ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH
Saints celebrated on the 14th of March
CHIARA LUBICH, FOUNDRESS
The second of four children, she was born to
Luigi Lubich and his wife Luigia on January 22, 1920 and baptised Silvia. At the age of 15, she joined Catholic Action in Trento and became a diocesan youth leader.
She attended a teachers' college and became a passionate student of philosophy. Her great desire was to attend the Catholic University of Milan, but she failed to win a scholarship. Initially deeply distressed, she suddenly felt consoled by an inner certainty from God: "I will be your teacher". As soon as she graduated, she took jobs teaching in elementary schools in the valley regions around Trento (1938-39), and then in Cognola (1940-1943), a town close to Trento, in a school for orphans run by the Capuchins. In the autumn of 1943, she left teaching and enrolled at the Ca'Foscari University of Venice, continuing to give private lessons. However, due to the circumstances of the war, at the end of 1944, she had to interrupt her studies.
The Focolare Movement was founded against the backdrop of the horrors of World War II. In the midst of this, Silvia discovered the life-giving alternative: God, who is Love. It would become the inspiring spark for the movement for peace and unity that would later emerge. In autumn of 1942, in the wake of a simple conversation about the love of God with a Capuchin friar, Casimiro Bonetti, he proposed that Silvia enter the Franciscan Third Order. Attracted by Clare of Assisi's radical choice of God, she took the name Chiara, which is Italian for Clare. Her experience of God's love was the topic of conferences she gave to the young women of the Third Order.
On September 2, 1943, Anglo-American forces began bombing Trento. As she and her first companions ran to the air-raid shelters, they took only a copy of the Gospel, which they read and tried to put it into practice. Amidst the uncertainty about the future and fear for life itself caused by the war, Chiara realised how everything passes, everything collapses, everything is "vanity of vanities" (Eccl. 1:1) and "only God remains". She became convinced that "the salvation of the twentieth century is love". She shared this great news with "letters of fire" that she wrote to her relatives, to the young women of the Third Order, and to her colleagues. Soon other young women joined her in living what they called a "divine adventure".
On December 7, 1943, in the chapel of the Capuchin College, she pronounced her total “Yes, forever” with a vow of perpetual chastity.
Chiara and her early friends dedicated themselves to the people in the poorest sections of Trento, recognising in them the presence of Jesus. Thanks to a growing number of people being involved, food, clothing and medicine arrived with unusual abundance. Chiara made a plan, with the goal of “solving the social problems of Trento”. In 1947, it took shape as “Fraternity in action". In 1948 she wrote: "We have understood that the world needs to be healed by the Gospel because only the Good News can give back to the world the life it lacks. This is why we live the Word of Life... We have no other book except the Gospel, no other science, no other art. That is where life is!"
In February 1948, in an editorial signed by Silvia Lubich, which appeared in L'Amico Serafico, the magazine of the Capuchin Fathers, she announced the communion of goods to all those around her, following the example of the first Christians. After only a few months, close to 500 people were involved in a widespread sharing of material and spiritual goods.
In that dark time without much hope for the future, a universal project opened up for Chiara:
One day I found myself with my new companions in a dark, candle-lit cellar, a book of the Gospel in hand. I opened it at random and found the prayer of Jesus before he died: "Father..., that they may all be one" (John 17:11). It was not an easy text for us to start with, but one by one those words seemed to come to life, giving us the conviction that we were born for that page of the Gospel.
For Chiara, "that they may all be one" could mean nothing less than the unity of all humankind. Unity with God and among human beings could be achieved on one condition: by embracing the cross. Gradually she and her companions realised that in that moment Jesus had transformed all forms of pain and suffering into "new life" and healed all the traumata of division.
"We experienced joy, new peace, the fullness of life, an unmistakable light. Jesus was fulfilling his promise: 'Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them' (Matt 18:20). He is the one who binds us into unity with the Father, and into unity among us, the unity which had been impossible until now."
Chiara understood that the unity that she and her first companions were experiencing was destined for the whole world. In 1946 she already proposed that they aim at universal brotherhood, indicating the way that this can be done. "Look at all people as children of the one Father. Let our thoughts and the affection of our hearts go beyond the barriers imposed by our human vision of life, and develop the habit of constantly opening ourselves to the reality of being one human family in only one Father: God".
At the beginning of February 2008, Chiara was admitted to the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome. During her stay, she received a visit from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and a letter from Pope Benedict XVI. On March 13, 2008, since nothing more could be done for her medically, she was discharged and returned to her home in Rocca di Papa, where she peacefully died the next day, March 14, at the age of 88.
Sources:
https://chiaralubich.org/en/cat_biografia/timeline-bio-en/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiara_Lubich
https://www.focolare.org/gb/history-of-the-focolare/chiara-lubich/
https://giveninstitute.com/chiara-lubich/
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