“You are entrusting the family with an explosive mission – a reform that families can initiate in the world” – this was Igino Giordani’s comment to Chiara Lubich in 1967, when she founded New Families, a branch of the Focolare Movement. After fifty years, precisely on the ninth anniversary of the founder’s passing away, the big branch that sprang from that small seed is putting forth many little branches through various events and initiatives in many cities worldwide. That prophecy is becoming a reality.
More than a thousand people, of all ages, coming from 50 different countries, participated in the three-day Loppiano event. They were mainly Christians, but Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus were also present. The fruits of the New Families’ itinerary were visible in the interaction between different generations: grandparents, parents, and grandchildren. The program, translated into 19 different languages and streamed live was based on three main themes: the family, a network of relationships; love, as a response to critical situations in the family; and the family, a creative resource for all humanity.
Parents and children alike communicated their experiences. A teenager shared their suffering as a family because of their father, a victim of alcohol. She transmitted the hope that came from sharing. “The family is the most important thing”, she said, “and we must not be afraid to take the first step. It may be hard to do so, but if it is done out of love,
it can bring about change”. A couple related how they searched for their
“prodigal” son, who had destroyed the family business, ran up big debts and fled the country. Although their pain was excruciating, they realized that mercy had to win over anger. So they decided to set off in search of their son until they found him. Their embrace marked the beginning of his new life and reconciliation.
Basma, a Muslim, and Tatiana, a Christian, went up on stage together and related how they were able to build a very strong sisterly bond between them by sharing the ups and downs of everyday life after Basma’s husband had died, and she found herself alone in a foreign country, with two children to care for and without any support. Their story spoke of the encounter between different peoples and demonstrated how it is only through mutual acceptance and hospitality that dissimilar peoples can become a family of families.
In her address to the participants, Maria Voce commented on the richness of these stories, and recalled how the charism of unity “offers a light and a key to look at the world and its history, to understand the bond that each one of us with the whole of humanity”. She quoted Chiara Lubich’s words, written in September 6, 1949, which sounded like a new appeal: “My ‘I’ is humanity with all the people that were, are, and will be. I feel and live this reality: because I feel in my soul both the joy of Heaven and the anguish of humanity that is completely a great Jesus forsaken”.
Then she launched Chiara Lubich’s initial call to families when they were entrusted with that portion of the world that seemed “the most shattered, the most similar to Him Forsaken”. She reminded those present that the irreplaceable task of families “is to keep love always alive in their homes, giving new life to the values God gave the family, and transmitting generously and tirelessly everywhere in society”. And she urged: “This is a tough task, but we cannot let hope escape us, as Pope Francis would say”.
The families at the Loppiano event expressed their commitment and determination to become witnesses of universal brotherhood – even though their contribution might seem a drop in an ocean – through two symbolic but concrete gestures: a moment of prayer and personal commitment represented by the flower every family stuck to boards outside the auditorium; and the twinning between families from two different parts of the world, an action to be extended to other families in their respective territories, in order to strengthen a network of relationships which responds to the needs of different parts of the world.
Academicians and experts in family support services, counseling in pedagogical and psychological research and other subjects concerning the family, participated in the Cultural Seminar about “The pact of reciprocity in family life, generating trust and relationships”. During the event, which took place on the first day, the participants explored the reality
of the family from the theological, anthropological, sociological, pedagogical and political points of view. Reflection on the value of the family as a resource for humanity, highlighted how the family’s future and the value of human life come from within the family itself. At the end of the Seminar, the outlines of a high level research center emerged. Run by the Sophia University Institute, in synergy with other institutes of international level, this interreligious, interdenominational, intercultural and interdisciplinary research center aims to study this wealth of family life to be able to then express it on a universal level.
