New Family
Dear Fr. Carrón: I am a Russian Orthodox single mother. I decided to live alone with my three-and-a-half-month-old daughter rather than continue staying with her father, who often beat me. Life seemed black for me, but the social services at the hospital brought me to a refuge house, and from that moment, at the age of 33, I have had the gift of a family “of the heart”–my Saint Anne’s House, a creation of Communion and Liberation. Over the course of three years, with great patience and love, they have dragged me out of the darkness, helping me to get my documents in order, staying close by when my daughter would get sick, helping me look for work, bringing me meals in bed when my strength abandoned me. I’ll always remember when I wondered for the first time, “Why? Why am I, a college graduate, here in the midst of these people?” Then I understood: Our Lady! She’s the one who wants to speak to me, who’s with us, who loves us, and who’ll never leave us. Step by step, I began to live my own autonomous life again, getting an apartment, a job, and a car. Even here, my friends of the community never left me. They organized things so they could get my girl from nursery school and play with her until I returned from work. But I always carried with me an aching pain, that of missing my other child, who was waiting for me in the Ukraine. My battle continued. Very soon, he’ll be arriving at our home, too. I am increasingly struck by the miracle of the presence of Our Lady in my life and that of my children. I want to thank the Saint Anne’s House members, Gisella, Alberto and Lorenza, Patrizia, Loredana, Giorgia, Manuela, Luciana, Lorenza, Paola, and Samuela, and my CL friends: Rita, Erica and Marco, Cristina and Davide, Luisa, Francesco, and dearest Grandma Cesarina and Grandpa Enzo for the gift of this miracle.
Marina and my children Roman and Elisabetta

Erasmus Project
[European Union
exchange student
program]
Dear CL friends: While I was in Milan from March to August on a scholarship, I had the opportunity to live in the place of origin of the Movement. From the beginning, I lived with the CL members. In their midst, I didn’t feel like a guest, but as if I were at home. They involved me in everything–studies, programs, School of Community, and vacations. As an Erasmus student, I had a wonderful experience, but the Movement has given me even more: a true value, which has rooted in my heart and grown slowly but surely, and now can never be broken off. I was very struck by the CL students’ way of life during these months, and all that I have learned has enriched my own life. Now that I’ve returned home, I try to live differently from the way I lived before this period in Italy. In small things I have been able to change, and I keep in touch with the small presence of the Movement in my country–I try to go to Budapest or Vienna to be with them. What an incredible and stupendous thing, that I can always count on my CL friends in different countries!
Agnes, Hungary

For Chiara Lubich
Having learned that Chiara Lubich had been hospitalized in Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on November 2nd, Fr. Julián Carrón sent a message to Eli Folonari, the closest collaborator of the President and Founder of the Focolare Movement.
Dearest Eli: Together with all of the friends of Communion and Liberation, I pray that Our Lady will be for Chiara that source of hope that gladdens the sacrifice of identifying with and becoming one with Christ, our peace. At this time, may the begging for His sweet presence as Savior be predominate in us, over every other sentiment.
Fr. Julián Carrón

Dearest friends: I am grateful to the Movement and to Fr. Carrón for the note making known our closeness to the Focolare Movement at this moment of apprehension for Chiara’s health. I remember the embrace of my Focolare friends when Fr. Giussani was living his final days of earthly life. I’m speaking of the community of Montet, Switzerland, who, during that hard time for us in CL, at Chiara’s clear request, prayed daily for Fr. Giussani’s health. When I went there a few years ago, accompanying some young people from our parish, I was very struck by their greatness in the faith and the esteem they expressed for our Movement; they told me how Chiara had always encouraged them to pray for Fr. Giussani and his work. This experience gave me an opportunity to deepen even more my sense of belonging. When you are with people who are in love with the Presence of the Lord, it always happens this way. You love the Presence even more, precisely in the form in which He presents Himself to us. Thank you. A fraternal embrace.
Marida

