Bishop David's address at the Mariapolis Centre of Cadine
24 January 2009 Maria Emmaus Voce
Dear Friends It is very moving for me and a great privilege to be among you as an Anglican bishop for this celebration when we dedicate the Mariapolis Centre of Cadine to Chiara Lubich. It is a sign of the great affection and esteem for Chiara among Anglicans that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams, has asked me to convey his personal greetings to all of you at this time. Chiara, of course, was a great friend of Anglicans and a great friend of our Archbishops. She knew every Archbishop of Canterbury personally from Michael Ramsey onward. Indeed, Archbishop Rowan has commented that perhaps Chiara knew the Church of England better than he did! When he heard of her death last March, the Archbishop wrote, “Chiara Lubich was one of the great figures of the modern Church. She set a new tone and a new agenda for the community life of many Christians. [She is] one of the great lights of the present Christian generation”. Chiara has left a unique and rich spiritual legacy to the whole Church. It is of course a legacy which lives on in the Focolare Movement she founded, but it is an ecumenical legacy, an ecumenical spirit that is a gift to all Christians. It was so well described by Pope John Paul II as that “spirituality of communion”, centred on the Gospels. It is an ecumenism, not of the head and intellect primarily, but an ecumenism of the heart, and the strength of this legacy is that it is a unique gift directed towards the laity. This spirituality of unity and communion, which is a spirituality of radical Gospel love, has become a discipline which has been embraced by Christians from every tradition. Millions of believers have been helped in their Christian pilgrimage by Chiara’s spiritual insight into the mystery of Jesus Abandoned. The one who is God’s Son, feeling he has lost all, even the sense of unity with the Father, cries from the cross, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We have learned from her how that moment of Christ’s utter nothingness and abandonment is the key to entering truly into the hearts of others and the hearts of all. Being nothing means we can open ourselves to others, completely, like our brother Christ Jesus in his own self-emptying, his abandonment, “who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness”. (Philippians 2.6-7). It is no merely pious spirituality; it is a spirituality that does not offer escape from the hurt and pain of the world, but which moves the Christian to meet, head on, the suffering and disfigurement of our world with the approach of Jesus, who became one with all who are completely forsaken. It is significant that Chiara has requested that the president of this lay movement always be a woman. Many may be surprised by this, but we know that this desire arose from Chiara’s deep love of Mary, who for her is the disciple who, more than any other follower of our Lord, has so completely opened her life to Christ. Mary shows the Christian what emptying our own selves in response to God can mean. Mary is the one who shows us how wonderful it can be if we make room for Christ to be born within us. And in the moment of utter desolation of her Son, Mary stands by the cross, showing the followers of Jesus how we enter into his abandonment and become one with his mission. But even beyond those of us who share the same baptism, the same Gospel, the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit, Chiara’s spiritual insights have opened up the way to dialogue, understanding and love with people of other religions. We know that when we empty ourselves, as Christ on the cross was abandoned, the same love of Christ can enter our hearts and build community and unity with all. As Archbishop Rowan has noted in Chiara’s memorable and definitive phrase, “we need to know how to lose God within us for God in our brothers and sisters”. Chiara’s spiritual insights have given strength to so many of the faithful in their daily life in Christ. But alongside this is another remarkable gift: Although a layperson, Chiara has given the gift of friendship and encouragement to the bishop friends of the Focolare Movement, and provided sustenance for our spiritual lives as bishops and pastors. For me when pastoral crises come before me, and even at times feel overwhelming, I remember and draw comfort from the words of Chiara, “Jesus forsaken is the God of our times”. Archbishop Rowan has written of Chiara’s theology, “that it offers the hope of transformation in even the most apparently unfree and dark corners of our deeply shadowed world”. He recognises in Chiara’s teaching “the simple and devastating truth” that “God will fully act and live in our world when and only when we ask God to be himself in us – not for benefits and comforts and securities of any sort but for himself”. +David Hamid |
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