The Focolare Movement came into being on 7 December 1943 in Trento, Italy. Its foundress, Chiara Lubich, was twenty-three years old when on that day she gave herself to God. She was alone then. It was impossible to imagine what fruit that marriage to God would bear. Today millions of people of every age, belonging to different social groups, languages, races and convictions, in 182 countries of the world, strive selflessly to build a new brotherhood and so to help build unity in the human family, which is torn by violence, division and social and cultural inequality.
Spirituality
The foundation of this life is constant mutual love, which makes unity and the presence of Jesus in the community possible. The spirituality is deeply rooted in the Gospel and rests on 12 key points:
God is love — give him the first place;
Accept the will of God;
Love your neighbour;
Love one another as Jesus loves each one of us;
Be one, as the Most Holy Trinity is one;
Live for the constant presence of Christ in the community;
Walk towards unity by the way of Jesus’s cry of abandonment by the Father on the cross;
Write the Gospel with your own life;
Be one with the body of Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist;
Follow the path of Mary, the first Christian;
Be the living Church everywhere;
Live in God’s atmosphere of the Holy Spirit and listen constantly to his voice.
The structure of the community
Although all live the same spirituality, because of the variety of those who make it up — young people, adults, children, families and priests, religious brothers and sisters, even bishops — the Movement is divided into 27 branches, among them several movements with a wide range of activity:
the various spheres of society, through the New Humanity movement, which works in concrete ways to bring the spirit of love into every pore of society;
the world of families, with the New Families movement, which by its life and its activities seeks to answer the blows and the wounds that strike this basic cell of society;
young people and children, with the Youth for a United World and Children for Unity movements, which propose to the young a radical life of the Gospel as the answer to their deepest longings;
the world of the Church, with the movement for priests, the movement for parishes and the movement for religious communities, whose vocation calls them to contribute to the unity for which Jesus prayed before his death: “That they may all be one”;
politics, through the Movement for Unity.
At the centre of the Movement are the focolares (women’s and men’s communities), small communities of a new kind, made up of lay people given wholly to God. Married lay people belong to them as well, likewise consecrated to God in keeping with their vocation.
The community in our parish
The Focolare community (the Work of Mary) in our parish meets for the Word of Life gatherings. From time to time the members of the community organise open meetings — especially at Christmas, for families with children. Several times a year they take part in spiritual programmes at the Focolare Movement’s centre in Croatia, where meetings for different age groups are also held, and in Italy, as well as in the annual “Mariapolis” gathering held in Macedonia.