The Mystery Does Not Leave Us Alone
I left the exhibit on the film, Sophie Scholl – The Final Days, with clarity about what I’ve begun experiencing during these weeks: what has happened in my life has brought tremendous pain, but not a desperate one, not one that separates me from Christ. It is becoming the form with which I love Him. My days pass by with a deep wound inside them, the wound of a loss that continually reveals what is dearest to me and moves me to pray for it. This is what I have seen happen in the life of my Fraternity friends, who have reorganized their family lives in order to meet my own family’s disparate needs. Each person’s way of looking at his or her daily life has changed. It is moving to see the thousands of kind acts of consideration, the discrete attention to every particular in their attempts to ease our difficulties, but what most sustains me is the thing that motivates these gestures and strengthens hope, that testifies to me of the certainty of the faith. I reflect on what a friend wrote me–she, too, marked by an experience of pain–the day after Graziano’s death: “Once again, the Mystery leaves us wordless, but not all alone!” The affection that I feel surrounding me comforts me and makes me glad and grateful to belong to the companionship of His friends. Please ask once again for me, my children, and our friends the gift of His presence and the simplicity of heart to recognize Him and abandon ourselves to Him.
Giovanna,
Florence, Italy

Being Christians
Dearest Fr. Julián: I’ve started once again to read the notes from the Opening Day. The afternoon of the Opening Day, I said to myself, “Something extraordinary has been said here, but I just can’t manage to decipher it.” Then, re-reading my notes, “by grace” I understood! It was about the desire to say “you” to Christ, not using my measure, but reason, throwing itself wide open to the real in all its particulars. A few days later, I had an encounter with a “needy” family. Maddalena, after having told me about herself and her situation, said, “After my sickness, none of our friends have shown concern for us; just about all of them have run away.” She stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Why are you helping me?” I was dumbfounded, and after a moment answered, “Because the Church teaches us to! Because I’m Christian!” I’ve thought a lot about this answer, and thanked the Lord, because through that circumstance I said “you” to Christ because I said it to her, and the gesture I was doing no longer used my measure! Maddalena died fifteen days after our visit. She has left me this inheritance: looking at everything, from the people who are closest to me to those who are not so close, from the simplest of our daily toils to the most challenging, always going ever deeper to the heart of my activity and being, in order to say with ever greater love and reason: “You, Christ, are the meaning of everything.”
Rita, Milan, Italy

Surprising Response
Dear friends: At times, in our fascinating profession of educators, we have the miracle of a surprising response from one of our pupils. When one of my third-year middle school students turned in these poems, I didn’t give them much attention, but after having read them, I gave them to my colleagues as well, to the great amazement of all. These are the circumstances in which we adults become disciples and our kids the teachers. Luisa, the author, is an adolescent like many in our school who is going through all the evolving changes of this mysterious “restless age.”
Giovanni,
Busto Arsizio, Italy
Stars
Ballerinas, little incandescent babes,
laugh together in the sky as the evening falls,
but how many secrets they bear in their embrace, all silver…
and only now do I realize how much
I would simply like to greet them.

Then a variegated sense
of sweet awe would surprise me
and I would understand what it means to be eternal.
But from now on, I swear, I’ll look at the black
infinity of the sky in another way,
and I’ll be more attentive… listening…

… every night to the light singing of the stars…
the most ancient lullabye of the universe.

Mountains
So arrogant!
What’s your problem?
… like this in an unbearable
silence.
There you are, immobile
dead, reminding us you’re
only
a mass of colored boulders.
But how much there is to learn
from you, used as you have always been
to contemplating the world.

And yet now, we’re the ones contemplating you
for the simple fact
of your grandeur.
Yet you’re alive
enormous sculptures
with the signature of a unique
great artist
who signed the universe
and your wisdom, so enviable…
and your small faults, and so complete the work… the mountain.

