the Muslims better Muslims. We feel that the reason the bond between us is so strong is that it is based on God. Each one of us is trying to love our neighbour as ourselves, as we are taught both in Christianity and Islam, and when we love one another, we truly feel the presence of God among us.
Imam DAVID SHAHEED
As I talk about the special unity we have with the members of the Focolare Movement, I am often asked, "Why did Muslims respond to the Focolare as they did?". Most of us in the Nation of Islam (NOI) and the American Society of Muslims (ASM) came out of the Christian church. We were familiar with the Bible, the teachings of Jesus and we knew about the Golden Rule. But we did not see it put into practice. Instead we were greeted with lynchings when we tried to vote, fire hoses and police dogs when we demonstrated for integration. So, many of us left the rhetoric of religion for the promise of freedom, justice and equality in Islam. Imam Mohammed removed the antagonism toward the church and showed the way to interfaith dialogue. But that concept changed when we met Chiara Lubich and her community. In Chiara and the Focolare we saw a demonstration of how Jesus would have treated people when he walked the earth and how he could reach the hearts and souls of the human person with his understanding of religion and people of faith. Chiara Lubich has so touched the hearts of the ASM members, that she has become a leader for us as well. Imam Mohammed’s son-in-law, Imam Earl Abdul Malik Mohammed and his wife, Bakerah, have named their recent daughter after Chiara. Imam Omar Shaheed, one of the leaders of the ASM who met her in Rome said, "It is an encouragement of what we can achieve in the world if we truly put into practice what we claim as people of faith". Another sister said, "I feel eternally committed to work shoulder to shoulder with my Focolare brothers and sisters to unite our world with the thread of God’s love".
Mrs. JO-ELLEN KARSTENS
In November 2000, Imam Mohammed once again invited Chiara Lubich to speak to 6,000 members of his association together with Focolare members in the Washington, D.C. Conference Center. This event was televised worldwide via satellite and was given wide coverage in the press. It was a powerful witness of universal brotherhood, where the barriers of race and religion were overcome. Whole families participated. Talks were given not only by Muslims and Catholics, but also by a Buddhist, a Rabbi and a Protestant minister, with the goal of showing how all sincere people want to do God’s will in their own life, according to their own understanding and faith tradition. The audience included professors and well-educated people, but also very ordinary people who perhaps were meeting a Muslim for the first time in their life, or someone who was not of their race, and this gave great joy to the event. All 6,000 people had lunch together and it was a unique sight to see blacks and whites and Asians at the same table, sharing their life, enjoying each other’s company, getting to know one another’s background. After this event, Chiara Lubich and Imam Mohammed met to discuss how to continue and deepen this friendship that was developing so quickly. This gave rise to the "Encounters in the Spirit of Universal Brotherhood", which are meetings between members of the American Society of Muslims and the Focolare Movement who come together to share one point of the spirituality of unity. The themes have included the choice of God who is love, the will of God, love of neighbour, mutual love, the "Golden Rule," peace and brotherhood. A whole day is dedicated to this event and the programme includes talks given by a Muslim and by a Catholic on how one common point is understood in Islam and Christianity, with quotes from the Bible and the Qur’an to underline the similarities. More importantly, Muslims and Catholics share how they have actually put this point into practice in everyday situations. It has been an immense mutual enrichment for all of us to learn how much we have in common. The day also includes eating lunch together, and interludes of music, singing, poetry or other artistic expressions from each community. In the past two years, meetings of this kind have been held in New York, Dallas, San Antonio, Los Angeles, San Diego, Indianapolis, Columbus, Baltimore and Chicago. Sometimes it is in a Catholic venue and sometimes at a Muslim location. Several hundred people attend each time and it is hard to describe the feeling of being a family we experience at these events. One young Muslim, after about an hour, said to his mother: "Mom, have we died and gone to heaven? Because this is just like being in heaven". In fact, a comment that is often heard is: "This is what the world could be like if everyone would love one another. We would have heaven on earth". In fact, we experience being children of one Father in heaven. The participants speak of this experience to their families and friends, who are also invited to future events, and so the circle continues to grow. The understanding between the two religions grows as well. Prejudices collapse. Stereotype images of Muslims and also of Catholics are wiped out when people actually get to know one another and see how deep and sincere is the faith in God of the other person. On all levels, this has been an extremely important experience. What Pope John Paul II wrote in Ecclesia in Asia certainly has become a reality among us: "Interreligious relations are best developed in a context of openness to other believers, a willingness to listen, and the desire to respect and understand others in their differences. For all this, love of others in indispensable. This should result in collaboration, harmony and mutual enrichment".
Imam DAVID SHAHEED
The work I do is a special kind of challenge. I get a chance to show this love for many people on a daily basis by being a judge in a court. And I presently preside over a drug court. A typical day for me, just in the morning alone, may involve 35, 40 maybe 50 different defendants who have their cases come before the court: i.e. pretrial conferences, bond reviews, trials, sentencing and other kinds of court business. And in each one of those situations, I find myself seeing each one of these defendants as children of God, who can be redeemed. And the challenge is, not to see them as a case number, 115681, or just a defendant, but to try and relate to each of them as a human being, a child of God. What I’ve learned from Chiara and the Focolare is that it’s not just enough for us to have that kind of special feeling when we get together for lunch and other opportunities for dialogue with our friends. I have to take that back to other areas. I have to take that back to the work that I do. The benefits of this approach came to me several months ago, when I was at a church campaigning. One aspect of campaigning can take place in churches, trying to get the message out of, who I am and why I deserve their vote. And on occasion, there are ministers that allow us to say a few words. We can say, "I’m running for judge". I was given that opportunity, but since it was Sunday, it just didn’t feel right to go up to a pulpit and say something like that. Instead I asked the congregation to pray for those who are caught up in the cycle of dependency … those that I see in the drug court. I asked them to pray for a day when they may have the will and the presence of mind and the grace of God, so that rather than being in jail because of drug abuse, they would be in a church, among a congregation. After concluding my comments, I was going to my seat in the second row. Before I could reach my seat, a young man who was in the front row grabbed hold of me before I could sit down. He said, "I was in front of you not too long ago, and I’m doing ‘OK’ now". And before I left the church, there were at least three other people who said they had been in front of me in court, and thanked me for what I had done in their case. The truth is, I didn’t remember the people, and I have no recollection of any special thing that I had done. The only conduct that I can point to is the idea of loving each person in the present moment. And the final thing that I would say is, after losing an election for judge in 2000, I was successful in 2002. I now preside over a criminal court and a drug treatment diversion court. I would have never chosen this responsibility if I had won in 2000 but I can see clearly an opportunity to help improve peoples’ lives with this special challenge. Almost every week I come into contact with someone who thanks me for giving them or a family member a second chance or showing some special compassion in their case. I have no recollection of the second chance that I supposedly gave them. But I’m convinced that this whole relationship with the Focolare has really helped me to live and love in the present moment. I have also been seeking out ministers and clergy that I have been involved with over the years to help connect some defendants in court with a church or spiritual home. If they complete their obligations to the courts and also become connected with God in the process, society is better served and their lives may be changed forever. Some of these ministers are amazed that I would direct a defendant to a Christian church, but then I tell them what I have learned from Chiara Lubich and the Focolare, that it is important that each one finds his/her spiritual home according to his/her own faith background. The love of neighbour that I have seen demonstrated by the Focolare Movement is a part of all the scriptures. But once you see it demonstrated, once you are involved in it, and are the recipient of it, it makes it very easy to take it and apply it to other aspects of your life, and we thank God for that experience.
Mrs. JO-ELLEN KARSTENS
My own personal experience of this relationship has been to marvel at the work of God, to see a miracle happening before my eyes. I am continually amazed at the immediate understanding we find with one another. It seems that we have known one another forever, and as soon as we meet, we are able to share on a spiritual level that is hard to find in other places. We have the same desire to live our lives totally for God, to do his will in our daily lives. We have the same longing for peace in our cities and in the world, and the same urgency to work for unity among all. We owe this to the insight of Imam W. D. Mohammed and Chiara Lubich who set us off on this path. These two very special people have encouraged all of their followers to simply meet one another in a spirit of brotherly love, to live together all those truths of our religions that we can share together, and then to allow God to act. And this is what happens. Living the "art of loving" has had another important consequence, which is very powerful for us in the United States. As a person who grew up in Chicago and experienced the racial strife of the 1950’s and 60’s, I have seen a barrier collapse that many of us thought could never be overcome. And here it has not only been overcome, but we are like a family. This is because when we begin to love others, we cannot stop at the fact that the person is of another race. We have to see each person as our brother or sister, and not look at them as Arab or African, as Caucasian or Asian, as black or white. And so the racial barrier is overcome. In my life, I have had a number of African American friends, especially at work. We would share a lot with each other, including joys and sufferings and difficulties. However, I always felt that there was a fine line that separated us, a subtle barrier that I could not go beyond. There was always something that kept us apart, and this made me suffer. However, with the followers of Imam Mohammed, I have never felt that barrier. We truly meet as brothers and sisters, as friends, with whom I can share everything, and this gives me great joy. We no longer notice the colour of our skin, we are truly one. Recently I visited the offices of The Muslim Journal in Chicago in order to purchase some extra copies of their newspaper. There was a young woman, an African American, at the front desk who had never been there before. As I walked in I could see the startled look on her face, and when she was introduced to me, she said: "For a minute I thought you were my teacher — you look just like her! Her name is Miss Moore". Since Moore is an Irish name, I said: "It must be my Irish blood". But she replied, "Oh no, she is black, but you look just like her!". This gave me great joy because I realized that this young woman no longer saw the colour of my skin, she saw me as a human person. This is our great hope for all of our young people, for all the youth of our country and of the world — that they will no longer see the differences, but the similarities, that they will build on all of those things that unite us, and in this way we will be working together for a more united world.
Notes 1 The official website of the Focolare Movement in five languages is: www.focolare.org 2 According to the Last Prayer of Jesus: "Father, may they all be one" (John 17, 21). 3 For more on the spirituality see La Dottrina Spirituale by Chiara Lubich, Mondatori and www.cittanuova.it 4 Letter of John Paul II to the participants in the 25th Spiritual Conference of Bishops Friends of the Focolare Movement, 14 February, 2001. 5 An-Nawawi, Quaranta Hadith, CESI, Translation Mohammed Ali Sabri, Hadith 13, referred by al-Bukhari e Muslim, p. 64. 6 Cf. Familiari Consortio II, 11. 7 Cf. 1 Cor 9, 22. 8 Chiara Lubich, My experience in interreligious dialogue, Aachen, Germany, 11/13/1998, spoken text. 9 Mark 15, 34. 10 John Paul II, address to 2,000 non-Christian Leaders and the representatives of various religions of India, 5 February, 1986, in "Il dialogo interreligioso del Magistero Pontificio", Libreria Vaticana, 1994, p. 385. 11 One of the concrete initiatives of the Focolare Movement are small cities of witness that want to show what the world would be like if everyone lived a life of unity and universal brotherhood. 12 The Supercongress 2002, organized by the branch of the Focolare Movement for children, called "The Young for Unity". http://www.focolare.org/rpu/index.html 13 http://www.focolare.org/en/ New Families. 14 One of the twelve points of the spirituality of the Focolare.
Ref.: Text given for the SEDOS Open Seminar of May 2003.
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