New Humanity
Dear Julián: I ask to be admitted to the Fraternity. Out of gratitude, I want to put my life at the disposal of the Communion and Liberation Movement, for the construction of a new humanity in this world, which I have encountered here. At the same time, I turn to you, asking you for further help for my life. I desire to be able to grow in the great mystery of Christ within the Fraternity, in order to be a witness to His saving presence.
Maximilian, Austria

A New Club
We wanted to invite new kids to GS, but we needed a new approach. In our schools, clubs are very popular; they can be founded by students with any kind of interest. We wanted to create a club which could touch on any topic, from poetry to art, science, music… to everything related to beauty! Looking for a name that was interesting, attractive, and, at the same time, “open,” we chose “Radius,” after a group that Father Giussani used to lead. The day after, we (the four girls from our school, St. Saviour) went to our principal with a sketched flyer to present our idea to her. At the beginning, she read without paying any attention, but then she looked surprised and said, “Yes, it sounds really interesting!”
But we still needed a moderator. When we asked Mr. Kozak, he thought a bit, looking maybe a little annoyed that he was being asked to spend time on our club, but he answered, “Interesting… tentatively, it’s okay, but I am available only on Monday.” Monday was the perfect day for us too! Providential! To attract the interest of our school friends, we prepared a Power Point presentation and short speech about topics like poetry, music, nature, and art–we wanted to strike them with a beautiful proposal, something they would want to participate in. The following Monday, six girls and three teachers came. After our presentation, we had an interesting discussion, because the girls didn’t understand why we were so concerned about their happiness and they wanted to know what we meant by saying that everything beautiful is related to our hearts. Our response was, “Come and see,” as we invited all of them to our second meeting about cosmology. The second meeting was definitely a big surprise: twenty girls showed up, plus five members of the faculty. It was so clearly a miracle! It was really hard to organize a third meeting at the school because, after the first burst of enthusiasm, we were forgetting the reason why we decided to start this club, allowing it to become another duty. But, provoked by our GS responsibles, we started looking for something that really fired us, because it is not only what you propose that captures the attention of the girls, but how much it concerns you and why you do it. Tomorrow, at our third meeting, we’ll watch The Truman Show together, a really clear example of the urgency of our needs.
Mariachiara, New York

From Certainty
to Simplicity
Dear Fr Carrón:
A couple of weeks ago, we did the Opening Day for CLU here in Warwick, on our campus near Birmingham (UK). This year, we decided to have four different Beginning Days around Britain instead of just one in London, so that it would be easier to invite our friends where we live–and actually, it was. We organized an “Italian-style” lunch after Mass in the Chaplaincy, inviting everyone to stay for the talk after lunch. During the talk, we tried to communicate the way we’ve been educated to live university life and life in general, how our heart is asking to find an answer to its desires “here and now,” and how we have found in being Christian the answer to the desires of our heart. One of the things that struck me most, together with the beauty and simplicity of the gesture, was the enthusiastic testimony of Holly, a girl who has been attending School of Community with us for a few weeks. She said the very basic things we always say, sometimes out of habit, and she was full of the wonder of a “beginning.” She related her initial distrust toward all church-related groups (“You never know which brand you are going to get!”) and her doubt about anything worthwhile coming from a group of only five people! Instead, she has been struck by the beauty of Fr. Giussani’s work, and by how reading Giussani you can live an experience of the Church that doesn’t stop on secondary issues but is an experience of a beautiful, all-encompassing loving Church. She was also moved by how the School of Community gives an openness of heart and mind–through it one goes out to the world more certain and more open toward others–and by how the conflict between faith and reason is totally overtaken in Giussani. At the end of the meeting, she was inviting others to School of Community (“You should join our group!”) with a certainty much bigger than the one I had. Many other people were very happy for the experience of that day, and for me it was a reminder to put myself into play, letting everyone know who I am. Moreover, it’s been the occasion to share this with all the friends known in the Chaplaincy. Some of these people started to come to our small School of Community with incredible faithfulness. Now there are ten of us, from at least six different nations.
Emanuele Bracco, Birmingham